Features

Gov. congratulates school district
for raising credentials 

OAKLAND— Gov. Gray Davis issued an official proclamation Wednesday to Oakland Unified School District for successfully reducing its number of emergency permit teachers by 64 percent last year. 

Davis credited the district’s participation in the Transition to Teaching pilot project for its decrease in teachers with emergency credentials. The program is part of Project Pipeline, a nonprofit group that operates the state-sponsored Northern California Teacher Recruitment Center. 

In the 2001-2002 school year the district reduced the number of emergency permit teachers from 257 to 93, said Margaret Fortune, the center’s director. 

When school opens Thursday, only 35 teachers with emergency credentials will show up for work, compared to 500 in 2000. 

Fortune said some teachers were eligible for credentials and just applied, and others put in the work needed to earn theirs. Teachers who did not pursue credentials were replaced. 

Defendants in SF killing
of senator’s son in court 

SAN FRANCISCO – After a three month delay, the preliminary hearing of evidence resumed Wednesday against two young men accused of killing a state senator's son during a San Francisco street robbery last fall. 

Hunter McPherson, 27, was shot on Potrero Hill's Mariposa Street on Nov. 17 while walking home with his girlfriend after a night of socializing with friends. The two men arrested a few weeks later are charged with committing a series of similar armed robberies that night, ending with the shooting death of one of their intended victims. 

One defendant, 22-year-old Dwayne Reed, had asked for and received a new attorney well into the preliminary hearing in May leading Superior Court Judge Ksenia Tsenin to grant postponements so that newly appointed attorney Cheryl Wallace could prepare.  

Several witnesses, including McPherson's girlfriend Alexa Savelle, had either pointed out a shooter that was different than who police expected or they were unable to identify either defendant as present at the scene. 

On Wednesday, homicide Inspector Thomas Cleary took the stand again to continue responding to defense questions about how officers identified Reed and his co-defendant, 18-year-old Clifton Terrell, as suspects.  

Still unanswered is whether one narcotics investigator involved – Officer Paul Lozada, who interviewed Reed in jail during late November – would respond to a defense subpoena issued while he was off duty on disability pay. The judge had threatened to issue a warrant if he didn't show up. 

US Commerce secretary gives
$6.4 million for tech uncubator  

HAYWARD – U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans Tuesday gave a $6.44 million check to a technology incubator housed in the former U.S. Navy base in Alameda, the largest economic development grant issued by the Bush administration so far. 

The award will go toward the construction of a home for the organization Advancing California's Emerging Technologies, which helps fledgling high-tech, biotech and environmental technology companies as they strive to become self-sufficient. 

A project of the California State University at Hayward, the incubator opened in 1998 and has "graduated'' seven companies which have created between 900 and 1,000 jobs and raised an estimated $150 million in venture capital. 

By its fifth year in operation, the new facility – scheduled to open in 2004 – will graduate 12 to 15 companies per year, add an estimated 6,000 new jobs to the Bay Area economy and attract $1 billion in investment.