Daily Business Report: Monday, March 31, 2025
Sacramento Report: Department of Education Is Dead. Now What?
By Deborah Sullivan Brennan | Voice of San Diego
Last week President Donald Trump signed an executive order to shut down the federal Department of Education, in what he said was an effort to return authority to states.
But California leaders don’t know exactly what that means for the department’s programs including K-12 services and student financial aid. And they’re not sure what the state can do to ensure that schools have support and college students can get loans and grants.
Trump maintains that the Department of Education isn’t equipped to handle the $1.6 trillion in student loans that it processes, and said he would move the loans to the Small Business Administration. There aren’t any details about how that transition would work or how the Small Business Administration, which faces its own staff cuts, would handle the additional responsibility.
Opinion: San Diego’s Senior Population Is Growing Rapidly. How Do We Plan to House Them?
By Paul Downey | Voice of San Diego
We all aspire to be old. Older adults are doing their part here in San Diego. The dramatic increases in the senior population will impact every facet of our community for decades.
For the first time in American history, adults aged 65 and older will outnumber minors under age 18 by 2034, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. In San Diego County, the California Department of Finance Demographics projects more than 910,000 people will be ages 60 and older by the year 2030 – a 130 percent increase from 2000. One in five people will be over 55 by 2050, compared to just one in 10 in 2000.
Overall, San Diego County lacks enough age-friendly resources including healthcare, public transportation and, most of all, affordable housing. The lack of housing affordability is the single most urgent, overarching issue for our seniors.
San Diego International Airport Launches Live Poetry Experience for Passengers
By Paul Downey | Voice of San Diego
Don’t be surprised if your next journey through San Diego International Airport (SAN) includes an interview about travel that is turned into poetry. Now through April 29, the airport’s Spring 2025 Performing Arts Resident, Poets Underground, will be onsite in the terminals at their luggage-inspired stage called The Great Poetic Baggage Exchange. The artists invite travelers to engage in conversations and live-painting of murals centered around five travel-inspired themes: Adventure, Baggage, Connection, Checkpoint, and Rise.
Poets Underground is a San Diego-based LLC and non-profit, comprised of a husband-and-wife team who create and foster healthy inclusive communities through the arts, poetry and storytelling. The stories the poets gather at SAN will inspire original poems—shared back with passengers as spoken word, written word, and visual poetry. Select poems will be featured in three culminating airport performances on May 2, 6, and 8. The works will also be compiled into an anthology, preserving these creative exchanges and the spirit of travel in poetic form.
“Partnering with performing groups like Poets Underground is one of the innovative ways SAN aims to create an exceptional airport experience for our community,” said Hampton Brown, the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority’s Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer. “Passengers can have their experience turned into something inspirational and at the same time get a taste of the local performing arts scene.”
SAN’s Arts Program launched its Performing Arts Residency Program in 2016. The Performing Arts Residency Program supports the development and public performance of new work. It offers artists the space to create and rehearse new material while providing SAN patrons a unique opportunity for interaction through the performing arts.
To view the Performing Arts Residency schedule, please click here. For more information about the Airport Performing Arts Residency Program, please click here.
