The board faces a lengthy agenda, with so many items scheduled for the closed session portion of the meeting that the starting time for open session has been pushed back from 7 to 7:30 p.m.

The open-session agenda is also loaded with items, including:

* Approval of the school district’s 2013-14 budget. Since the details of the state budget approved Friday by legislators are still emerging, the spending plan that will go before trustees Thursday is based on the most recent state information available. Gov. Jerry Brown has yet to sign the state budget.

As Thursday’s agenda summary notes, “The district could receive $1.6 million to $1.7 million of increased funding for next year” due to the improved outlook for education funding in the state budget. “This (new) funding will be used to cover inflation increases, program cost increases and statutory cost increases. It will also be used to start the restoration of class size reduction for K-3 classes toward the new state target of 24 students per class.”

California law requires school districts to have a balanced budget in place by June 30, which is also the deadline for the governor to sign the budget. A second version of the school district budget, reflecting the figures in the state spending plan that the governor eventually signs, will come before the board for approval at a later date.

* Hold the state-mandated annual public hearings for Community Facilities District No. 1, Community Facilities District No. 2 and two school parcel taxes — Measures C and E. Each of these public hearings will be followed by a motion to set the tax rate for the coming year for these items.

The proposed tax rates are $189.74 per special tax unit for CFD No. 1; 56.64 cents per square foot for residential property and 8.49 cents per square foot for commercial/industrial property for CFD No. 2; $157.30 per unit for multi-unit dwellings and $327.04 for other properties for Measure C; and $20 per unit for multi-unit dwellings and $204 for other properties for Measure E.

* Consider authorization of a 2013-14 Tax Revenue Anticipation Note, which is essentially a form of short-term borrowing, as a cash management strategy for the coming year. The school district has authorized TRANs several times in recent years.

The majority of the district’s revenues come from the state, and are paid in two installments, in January and April. But during the recent state budget crisis, some funding was deferred throughout the fiscal year and crossing fiscal years. At the same time, school district cash expenditures, primarily payroll, are spread fairly evenly throughout the year. Due to the state deferrals, the district’s cash reserves are projected to be negative during October, November, December and March, necessitating the request for authorization of a TRAN.

* An update on the Davis High School athletic department, which includes some 1,300 student-athletes, more than 150 coaches, 27 sports and 44 teams.

* Consider a recommendation on a strategic planning facilitator to work with the district in developing a districtwide strategic plan. Superintendent Winfred Roberson is recommending Kathleen Ohm, director of the Planning Center at the Association of California School Administrators. The position will involve a cost in the range of $40,000 to $50,000.

* Consider a request from Roberson to restore a full-time administrative position at the district office “for services that support student learning.” In 2008-09, Davis eliminated the position of director of curriculum and instruction, along with the equivalent of another 2.2 full-time administrative positions, in an effort to “avoid financial disaster with the belief that (the cuts were) unsustainable but necessary in the short term,” according to the agenda.

“These reductions helped the district meet its immediate financial needs but did not best serve the students, families and school site staffs that rely on district office services,” the agenda continues.

Restoring a district office administrative position “does not require additional funding, nor does it increase general budget expenditures; it reallocates existing funds to better serve student learning needs in the district,” the agenda notes. The proposed title for the position would be “director of curriculum and learning.”

* Consider a consent calendar containing 28 items, including a salary schedule that restores a 2 percent pay cut that district administrators took during the state budget crisis.

The closed session agenda, which is discussed by the school board in private, includes a conference with legal counsel regarding the lawsuit brought by Jose Granda and others in Yolo Superior Court against the school district’s Measure E parcel tax.

Last week, the California Supreme Court let stand a decision in a case involving a parcel tax in the Alameda Unified School District, and that case is widely thought to have implications for the Davis tax. It is possible there will be public comment on Measure E during Thursday’s open session.

The meeting will be carried live on Davis cable Channel 17 and as live streaming video at www.djusd.tv.

— Reach Jeff Hudson at jhudson@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8055.

The prize, announced Tuesday by the Asahi Glass Foundation of Tokyo, has been described as the Nobel Prize for the environmental sciences.

Sperling is an international expert on transportation technology, fuels and policy, with a focus on energy and environment. His research is directed at accelerating the global transition to cleaner, more efficient transportation and energy, and mitigating climate change.

The prize, which comes with a $500,000 (50 million yen) award, recognizes Sperling for his unique ability to bring together the top thinkers and strategists in academia, government and industry to develop new vehicle- and fuels-policy approaches that are models for the world.

“I am deeply honored to receive the Blue Planet Prize, and I share it with my many brilliant and passionate collaborators,” Sperling said. “I hope to use this time in the spotlight to promote universities’ tremendous reservoir of policy-relevant knowledge — particularly policy that averts the pending disaster of global climate change. My primary goal is to bring science to policy.”

Sperling was chosen to receive the Blue Planet Prize from among 106 candidates representing 27 countries.

“UC Davis faculty work every day to bring sound science to the world’s most pressing problems, and Dan Sperling is a wonderful example of that,” said Chancellor Linda Katehi. “We are proud of his accomplishments and pleased that his efforts are being recognized through this prestigious prize.”

