Cafeteria foods eat budgets - Some Inland children will find higher prices in the cafeteria this fall, as schools try to make up for double-digit food cost increases. Some also will find fewer treats and brand-name items on the lunch line. Riverside Press Might be time to turn back to the ‘packed lunch and sack lunch’.

Conservative bastion Bakersfield sees a shift on gays - Though opposition to same-sex marriage remains strong, longtime residents say tolerance has grown in recent years. Catherine Saillant in the Los Angeles Times

California lawmaker wants voting age dropped to 17 - State Assemblyman Gene Mullin wants to lower the voting age in hopes of boosting participation at the polls among young adults. AP

Vice presidential picks: What really matters? -- As Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain set about choosing their running mates, their vice presidential picks should come with a warning attached: Buyer beware. Carolyn Lochhead in the San Francisco Chronicle

Gay-union initiative may aid McCain -- The raging battle over same-sex marriage in California could create some intriguing dynamics in the presidential election. John Marelius and Bill Ainsworth in the San Diego Union-Trib

Return of the Math Wars -- 1997 saw the height of the Math Wars in California. On the one side stood educrats, who advocated mushy math - or new-new math. They sought to de-emphasize math skills, such as multiplication and solving numeric equations, in favor of pushing students to write about math and how they might solve a problem. Their unofficial motto was: There is no right answer. (Even to 2 +2.) Debra J. Saunders in the San Francisco Chronicle

Exodus of San Francisco's middle class -- It's urban flight flipped on its head: The number of low- and middle-income residents in San Francisco is shrinking as the wealthy population swells, a trend most experts attribute to the city's exorbitant housing costs. James Temple in the San Francisco Chronicle

Supporters of John Freshwater stood in a parking lot today asking God to inspire the school board to make the right decision. Three hours later, the board announced that it intends to fire Freshwater, an eighth-grade science teacher. Columbus Dispatch

John McCain hopes to solve the country's energy crisis with cold hard cash. The presumed Republican nominee is proposing a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. The bounty would equate to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country, "a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency," McCain said in remarks prepared for delivery Monday at Fresno State University in California. AP

The era of carefree, unlimited Internet browsing and downloading might be coming to an end. Industry leaders Comcast and Time Warner Cable have started testing traffic-metering and management techniques that seek to rein in heavy usage, and AT&T says such limits are inevitable for the most extreme users of its network. SF Chronicle