535 San Francisco Unified School District teachers will receive layoff notices this morning due to state cuts in education funding. Today's pink slip handouts stem from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget '09, which will see San Francisco schools losing around $40 million. According to CBS 5, Mayor Newsom is doing what he can, even if it's a Band-Aid solution to a longterm problem.

Mayor Gavin Newsom has said he plans to ask the Board of Supervisors to allow the schools to tap into the city's rainy-day fund to help soften the financial blow, but officials admit that would only provide a "short-term solution."

CBS 5 goes on to say that "layoffs could ultimately total as many as a thousand." Yikes. The job terminations will go into effect once the school year ends.

After Carole Migden won the endorsement of the Harvey Milk Club, things were looking grim for Assemblyman Mark Leno. But today Gavin Newsom shined his megawatt charm over in Leno's direction today, endorsing his bid for a state Senate seat. According to the B.A.R., " Newsom [is] expected to publicly endorse Leno Wednesday night at the Herbst Theatre during a special screening of Pursuit of Equality..."

Leno is trying to dethrone state Senator Carole Migden from her Third District seat. The two bent lawmakers will go head to head during the June 3 primary. (Another election? Oh man.) San Francisco Police Commissioner Joseph Alioto Veronese and former state Assemblyman Joe Nation (who, it seems, just entered the race last Saturday) will also make an attempt to steal the seat, but neither candidate is expected to win.

Image credit: B.A.R. / Rick Gerharter

Making her move at juuust the right time, Jackie Speier is a shoo-in to fill Tom Lantos' seat by April 8 if she gathers a majority of votes in a special, pre-primary election. But first, according to the Merc:

...Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger must issue a declaration today that would allow the 12th Congressional District race to appear on the June 3 ballot. If he waits until after today, San Mateo County would have to hold a separate, special election that could cost $500,000 or more... The governor's office said Schwarzenegger is aware of that limitation and state officials were working to complete the necessary paperwork.

Rep. Lantos, if you recall, died Monday morning, and endorsed State Sen. Jackie Speier as his successor. He represented most of the Sunset District in SF, and San Mateo County. Just like Lantos was, Speier is a fan of la Clinton.

Last night, according to an SFist tipster:

A few blocks in the Marina around Cervantes and Beach were shut down to traffic and residents for about an hour and a half this afternoon. Helicopters, police, and bomb squad were all present. Anyone know what was going on??? I asked the cop who was blocking the street and he said "Whatever it is, it's bad." Gee, thanks.

Well, it turns out that all of the hullabaloo was due to an unidentified man "making threats and causing a disturbance" just outside the Egyptian Consulate in the Marina. Yikes! According to KCBS "[a] police officer found an agitated man standing outside the Egyptian Consulate in the Marina District and shouting general threats with a suitcase nearby." Although no explosives were found in the screaming gentleman's suitcase, he was placed under arrest.

SFist tried calling the Egyptian Consulate to find out more, but we keep getting a busy signal, a sound we haven't heard since probably the '90s.

As far as the trend of naming smaller neighborhoods in San Francisco goes, Little Saigon (sandwiched between Civic Center and the Tenderloin) sounds pretty good. Anyway, it's a lot better than the name for a Vietnamese-American part of San Jose: "Saigon Business District".

And speaking of cameras...

While Chicago has seen crime rates plummet to their lowest numbers in over four decades due to the windy city's Big Brother program, San Francisco's attempt at panopticon-ish camera security is failing. Ever since the 68 city-funded cameras started rolling, our city's surveillance program has resulted in a single arrest. That was over 19 months ago.

Why the lag, you ask? Well, for starters, "choppy" video streaming, above, at 16th and Mission streets. According to the Chronicle:

Run on a modest budget, Mayor Gavin Newsom's surveillance camera program has produced footage that is disjointed and less clear than the nearly seamless and sharp quality of video that the devices are capable of delivering, a Chronicle review found.

The difference can be dramatic, leaving police with less potential evidence. A review of videos taken last year by four cameras at 16th and Mission streets found a striking problem with the cameras' frame rate, or the number of images produced per second.

On average, the Mission District-perched cameras didn't even average one frame per second, making it difficult, if not impossible, to snap, trap and prosecute our city's most randy mischief makers. (Check out the undramatic footage here.)

First Oprah, now Craig. Who's next?

As of noon today, the District 4 seat formerly occupied by Ed Jew is now empty, and the Sunset has no representation on the Board of Supervisors. Quick, everyone, now's the time to put a toxic waste dump on 26th and Wawona! (We just like saying the word "Wawona" is all.)

Former acting District 4 supervisor Carmen Chu is still trying to decide if she wants the seat through November or not, and while she ruminates, all of her staff was required to turn in their office keys and parking passes since the office is now closed.

Gavin Newsom says Chu would be the clear frontrunner for the seat if she wants it, but hasn't said if anyone else is under consideration. For what it's worth, he has no deadline for appointing someone to the seat -- it apparently took Dianne Feinstein 6 weeks to appoint Harry Britt to Harvey Milk's seat after his 1978 assassination (though to be fair, probably some of that delay was due to the fact that Dianne Feinstein herself had only just been appointed the mayor at the same time.)

Well. Newsom will now appoint a permanent replacement for Ed Jew's seat on the Board of Supes (presumably interim District 4 supervisor Carmen Chu is the leading candidate, unless Jennifer Siebel-soon-to-be-hyphenate-Newsom is living by the zoo now and wants something to do on Tuesday and Thursday nights), and that replacement will rule through to the November 08 election. The seat will be up for election, along with the other odd-numbered districts (which were up anyways).

Ron Dudum, for one, has said he's going to re-throw his hat into the ring, claiming that he came in second back in 2006 anyways -- though you may remember that David Latterman, city elections number cruncher, reran the numbers through the ranked-choice voting algorithms and concluded that if Ed Jew's first place votes were tossed out, the excitingly-voweled and suspiciously-fundraised Jaynry Mak actually would have won.

It turns out that the man who was brutally gunned down in the Mission on Monday night recently ditched a witness protection program. Justin Lee, 40 - who was shot to death after being chased down on 26th and Mission Streets - just left the security of a safe house in another part of the state on the same day. Yikes.

Going back a bit, it seems that in 2005 Lee had "taken the stand last year and identified Sean 'Smiley' Robinson, 39, as the man who had shot him multiple times on 24th and Vermont streets on Potrero Hill." It is believed that the first unsuccessful attempt at Lee's life was an effort "to silence him for what he may have known about a homicide in which Robinson was suspected."

Even though Lee was repeatedly warned by both police and prosecutors "not to come back to the city, unless under armed escort to return to court," he did. And he died.

Although Robinson has been in custody since the 2005 shooting, it is still not clear whether or not Lee's murder had anything to do with the aforementioned case. But...probably. It sounds like the protection program did all they could to help the guy. Why he felt the need to return to San Francisco, much less back to the Mission District, piques our curiosity.