A professor of civil engineering and environmental science and policy, Sperling founded the Institute of Transportation Studies in 1991.

ITS-Davis is now the world’s leading academic program in transportation technology and policy, thanks to Sperling’s talent for building enduring partnerships with industry, government and the environmental community; integrating interdisciplinary research and education programs; and connecting research with public outreach and education.

Today, the institute has 60 affiliated faculty members and researchers, 120 graduate students and a $12 million budget.

ITS-Davis researchers pursue topics as diverse as consumer response to advanced vehicle technologies, such as hybrid and electric cars; biofuels production; hydrogen fuels infrastructure; telecommuting; and the potential for converting the globe to 100 percent renewable energy.

Sperling championed early research into lifecycle analysis, with his students going on to develop the world’s most widely used lifecycle-analysis models for transportation fuels, and led the effort to transfer lifecycle assessment from labs into policy. For transportation fuel, lifecycle assessment means accounting for the emissions that occur in every stage of a fuel’s production and use.

The lifecycle approach is a critically important tool used to calculate greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, and other emissions that harm the environment. It forms the basis of many new climate and environmental policies around the globe.

Sperling noted that this year, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in human civilization. Still, he is optimistic.

“Solutions are all around us,” he said. “New technologies and new behaviors will transform our cities and energy systems. It is not easy, but with great effort we can recover our healthy blue planet.”

In 2007, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Sperling to the California Air Resources Board. Sperling co-led the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard study, which formed the basis of the first standard of its kind to tackle carbon pollution from transportation fuel. The LCFS is in effect today in California and under consideration in other states. It is a model for similar polices in Canada and the European Union.

Sperling has authored or co-authored more than 200 technical papers and 12 books, including “Two Billion Cars.” In 2010, he received The Heinz Award for addressing global change caused by the impact of human activities and natural processes on the environment.

This year is the 22nd year of the Blue Planet Prize. Previous recipients include David R. Brower, chairman of the Earth Island Institute; Lester R. Brown, founder and president of the Worldwatch Institute; Paul R. Ehrlich, director of the Center of Conservation Biology at Stanford University; James Hansen, recently retired director of the U.S. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; and Jane Lubchenco, undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

— UC Davis News Service

And after several years during which just about every class offered by the Davis Center was packed to the rafters in advance, there are now a few open seats for students who want to register at the last minute.

* There’s now a Learning Resources Center, which provides a study space and basic office services, like a self-serve copier.

“It’s for students who are study, tutoring, doing group work,” said Don Palm, dean of the Davis Center. “And it is available from the moment we open at 8 a.m. until we close at 9 p.m. at night. Students don’t have to leave the Davis Center campus.”

The Learning Resources Center also provides library services. Books from the Sac City College library may be reserved and brought to Davis, and Davis Center students can get community borrowing privileges at Shields Library at UC Davis for $15 per quarter.

* A career services desk is available certain days of the week on a walk-up basis.

“The services are provided by counseling interns from Sacramento State,” Palm explained. “You don’t need an appointment. It gives us a new dimension, and allows our regular counselors to focus more on academic advising. Students can come in and talk about careers with people who have a very contemporary understanding of the current job market.”

The services are available at a desk by the center’s front door, he said.

* The Davis Center also has an arrangement with UCD to allow as many as 60 community college students who intend to transfer to UCD — after studying at the Davis Center or another Los Rios Community College District campus — to live in West Village student housing. Palm said 14 students are already signed up.

“It is great environment; you can bike or walk to academic events or entertainment at the main UC Davis campus, there is also a free bus that goes every 20 minutes,” Palm said. “Our Davis Center students can be members of UC Davis clubs and intramural activities.”

The arrangement appeals to students whose families live too far away for an easy daily commute, as well as students who want a bit more independence from home life.

* Palm also reports that a few spaces have opened up in summer courses at the Davis Center, and there are still spaces for classes that will start in the fall.

“I think the economy is changing, and more students are finding economic opportunities, so there are some students who had enrolled in summer courses but are now taking other opportunities like summer jobs — something we haven’t seen much during the past three years,” Palm said.

“So we are encouraging students to identify summer classes that they might like to take, and then show up and see if they might still get a seat. Students will find classes are much more likely to be open than they were last year, when we had long waiting lists.”

Palm added that for the fall classes, “Our program will be about the same size as it was last fall. But we have added some geology courses with an emphasis on sustainability. And we’re trying to find the right kinds of career-oriented courses — we’ve got one in graphics communications for 3-D animation.”

Most important, Palm said, is that “we want to keep emphasizing that in our new building, if a Davis Center student takes a full course schedule, you can take the whole schedule and be ready to transfer (into UCD or some other four-year institution) in two years. And there are seats available.”

A transfer counselor from UCD visits the Davis Center on a regular basis to advise transfer-oriented students, and the guarantee arrangement with UCD — for students who take the required courses and maintain a high grade-point average — remains in place.

The new building is about twice the size of the Davis Center’s former digs on Galileo Drive in South Davis.

