Amid a jarring education funding shortfall, committees of parents and teachers at two San Francisco schools are refusing to endorse the budgets for next school year, saying that signing off on them would excuse unacceptable cutbacks. The shrunken budgets that the San Francisco Unified School District is requiring would make class sizes larger. School site councils, introduced in the 1970s throughout California as a way to broaden involvement in school administration, have faced disagreement about whether they have any real say in spending choices.

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Despite high loan requests and lower repayment rates by borrowers in the country, San Francisco nonprofit microcredit Web site, Kiva, has managed to raise $765,900 since launching its pilot program this past June in the United States. Typically, the organization distributes loans raised on its Web site to microcredit organizations in developing countries that lend it to impoverished entrepreneurs. The impact of the economic downturn on small business owners set the stage for Kiva to establish a program in the U.S. last June.

Sanchez Elementary School, in San Francisco's Mission District, has erected the city's first public, off-the-grid, vertical garden. Equipped with a high-tech weather station, students will study the growth patterns of the edible, organic vegetables and measure weather patterns.

Capping a wave of national immigration-rights actions across the country, local organizers turned this week to urging Sen. Dianne Feinstein to support comprehensive reform. About 2,000 Bay Area immigrants and others rallied Wednesday in front of Feinstein’s San Francisco office. The nationwide effort — including a march of 200,000 in Washington, D.C. — is aimed at pressuring Congress to support reforms Immigration reform leaders are pressing Congress for “humane comprehensive immigration reform” to protect undocumented immigrants while moving them toward legal status, prevent immigrant families from being split apart by deportations, and other goals.

Maria Watanabe takes the stage in Japantown’s Peace Plaza to sing and dance as the anime character Sailor Moon every Saturday — despite her fear of crowds. She believes her shows are worth the trouble because anime is such an important part of Japanese culture. Watanabe is part of a growing number of otaku (anime fanatics) in the Bay Area and the United States. Over the past few decades, attendance at anime (animated movies) and manga (comic books) conventions has skyrocketed. San Jose’s FanimeCon alone grew from 200 attendees in 1994 to about 15,000 in 2009.

Take a virtual tour of the city’s northeastern waterfront ... There were no slackers at the third annual Sunday Streets kick-off on Embarcadero. Whether it was biking, Rollerblading, scootering or walking, people — not vehicles — were mobile. The northbound lane of the Embarcadero, where bumper-to-bumper traffic on a Sunday is the norm, was converted to a bidpedal and pedalers’ mecca.

SoMa is growing up, literally.

The neighborhood, bordered by Market and South Van Ness streets, has seen the most recent growth in high-rise construction in the city. In the past three years, about eight high-rises were built in the neighborhood and blueprints for more, namely the Transbay Terminal redevelopment area, are reshaping the skyline.

Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to support a proposal passed by the Board of Supervisors that protects tenants from arbitrary eviction in non-rent controlled residences facing foreclosure.

Thousands of people, including college, high school and elementary school students, plus parents, teachers and other activists, converged in streams on downtown San Francisco to protest cuts in public education Thursday afternoon. Organizers said that more than 4,000 people marched down Mission and Valencia streets to Market, and then to the Civic Center Plaza.