When it comes to giving students with disabilities the best education possible, early intervention and early detection are crucial – but not all families are equipped to access the resources they need. On this week’s podcast, Shana Cohen,...

Just before we went to tape the latest episode of the San Diego Decides podcast, former Obama adviser David Axelrod had a fortuitous tweet: Polls are so numerous at this point that results vary greatly and everyone can find one they like. Yet all are covered as if they're right! — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) September 14, 2016 During election season, various polls get blasted in people’s faces like they’re being hurled from a T-shirt gun. Making sense of them all – especially when they sometimes seem to contradict one another – is tough. In this episode, Ry Rivard and I run down some of the many things to consider when reading a poll: Who was paying for it, who was surveyed and how (did the interviewers use cell phones? Did they have Spanish-speakers available?) and what questions were actually asked. We also talk about the rise of online polling – a method that was considered kind of a joke as recently as a few years ago but is growing more sophisticated at a rapid clip. And we talked with John Nienstedt of Competitive Edge, who’s been polling San Diegans for decades, about lessons he’s learned over the years. Nienstedt said that even subtle changes in the wording of a polling question can produce significant differences in results. He pointed out that in 2015, the Chargers paid for a survey that asked: “Do you favor or oppose the city and the county spending $400 million to build a new NFL football stadium in the Mission Valley area of San Diego?” About 61 percent of the respondents said they opposed that plan. “I pointed out when this was touted to me – the question itself, if you read it carefully, what is a respondent supposed to say? Because you’re putting the emphasis on the city and county spending $400 million – that’s what you’re responding to,” Nienstedt said. “You’re not responding to a package or a proposition or an initiative, you’re responding to whether they should spend that money. The default is gonna be no.”

In an unruly and bewildering presidential campaign, Reihan Salam sees some clear lessons and takeaways for the Republican Party. The conservative author and executive editor of National Review joins Scott Lewis this week to give a quick preview of the Politifest keynote talk he's delivering at 9 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 24. Salam talks about the past and future of conservatism and why he thinks Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has garnered such wide appeal and proven that its time for the Grand Old Party to rethink itself. Trump has veered from the traditional wisdom and conservative talking points of Republican party leaders – leaders Salam says have lost touch with the majority of voters anyway. "The truth is that most people vote on the basis of their identity," he said. "What is the the group that I belong to? What kind of person am I? And so which party is basically going to defend the interest of my kind of person....?" Salam says the Republican Party needs to connect with more people, particularly the immigrants Trump has been alienating, if it wants to stay relevant. "There are a few different paths Republicans can take," he said. "One of which is to try to become a whites-only party that represents affluent as well as working-class whites. Another path is for it to be the part of the middle, including the Hispanic middle and some component of the black middle as well. ... Then there's another view that we can stick with the Neo-Reaganite, quasi -Libertarian Party and hope for the best. I believe that that middle-oriented Republican Party is the way of the future but there's going to be a lot of resistance to that over the next 10 years." Also on the podcast, hosts Lewis and Andrew Keatts discuss the U-T's story about the new developments in the long-running lawsuit over the city's 2012 City Council-approved hike of the hotel-room tax to help fund the future expansion of the Convention Center and the possibility of a future consumer fraud class action lawsuit connected to the hike that was levied without a citywide vote. Lewis also gets into why he's been feeling so somber about the state of journalism lately, but cheers up a bit when he mentions all the big names who'll be participating in the big stadium debate at Politifest. Faulconer Watch Mayor Kevin Faulconer still hasn't taken a position on whether he thinks a hotel-room tax increase to help pay for a new East Village stadium for the Chargers is a good or bad idea. Lewis lays out a slow and steady case for why he thinks the mayor isn't saying anything. The paralysis over the issue, Lewis says, might be related in part to the Faulconer Doctrine, which Lewis and Keatts have described as the mayor's tendency to wait in the wings before going with the side that seems to have the most political force. That approach seems to have failed Faulconer on this issue. Hero of the Week The PangeaSeed Foundation, a nonprofit that uses art to promote environmental awareness, rounded up local and international artists to paint 16 new outdoor murals across the San Diego region. Goat of the Week This week's goat goes once again to the San Diego Unified School District. The district closed three child development centers relied on by parents who work or attend school, plus one preschool serving families that meet strict low-income requirements. The closures come on the heels of the district's Preschool for All initiative, which is being pitched as an expansion but appears to be mostly a publicity stunt.

