For eight days, the Spurs puttered around their practice gym, fighting off rust and wishing the Western Conference semifinals would start already.

Two days after finishing off a grueling Game 7 in Memphis, the Los Angeles Clippers arrived in San Antonio wishing they had a couple extra days to catch their breath.

In Game 1 on Tuesday night at the ATT Center, fresh legs won out over exhausted ones, and the well-rested Spurs struck first blood with a 108-92 victory.

“You’re always scared coming in here with so many days off,” said Tim Duncan, who notched his 133rd career playoff double-double with 26 points and 10 rebounds. “It makes you scared you’re going to come out here and stumble out of the gates.”

By the time the second half rolled around, the Spurs were back in a playoff groove. And the Clippers were out of gas.

More recharged than rusty, Duncan and Manu Ginobili (22 points) each turned in playoff scoring highs, as the top-seeded Spurs picked up where they left off in the first-round sweep of Utah.

The victory was the Spurs’ 15th in a row, dating to the end of the regular season, and fifth consecutive in the playoffs.

“It was hard to start,” Ginobili said. “We were a little sluggish at the beginning. Then, we picked it up.”

One sign the Spurs had their legs: They made 13 of 25 on 3-pointers, tying a franchise playoff record, including three apiece from Kawhi Leonard (16 points), Danny Green (15) and Ginobili.

During the break between the end of the first round and start of the second, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich fretted the extended time off might discombobulate the rhythm his team had gained in the first round.

He paced his team through every-other-day practices, including full-squad scrimmages, trying to keep his players sharp.

“You’ve got to do whatever you think is necessary to try to keep your rhythm, keep your conditioning and not get anybody hurt,” Popovich said.

After some early struggles — such as nine first-half turnovers — the Spurs rounded into form. Up by eight at intermission, the Spurs put together a 26-11 run in the third quarter to build a lead that got as large as 19 points.

The Clippers, who overcame a 27-point deficit in the second half of Game 1 against Memphis, did not go quietly.

When backup guard Eric Bledsoe, who finished with a team-high 23 points, hit a layup with 8:42 to play, it brought the Clippers within 90-82.

“We have some very resilient guys,” Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro said. “We’ll play through it.”

Late in the fourth quarter, the Clippers hit a wall.

With starters Chris Paul (hip), Blake Griffin (knee) and Caron Butler (hand) nursing injuries, the Clippers could have used about a week to heal up.

It was difficult to tell, for example, if it was exhaustion or the Spurs’ defense that caused Paul’s six-point, 3-for-13 night.

On the flip side, was the Clippers’ defense or rust responsible for Tony Parker’s 1-for-9 showing?

“We really don’t care if he’s the one scoring 25 (points),” Ginobili said of Parker. “The important thing is to move the ball, attack and kick and find the open teammates.”

Griffin turned in 15 points but missed 10 of his 17 field goals.

The high-flying Clippers All-Star was consistently schooled by Duncan, who scored eight of his points during the Spurs’ decisive third-quarter spurt.

“(Duncan) is not going to do anything that’s going to be on a highlight film for TV,” Popovich said. “But a highlight film for coaches, possibly.”

The Spurs were as rested as they have been all season Tuesday, and it showed.

Leonard’s young legs led him to six rebounds and one block to go along with his scoring. Boris Diaw pulled in 12 rebounds. Green grabbed six rebounds to complement his hot-shooting night.

When it was over, and the Spurs held another 1-0 series lead, they could rest easy in this knowledge:

They only have to wait a day to play Game 2.

jmcdonald

@express-news.net

Twitter:

@JMcDonald_SAEN

Article source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/spurs/article/Layoff-doesn-t-slow-Spurs-3561424.php

Australia fly-half Quade Cooper will
make his return after a near seven-month knee injury layoff in
the Queensland Reds’ May 19 Super Rugby game against the Lions.

Cooper, who ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament Oct. 21
when playing for the Wallabies against Wales in the Rugby World
Cup third-place playoff, was today named to start in the
playmaking role at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium.

Cooper’s inclusion comes after he responded positively to a
series of tests at a team training session yesterday, the Reds
said on their website. He played in all 18 games last season to
help the Reds win their first southern hemisphere provincial
championship in rugby’s professional era.

“It has been a long layoff for him and the next few weeks
before our bye will be invaluable as he again finds his feet,”
Reds coachEwen McKenziesaid in a statement. “Everyone is
excited to see him back out there, but it’s important we manage
him the right way during this period.”

