SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Lower enrollment is forcing a 23-campus Northern California school district to eliminate 18 teaching positions.
Seven weeks into the school year, San Jose's Alum Rock Union School District says it's also moving some students to different classrooms and schools and it's creating 25 combination classes.
The district, which relies heavily on state funding, has 23 elementary schools.
The San Jose Mercury News says the student population is down 211 students from projections.
Superintendent Stephen Fiss says eliminating the teachers and making the other changes will save $1.2 million.
The district is notifying parents of changes this week, and all the targeted students and teachers will be moved by Oct. 15.
Mom sentenced to life in twin daughters' deaths
FAIRFIELD . (AP) — A Fairfield mom convicted of murdering her twin toddler daughters has been sentenced to two life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.
The Reporter of Vacaville reports that a tearful Monica McCarrick told a Solano County court she was sorry and loved her daughters before she was sentenced on Monday.
A jury convicted the 29-year-old McCarrick in June of two counts of first-degree murder in the 2010 deaths of her daughters, Tori and Lily Ball, both 3 years old. It later found her sane.
Authorities say McCarrick stabbed the girls with a samurai sword before attempting to take her own life and set fire to her apartment.
McCarrick's attorney said her client was suffering paranoid delusions and believed her children were going to be enslaved and raped.
Prosecutors told jurors McCarrick's use of methamphetamine was to blame.
Mistrial in case against former SF crime lab tech
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office says a mistrial has been declared in the federal trial of a former San Francisco Police Department's crime lab technician accused of skimming cocaine from the lab.
Spokesman Jack Gillund says U.S. District Judge Susan Illston declared the mistrial Wednesday in the case against Deborah Madden when jurors said they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on charges of obtaining cocaine by fraud, deception or subterfuge.
Madden was at the center of a scandal that resulted in hundreds of drug cases being dropped after she was accused of taking cocaine evidence from the lab while she worked there in late 2009.
The federal charges came after state prosecutors declined to file charges.
The 62-year-old Madden, a resident of San Mateo, later pleaded no contest in a San Mateo County court to possession of cocaine.