“And sometime in the next five years, we are planning to go into phase two of construction that would allow us to more than double the space we have now,” Palm said.

— Reach Jeff Hudson at jhudson@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8055.

Monday’s walk brought him to 700 miles in 51 days — from San Diego to Raley Field.

“Now comes the hard part,” he said.

Brooks, executive director of the California Innocence Project, and staff attorneys Alissa Bjerkhoel and Michael Semanchik, who’ve joined him on what they call the “Innocence March,” will walk a final mile to the Capitol on Thursday.

There, they’ll present 12 clemency petitions to Gov. Jerry Brown’s staff.

It’s the stories of that dozen men and women — prisoners Brooks insists are “100 percent” innocent — that the three attorneys have carried with them.

“Whatever side of the criminal justice system you’re on, we all know mistakes are made,” said Brooks, a professor at California Western School of Law, where the Innocence Project is based.

“I’ve got to believe that when (Brown) looks at these facts, he’s going to see that mistakes were made. He has the power of the fail-safe device of clemency, and he’ll use it.”

The attorneys have stopped to speak with whomever will listen at law schools, high schools, even the odd 7-Eleven.

Bill Richards’ story is one they tell.

He has served 15 years of a 25 years-to-life sentence for the beating death of his wife, Pamela, in San Bernardino. A jury found him guilty at the end of his third trial.

On top of several standard procedures that police neglected during the investigation, tests have since found male DNA on both the stones used as the murder weapons and under Pamela’s fingernails — DNA that does not match Bill’s.

In 2009, two bite-mark experts from the original trial testified that current science excluded Bill Richards as the killer. A Superior Court judge ruled that the evidence “points unerringly to innocence.”

The district attorney appealed the ruling. An appeals court reversed it.

“They said, ‘Well, we can’t have experts coming in and changing their testimony.’ It had nothing to do with whether (Bill) was innocent or not,” Brooks said.

Richards, who has cancer, remains in county jail, awaiting a state Supreme Court hearing.

“We just kind of get tired of these cases not focusing on innocence. Innocence should be the most important thing, but it’s not,” said Brooks, 48, who has worn out five pairs of shoes while on the march. “You’ve got guys sitting in prison because they didn’t file their paperwork on time.”

His staff of 13 is aided by a dozen full-time law-clinic students and up to 20 interns (Bjerkhoel, 31, and Semanchik, 28, are among Brooks’ former students). They review more than 2,000 cases per year.

After 13 years and thousands of hours digging through court documents, meeting with inmates and witnesses and running down leads, the team has freed 10 prisoners.

Attorney Toni Blake, a Davis native, has joined her colleagues for 250 miles of the march. Thirteen years ago, she defended a woman, whom the Innocence Project is representing, during her original trial.

Suzanne Johnson was convicted of assault of a child resulting in death. The 68-year-old Johnson, who won’t be up for parole until she’s 80, has maintained since her 911 call that a 6-month-old girl she was baby-sitting fell from a high chair.

The prevailing wisdom at the time of her trial held that hemorrhages in the eyes, bleeding in the brain and swelling of the brain were proof that a baby had been shaken to death, Blake said. Experts now agree that trio of symptoms can be caused in other ways, and that suffering a previous skull fracture, as an autopsy showed that the girl had, increases the risk of death.

Said Blake, “There’s not anything worse than losing your child or another baby on your watch — other than to be falsely accused, convicted and then go to prison for that.”

Any optimism that she feels about Johnson’s case Blake credits to the other attorneys.

The trio started each day’s walk at 5:30 a.m. and usually covered 20 miles, sometimes in stiff winds or high temperatures.

They’ve slept in tents or an RV. Eaten at more than 30 Subway restaurants. Suffered blisters. Dodged traffic. Trudged along railroad tracks and through forests, when the roads weren’t safe.

“Find me three lawyers anywhere who would take off eight weeks of their life to walk for 12 perfect strangers,” Blake said. ”I don’t know if (Johnson) will get clemency, but I know that they’ll keep trying, and that’s so different than the treatment she’s gotten in the legal system so far.”

One day, the 80-year-old uncle of a convicted robber name Guy Miles walked 12 miles alongside them on a bum knee.

Among the evidence the Innocence Project has hunted down during nine years on that case: confessions from three men who say they, not Miles, robbed a bank. Miles has served 13 years of a 75 years-to-life sentence.

“To see the kind of support that his family still has for him, that makes you want to walk 10,000 miles — whatever it takes,” Semanchik said.

For a while, the journey to the governor’s office took the walkers along Big Sur’s cliffs and crashing waves. There, Bjerkhoel’s thoughts returned often to her clients behind walls and razor wire.

“For most of them, this is the end of the road — their last shot to ever see the ocean again.”

Brooks will speak at 6 p.m. Wednesday at University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, 3200 Fifth Ave. in Sacramento. At noon on Thursday at Raley Field, supporters are set to join the attorneys for their walk to the Capitol for a rally.

Online: http://innocencemarch.com

— Reach Cory Golden at cgolden@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8046. Follow him on Twitter at @cory_golden