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Dan Baynes at
dbaynes@bloomberg.net

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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-16/australia-s-cooper-to-make-rugby-return-after-seven-month-layoff.html

SAN ANTONIO — So much for getting rusty: The San Antonio Spurs didn’t miss a beat after a weeklong break, extending a winning streak that few NBA teams have ever sustained in the playoffs.

The weary Los Angeles Clippers looked just beaten — and making matters worse, they’re even a little more beat-up than when they got here.

Tim Duncan had 26 points and 10 rebounds following an eight-day layoff for the top-seeded Spurs, who wore down Los Angeles in the Clippers’ sixth game in 11 days and won Game 1 of their Western Conference semifinals series, 108-92 on Tuesday night.

“It’s hard to tell if they were tired or not. If we were rusty or not,” Spurs guard Manu Ginobili said. “The game just developed that way it did.”

By that, he meant the latest Spurs blowout.

The Spurs have won 15 in a row, haven’t lost in more than a month and are winning by an average margin of nearly 17 points during that span. It’s the longest winning streak sustained in the NBA playoffs since the 2004 Spurs carried 17 straight wins into the second round that season.

That Spurs team, however, wound up dropping four straight to the Lakers and lost that series. The Clippers have a lot of work to do if they’re going to stage a similar stunner, and a good start would be getting healthy.

Blake Griffin scored 15 points in 28 minutes a day after estimating his sprained left knee had him feeling “80 per cent” at best. The All-Star said he became tired quicker than usual, and also turned his left ankle early in the game.

“But I’ll get back in the training room, get treatment and hope to be better the next game,” Griffin said.

The marquee matchup of the series — All-Star point guards Tony Parker and Chris Paul — began with a fizzle.

Paul, who ended the first round with an aching hip, scored just six points and didn’t make a single basket in the second half. Parker was barely any batter, putting together seven points and 11 assists, and didn’t talk to reporters after the game.

Paul did face the media after his worst playoff game since scoring four points in a loss to Denver in 2009. But not until after a quick chat with his young son.

“Good game, Daddy,” Paul’s son said in the locker room.

“No, bad game,” Paul told him. “Daddy had a bad game. Daddy couldn’t make a shot.”

Paul, who was 3 of 13 from the floor, gave a more elaborate explanation to reporters.

“I felt I got all the shots that I wanted. I just didn’t make them,” Paul said. “That’s the most frustrating part. Getting to where I wanted to and not seeing them go down. Can’t do that in the playoffs.”

Game 2 is Thursday night.

That gives the beat-up and banged-up Clippers one full day of rest — which is all the time they’ve had to recover between games for the past week and a half. Los Angeles couldn’t even fly home first after knocking out the Grizzlies on Sunday in Game 7 of a grueling series that had the Clippers hobbling next to Texas.

Rookie Kawhi Leonard added 16 points, hitting all three of his 3s, and Danny Green added 15 points for the Spurs.

Caron Butler scored 15 points and Nick Young had 13 for the Clippers. Los Angeles cut the deficit to single digits with a 10-burst in the fourth quarter before San Antonio ran away with its 11th double-digit victory during this dominating winning streak.

The Clippers didn’t even need San Antonio’s help getting more bumps and bruises: Mo Williams, already playing with his sore right fingers taped, took a lump on the head when teammate Reggie Evans kicked him with an errant foot after Williams fell on his back in the lane.

Williams wobbled when he tried standing, sat back down, and the Clippers burned a timeout. He never left the game, but the Clippers weren’t getting any fresher.

Parker, meanwhile, finally felt the hard knocks and slow-him-down shoves that Utah repeatedly promised but never delivered in the first round. Sometimes, the All-Star looked in vain to officials when the whistle didn’t blow. When that didn’t work once in the first quarter, he kept jabbering about a no-call on the last possession while lining up to shoot free throws on the current one.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, pacing and sensing an impending technical foul, silenced his leading scorer.

“Tony!” Popovich snapped from the sideline. “Shoot!”

Parker waved off the NBA Coach of the Year — he was under control. But his frustrations didn’t end there. He was 1 for 9 despite playing 38 minutes, scoring all but two of his points at the foul line.

“He didn’t score, but he got 11 assists,” Ginobili said. “That’s who we are. Sometimes it’s not going to be him.”

Notes: The Spurs tied a franchise playoff record with 13 3-pointers.Before this became the deepest Spurs team yet under Popovich, Butler said he came so close to signing with the Spurs after the lockout that he cancelled a flight to San Antonio when the Clippers counteroffered. “They made a great pitch,” Butler said. …Leonard finished fourth in the Rookie of the Year voting, the highest finish for a Spurs player since Ginobili finished fourth in 2003. Said Popovich: “He’s done a good enough job to make me trust him to be in the starting lineup. I’m happy for him.”