In the carefully crafted messages that surface in the wake of corporate buyouts of craft breweries, several creative explanations for the sales have been floated to appease fretful indie beer fans. Jacob McKean, founder of San Diego craft brewery and coffee roaster Modern Times, says anyone who says a sale is about more than money isn't being straight. In a scathing blog post about the rising trend of corporate acquisitions of craft breweries and some of the rationale that follows, McKean pokes holes in some of the most popular claims. "Here’s the truth: selling to a macro-brewer is the fastest, simplest way to turn equity in a craft brewery into cash. That’s the only reason to sell to them. Anyone who claims otherwise is full of shit." McKean joins co-hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts this week to talk more about the points he made. He said post-acquisition, the main goal of the corporations that buy small breweries is to suffer as little blowback as possible from the craft beer crowd and keep sales up. He said he hopes journalists will stop buying the spin and start scrutinizing big beer's intention, because their entry into the craft beer market is dangerous to actual craft breweries that can't compete with big beer business tactics. "The one thing macro beer can do that small breweries can't is lose money," McKean said. "And that's the weapon they're deploying." Also on the podcast, Lewis makes good on a lost bet with Keatts, the duo talks about Measure K, the proposal that would change how city elections work and how the debate about it at Politifest will likely be one of the most heated, and they parse a claim by Measure C proponents about the amount of money the city can save by mothballing Qualcomm Stadium. Faulconer Watch In this week's #FaulconerWatch, Keatts and Lewis note that Mayor Kevin Faulconer got a letter signed by local business leaders asking him to oppose the proposed East Village stadium. The mayor, though, continues to stay mum on the matter. Hero of the Week The San Diego Opera gets a thumbs-up for its new Opera on the Tracks series that takes free shows to venues on and around the trolley lines and the organization's continued work reshaping itself into an opera company that serves more people. Goat of the Week The city of Del Mar wants the North County Transit District to stop slamming folks with hefty fines for illegally crossing tracks to get to the beach. The city gets the goat this week for not actually dealing with the problem of accessing the beach. The city of Encinitas, for example, built its residents a nice underpass leading to Swami's Beach.

A couple years ago, the state got rid of the and opted for a new way to check in on student progress. On this week’s podcast, Steve Green, senior director for assessment, accountability and evaluation at the San Diego County Office of Education,...

Last week, Mayor Kevin Faulconer's office sent out an email saying the mayor would be appearing the next day with leaders of the San Diego Unified School District to launch a “game-changing education initiative.” The announcement, it turned out, was that the district was launching a Pre-K for All program. It sounded just like New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio's Pre-K for All program, which made preschool free for some 65,000 children. So is that what happened in San Diego? Nope, not at all. That is not what happened in San Diego. On this week's podcast, hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts explain just how the different the initiative Faulconer and school officials described is going to be. The program would be more accurately titled something like You Can Pay Us for Preschool. The school district and the mayor get a big-time goat award this week for making the initiative sound like a much bigger, better deal than it is. Experimenting With Affordable Housing Architect and developer Jonathan Segal, the guy behind the North Parker building at the corner of Upas and 30th and several other projects in San Diego's urban neighborhoods, joined the show this week to talk about a new project in Little Italy that's breaking some regulatory molds. Segal said the project won't include any parking. That's a move that will help keep construction costs down, resulting in savings he said he'll pass on to tenants. He said they hope to charge around $1,000 to $2,000 a month for small units that are about 350 to 400 square feet. He said that's a lot less than nearby rents. The city, though, does require new projects to include parking. Segal said his firm used the state's density bonus law, which allows developers to build more homes on a property than city restrictions allow if they agree to build some low-income homes in their project. The law also allows developers other exceptions, and Segal used his to waive the parking-garage requirement. He calls the project "experimental micro-housing" and said he thinks it's a model for building affordable housing downtown. He said if developers continue to pack downtown with nothing but luxury condos, it will lead to a homogenized population. "If you want to push all the real people out of downtown living, just keep cramming that parking requirement in and you'll find out it'll be all the highbrows that are living down here versus a great mixture," he said. Also on this week's podcast, Lewis and Keatts digest all the Chargers news and opinions on our site this week and they debut the "Faulconer Watch," a weekly look at whether the mayor has decided to take a position on the stadium, the biggest decision facing the future of the city he leads. They also worry about climate change and connect it to the ongoing debate about the Carlsbad Desalination Project, and discuss more of the week's biggest news.

High school graduation rates are up – but students' access to quality courses still varies from school to school. Last school year, the San Diego Unified School District touted a – an increase despite the district's new, tougher . The...

East Village isn't the thriving arts district . When Petco Park was built 12 years ago, lots of the artists and galleries taking advantage of cheap rent and large warehouses there were priced out. East Village has been gentrifying since the...

