$50 includes crab, 50/50 raffle, prizes, and DJ Wategate. Proceeds support sports programs at MDHS. Support and recognize the efforts of student athletes from past and present. Provide additional opportunities for local athletes and assist in building school spirit and pride. Call to reserve tickets 671-0703 or RSVP by e-mail. Send Checks made to MDHSSHOF to 1532 Maynard, Concord 94519; Tickets held at door.

If you want to be a part of the fight against cancer, Sign up today for the Relay For Life of Concord. After you register, make plans to join us at the 2008 kickoff celebration. If you’re interested in learning more or receiving an invitation, please call 925-324-2385, or email Brian Leshak at gmail dot com.

Questions:

1. Why does Concord have to pay for this and not the blessed Mount Diablo Unified School District (MDUSD)? This is a school problem impacting the neighborhoods and downtown. MDUSD should be on the hook for this. What am I missing?

2. Isn’t there a better way to spend 43 large? Why not put up web-cams around the area and shame kids for truancy violations with live, in-school video display. $20 says there’s some smart Red Devils in the computer science class that could figure this out for less than $43,000. So make it a school project with what’s leftover as a prize!

3. Sources say that plan will produce a sieve, noting there is no concern for the stadium exit at Galindo Street at Almond, where kids meet up and a lot of the drug deals go down. Instead, maybe school staff could be more properly incentivized by using the money as Bounty; where staff gets a reward for interdicting the few ne’er-do-wells from skipping classes to go to Baldwin Park for a toke or some fertive family planning in the bushes around the school.

The bitter-sweet side of this is Concord’s RDA will actually be spending monies on education! Imagine that.

Following our recent story about the truancy problems at Mt Diablo High School spilling into downtown Concord, we heard noise that the Mt Diablo School District had proposed installing a fence to help control truant students. Apparently, the district has sent the City of Concord the bill… and it isn’t pretty.

Sources indicate that the first estimate for a fence around the entire school property would cost more than $300,000. But this week City staff and Council are trying to determine whether a recent bill for $40,000 payable to Mt Diablo School District is for one gate or two. The City of course wants cyclone fencing, while the district is pushing for more fashionable wrought iron.

Aesthetics aside, one gate for $40,000 is robbery, and we hope the Red Devil on Concord City Council can talk sense to the district. Even $40,000 for two “gates” is probably a waste of good money. Two gates will prove ineffective as they would not stop determined truants from leaving the campus via the stadium gate at Galindo and Almond on their way to fun and frolick at Todos Santos Park. Nor would such a timid scheme mitigate simple egress across East Street to Baldwin Park, location of the award-winning Baldwin Walk homeless housing development.

Perhaps the real untold cost is Concord having to pay its police force to wrangle truants back to school so the District can get its ADA money (per-student-per-day) from the State. Maybe Concord should collect a bounty of say 20-percent for every truant that Concord police return to school (either Olympic or Mt Diablo).