Article source: http://www.tsn.ca/nba/story/?id=396072

Teachers got theirs this week, and some staff members got theirs earlier.

The layoffs are due to “budget restraints” for next school year, the district news release said.

The 2011-2012 budget is about $6.2 million less than for this school year.

The district will have about $10 million additional from the state budget that Gov. Sean Parnell approved this week and other sources, but almost all of it is one-time funding, said district chief financial officer Chad Stiteler.

The School Board will discuss the situation at its May 21 work session and meeting, and decide what to do at its June 11 meeting, said board president Gretchen Guess.

“We won’t have enough ongoing funds to reinstate all the teachers,” Guess said. “If funding remains flat, we will face similar cuts in the future.”

“The district had its hands tied,’ said teacher’s union president Jim Lepley. “The state didn’t add any funding to the base student allocation.”

The layoff notices went to non-tenured teachers mostly at the middle and high school level, where class sizes are being increased. Teachers are tenured after three years.

In addition, more than 135 teachers were moved to different teaching jobs within the district, the district reported.

The non-teaching jobs lost include seven administrative, technical and professional positions, 12 clerical and support positions, and one maintenance position.

“This is a very sad time because we are potentially losing some incredible educators and staff who have given valued service to our students and our school district,” said Superintendent Carol Comeau in a written statement. “I am hopeful that over the next few months some of the people will be able to be recalled into a position.”

Lepley said typically 30-50 teachers resign over the summer. And their union contract calls for laid-off teachers to be on a recall list for three years, so there’s hope for some of them, Lepley said.

The last time the district pink-slipped sizeable numbers of employes was in 2003, when 177 received layoff notices, said district spokeswoman Heidi Embley. Those notices were all rescinded when then-Gov. Frank Murkowski signed the state budget.

Reach Rosemary Shinohara at rshinohara@adn.com or 257-4340.

Article source: http://www.adn.com/2012/05/15/2466416/school-district-delivers-layoff.html

Australia fly-half Quade Cooper will
make his return after a near seven-month knee injury layoff in
the Queensland Reds’ May 19 Super Rugby game against the Lions.

Cooper, who ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament Oct. 21
when playing for the Wallabies against Wales in the Rugby World
Cup third-place playoff, was today named to start in the
playmaking role at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium.

Cooper’s inclusion comes after he responded positively to a
series of tests at a team training session yesterday, the Reds
said on their website. He played in all 18 games last season to
help the Reds win their first southern hemisphere provincial
championship in rugby’s professional era.

“It has been a long layoff for him and the next few weeks
before our bye will be invaluable as he again finds his feet,”
Reds coachEwen McKenziesaid in a statement. “Everyone is
excited to see him back out there, but it’s important we manage
him the right way during this period.”

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Dan Baynes at
dbaynes@bloomberg.net

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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-16/australia-s-cooper-to-make-rugby-return-after-seven-month-layoff.html

Teachers got theirs this week, and some staff members got theirs earlier.

The layoffs are due to “budget restraints” for next school year, the district news release said.

The 2011-2012 budget is about $6.2 million less than for this school year.

The district will have about $10 million additional from the state budget that Gov. Sean Parnell approved this week and other sources, but almost all of it is one-time funding, said district chief financial officer Chad Stiteler.

The School Board will discuss the situation at its May 21 work session and meeting, and decide what to do at its June 11 meeting, said board president Gretchen Guess.

“We won’t have enough ongoing funds to reinstate all the teachers,” Guess said. “If funding remains flat, we will face similar cuts in the future.”

“The district had its hands tied,’ said teacher’s union president Jim Lepley. “The state didn’t add any funding to the base student allocation.”

The layoff notices went to non-tenured teachers mostly at the middle and high school level, where class sizes are being increased. Teachers are tenured after three years.

In addition, more than 135 teachers were moved to different teaching jobs within the district, the district reported.

The non-teaching jobs lost include seven administrative, technical and professional positions, 12 clerical and support positions, and one maintenance position.

“This is a very sad time because we are potentially losing some incredible educators and staff who have given valued service to our students and our school district,” said Superintendent Carol Comeau in a written statement. “I am hopeful that over the next few months some of the people will be able to be recalled into a position.”

Lepley said typically 30-50 teachers resign over the summer. And their union contract calls for laid-off teachers to be on a recall list for three years, so there’s hope for some of them, Lepley said.

The last time the district pink-slipped sizeable numbers of employes was in 2003, when 177 received layoff notices, said district spokeswoman Heidi Embley. Those notices were all rescinded when then-Gov. Frank Murkowski signed the state budget.