East Village isn't the thriving arts district it once was. When Petco Park was built 12 years ago, lots of the artists and galleries taking advantage of cheap rent and large warehouses there were priced out. East Village has been gentrifying since the ballpark went up. High-priced condos and nice restaurants are popping up, but the neighborhood's also home to the region's largest homeless population, In episode four of Culturecast, VOSD’s podcast covering the intersection of arts and gentrification in Barrio Logan, I talk to people who are worried that Barrio Logan's development will mirror East Village's if the Chargers get their new downtown stadium. They say the arts scene that's been flourishing in and around Barrio Logan will die if the stadium's built. Brent Beltran, who lives in Barrio Logan and is part of the Barrios Against Stadiums group, said he's concerned that both the very poor and the very rich will come to their neighborhood if Measure C passes in November. He said he and his neighbors have already seen an influx of homeless people, and he thinks more will come if the measure passes. On the flip side, Beltran said he's already seen an uptick of real estate investors swooping up properties. "There are people that support the Chargers in this neighborhood," he said. "A lot of people in community may not understand the impact of what the stadium's going to do on them. They don't know anything about gentrification. Some people don't know the rising property values are going to go up and they're going to be pushed out – they don't understand the correlation between that." The Chargers are asking voters to approve an increase in the city's hotel-room tax to help pay for the new stadium, which would also include a Convention Center annex. The San Diego Building & Construction Trades Council, a coalition of 22 local construction and trade unions, has come out in support of the proposal, but Carol Kim, the council's director of community engagement, said the support comes with strings attached. Kim said she's been talking to people in Barrio Logan and the other neighborhoods surrounding East Village about their stadium concerns. She said her conversations almost always stray toward the community's more deep-seated problems. "That's really where it gets tricky because these concerns they're dealing with, things like gentrification, things like parking and traffic, environmental concerns, health concerns, other mitigation, all of those things are things that are really big, complex issues and they're the culmination of basically decades of neglect," she said. Kim took the community concerns she collected to a meeting with the Chargers and walked away with a letter signed by the team's owner Dean Spanos. In it, he commits to a community benefits agreement, or a contract with community groups from Barrio Logan and surrounding communities. Nothing is set in stone yet, but the letter lays out a framework that says the Chargers will consider doing things like starting a public land trust and pitching in money to help build affordable housing, help create a parking district, put on job fairs and outreach events to hire folks from those communities to work at the stadium and offer job-training and apprentice opportunities. Of course, everything is contingent on whether the ballot measure passes in November, but Kim said she thinks the opportunities the Chargers are offering are the only set of solutions available. "Right now it seems very apparent that there's a lack of leadership at the city level to address these problems," she said. "So absent that leadership, here's an opportunity for us to actually try and do something, and we've got a stakeholder here who's willing to contribute some significant resources toward doing something about these problems, where, what else is on the table right now? There's not a lot." When I contacted the Chargers, the team’s spokesperson put me in touch with Marcela Escobar-Eck, principal of A

The San Diego Association of Governments touts its proposed ballot measure as a tool to solve many of the region's transportation and infrastructure problems. Relieving congestion is among the things the proposed half-cent sales tax would purportedly do, if passed by voters in November. Podcast hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts dig in to VOSD reporter Maya Srikrishnan's recent fact check of that claim. They discuss the nuances behind what SANDAG actually means when it talks about traffic and congestion relief and explain why the claim is a stretch. This rest of this week's podcast is a little different than usual. Lewis and Keatts essentially craft an audio digest of several recent VOSD stories. Keatts talks about the documents he got from the civil case against San Diego Police Officer Neal Browder, the officer who shot and killed an unarmed, mentally ill man last year. The files provide a rare look into how SDPD evaluated and disciplined the officer (spoiler alert: they didn't). They also touch on the San Diego Unified principal with questionable credentials and the trend of moving problem principals into special assignments, the big disappointment that was District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis' testimony in the trial of the Mexican businessman accused of making illegal campaign contributions and the week in Chargers news. There's also a Chargers bet involving a cheesesteak. Mary Walter-Brown, the publisher and chief operating officer of Voice of San Diego, also joins the show to talk about VOSD's current fundraising campaign and her role in raising money for journalism. "It's an interesting challenge, but one I think is a worthy one," she said. " It's difficult for philanthropists and corporate funders to think about funding journalism. We're viewed as being controversial and Voice especially is irreverent and not afraid of tipping any sacred cows." Hero of the Week The San Diego County Bicycle Coalition gets a big thumbs-up for bringing back CicloSDias after a two-year hiatus. The event clears city streets to celebrate biking and walking. Goat of the Week The newly elected board trustees for the San Diego County Office of Education want a say on who should fill the county superintendent role if Randy Ward, who's currently on paid leave after a lawsuit alleged he illegally paid himself $100,000, is ultimately let go. There's a logic to their point, but Keatts and Lewis dinged incoming board member Mark Powell for his awkward comparison to the current stalemate over the U.S. Supreme Court.