Reach Rosemary Shinohara at rshinohara@adn.com or 257-4340.

Article source: http://www.adn.com/2012/05/15/2466416/school-district-delivers-layoff.html

A lawsuit challenging the legality of California laws that make it more difficult to lay off or fire ineffective teachers has been filed by a 2-year-old education reform group.

The lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Students Matter seeks to overturn five statutes governing teacher tenure, dismissal and seniority rules, claiming they violate they rights of students to receive a high-quality education.

“A handful of outdated laws passed by the California Legislature are preventing school administrators from maintaining or improving the quality of our public educational system by denying them the flexibility to make teacher employment decisions driven by the needs of their students,” the lawsuit said. “These laws force school administrators to grant new teachers “permanent employment” after only 18 months on the job – well before the teachers’ effectiveness can be determined – and force school administrators to keep teachers in the classroom long after they have demonstrated themselves to be grossly ineffective.”

The suit was filed on Monday behalf of eight students against the California Gov. Jerry Brown, state Superintendent Tom Torlakson, Los Angeles Unified and several other plaintiffs.

Students Matter was founded in 2010 by David F. Welch, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who co-founded Infinera, a manufacturer of optical telecommunications systems based in Sunnyvale.

Article source: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_20628396/lawsuit-challenges-outdated-laws-governing-teacher-layoffs-firings

Hostess Brands Inc., which filed for bankruptcy protection in January, has notified the state that it is bracing for up to 38 layoffs at facilities in Uncasville and Norwich, just a portion of a possible 187 job reductions throughout Connecticut.

The layoffs at the maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies would occur around July 6 if necessary, according to a filing on a state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification site. The notification said up to 36 of the layoffs could occur at Hostess’s Uncasville distribution and two could happen at its Norwich retail site.

“On May 4th, we mailed conditional WARN notices to all 18,500 Hostess Brands employees around the country,” said Hostess spokesman Erik Havorson in an email. “The notices were sent to alert employees that a sale or wind down of the company is possible in the future.”

Both sites may be closed permanently, according to notification letters forwarded to Norwich Mayor Peter Nystrom and Montville Mayor Ronald K. McDaniel Jr.

“The company has been actively engaged in discussions with various lenders and potential purchasers regarding Hostess’s restructuring,” the letters said. “Our primary focus is to complete our restructuring of the company and emerge from Chapter 11 (bankruptcy) as a viable company.”

The layoffs are part of a nationwide restructuring of the company that could lead to more than 20 percent of Hostess’s workforce being laid off in the coming weeks, according to the notification.

Hostess, which does not bake any of its products in Connecticut, also announced possible layoffs at sites in East Windsor, Cheshire and Bridgeport.

The notice said company employees are represented by as many as 12 unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union.

Hostess Brands filed for bankruptcy eight years after a predecessor company, Interstate Bakeries, also failed. Interstate emerged from bankruptcy as Hostess Brands just three years ago.

CLARIFICATION: A headline on an earlier version of this story may have left readers with the incorrect impression that the layoffs at Hostess Brands are imminent. The headline has been updated to reflect that the layoffs are only a possibility.

Article source: http://www.theday.com/article/20120515/BIZ02/120519764/1047/NWS1501

Let’s lay off Sally Ridge until we’ve seen her upcoming reality show, says TV blogger Paul Casserly.

I’m disappointed in you New Zealand.

You see a poll asking if you want a reality show based around the capers of Sally Ridge and her daughter, and what do you do? You tick the box that says “no thanks”.

A pilot has barely been shot and already you want to put the damn thing down like a sickly Pomeranian.

And I thought the Great Kiwi Clobbering Machine was in a rusting heap somewhere out the back of Motat. It seems as if someone has sprayed some CRC on the points and got the bloody thing up and running again.

Online polls are a curse. They draw us in with the promise of empowerment. Most of them may as well say: “Hey loser, want to have a moan? Wanna inflict some negativity on some jumped-up curly-haired celebrity?”

Apparently the poll results were 14,157 votes for “No way!”, 1107 for “Maybe – It’s gotta be better than The GC, right?” and 873 votes for “Yes – It would be trash-tastic”.

For God’s sake, let them make the show first, then we can set about the process of tearing it apart like the judgmental hyenas that we are.

It’s telling that one of the most viewed items on the Herald Site last week was a story about the same Sally Ridge being filmed making the pilot for the show that no one apparently wants, despite being obsessed about.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Clint Eastwood’s wife is also about to launch her own reality show.

Apparently the 81-year-old Clint will feature but won’t be the focus of Mrs Eastwood and Company for the E! Channel. (I wonder what he did to deserve this?)

The show will be all about his wife, Dina, daughter Francesca and the band that Dina manages: A South African acapella group called Overtone, thus adding a hybrid X Factor vibe to proceedings.

Apart from making us feel better or worse about our own lives – or both – these shows have other uses.

For the past few years one Kardashian or another has been busily providing material for every comedian and columnist in Christendom, like Snooki and The Osbournes before them.

The GC is providing the same useful service here in New Zealand, and let’s hope Sally gets the chance to come to the party as well.

I can see the TV listings already: Episode 4: For the Love of GHD. Sally tries out her new hair-straighteners while SBW gets his first perm.

Of course we’ve been here before – even before The GC came along. Remember The Family, the TV3 series that ran about 10 years back? It focused on the hilarious antics of the larger than life Rippin whanau.

It was a highly entertaining example of the genre that was best realised by the makers of Sylvania Waters. This seminal soapumentary is still unrivalled, the characters and the lines still etched in the memory banks:

Noeline: “Struth Laurie, one of these days I’ll pack me bloody bags, and I’m out of here.”
Mick, her hopeless son in law: “Do you put the milk in first, or the tea bag?”

Not that Noeline was entirely happy with how she was portrayed on the show. As she told Australian TV: “The average person didn’t see Laurie and I going to work every day – they honestly thought we just stayed home, drank bourbon, smoked cigarettes, went out on our great big huge boat.”

Naturally the best bits of the show were when she stayed home, drank bourbon and smoked ciggies.

Meanwhile, and even more sublimely, Michael Apted’s 7 Up series has just hit the 56 Up mark. The latest instalment screened in the UK a few days ago and the reviews are glowing.

Every seven years since 1964 Apted has been making the ultimate reality show, a study of 14 British people as they make their way through life. I feel like I actually know these guys – like Jim Hickey and the cast of Coronation Street – because they’ve been there all my life. And every seven years we get to see them again.

Talk about reality. It’s surely one of the truly great achievements in the history of television but I’m betting that if the idea was placed in front of us today, via an online poll, most of us would probably tick the box that said: “Terrible idea – won’t last.”

By Paul Casserly

Article source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10806271

24414

« Teacher Performance Assessment Under Scrutiny |
Main

A handful of California parents have sued the state over five laws that allegedly concentrate poorly performing teachers in schools that primarily serve disadvantaged and minority students.

Filed today in the California superior court, the lawsuit takes aim at California rules that: require tenure be granted after only two years, before a teachers’ performance has been well documented; create some dozen steps in the due-process procedures for dismissing teachers for poor performance, which the plaintiffs say allows that process to drag on for months or years; and mandate that seniority serve the major factor (barring a few exceptions) in determining which teachers are laid off during reductions-in-force.

The combination of these statutes, the filing reads, “inevitably presents a total and fatal conflict with the right to education guaranteed by the California Constitution because it forces an arbitrary subset of California students to be educated by grossly ineffective teachers who fail to provide them with the basic tools necessary to compete in the economic marketplace or participate in a democratic society.”

Named in the lawsuit are the Los Angeles and Alum Rock Union school districts, Governor Gerry Brown, schools Superintendent Tom Torlakson, the California education department, and the California board of education. It seeks an injunction against the five statutes in question.

This is one in what appears to be an increasing number of lawsuits in the state that say students’ educational civil rights are violated by its own education laws. Two years ago, plaintiffs won a settlement barring seniority-based layoffs in certain Los Angeles schools in a lawsuit that drew on a similar argument. More recently, another group has threatened to sue on the issue of teacher evaluation; it contends that the state has not followed requirements that pupil performance be counted in teacher evaluations.

The lawsuit was sponsored by a California nonprofit group called Students Matter. Students Matter was advised by a committee including a bunch of other education advocacy groups—some controversial in the field—including Democrats for Education Reform, Parent Revolution, StudentsFirst, and the Education Trust-West.

A few other interesting things to note in this lawsuit. First, it leans heavily on value-added research, referencing economist Eric A. Hanushek’s work (particularly this study) and a second, recent study that connected better teaching to higher lifetime earnings. It also cites a number of stories in the California press about the difficulty and expense of dismissing tenured teachers. Finally, litigators Theodore Olson and Theodore Boutrous are among the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. They’re also the lead attorneys on an effort to overthrow California’s controversial Proposition 8, which barred same-sex marriage in the state.

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Article source: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2012/05/calif_lawsuit_challenges_teach.html