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A group of students at Rim of the World High School in Lake Arrowhead have created a stir for displaying Confederate flags, staked into the beds of their pickup trucks, in the school parking lot. On Friday, two Ford pickups, parked side-by-side, sat parked in the school parking lot, one Confederate flag and one American flag displayed in the bed of each truck. The black pickup also sported stickers from Patriot Alliance, an online retailer of clothing, National Rifle Association, and Donald Trump campaign signs. Also on Friday, Ruing Springs resident Jeifer Celise-Reyes, whose daughter began her freshman year at the high school last month, said she sent emails to school board president Cind...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — For one day, a mother says, she didn’t have to worry about her autistic son eating lunch by himself. A small gesture of kindness by Florida State University wide receiver Travis Rudolph — captured in a photo and shared on Facebook — had tears streaming down the face of the sixth-grader’s mother, Leah Paske. “I’m not sure what exactly made this incredibly kind man share a lunch table with my son, but I’m happy to say it will not soon be forgotten,” she wrote. “This is one day I didn’t have to worry if my sweet boy ate lunch alone, because he sat across from someone who is a hero in many eyes.” Rudolph was among several FSU players visiting Montford Middle School in Tallah...

An estimated 75,000 students will retu to classes in Long Beach Unified today, and police are urging motorists and pedestrians to be safe out on the road. Drivers, police say: Yield the right of way to pedestrians in crosswalks, do not pass cars that are stopped for pedestrians, obey speed limits, stop for school buses with red lights flashing and don’t drive distracted. Pedestrians: Yield to vehicles if you are outside the crosswalk, and do not cross between intersections controlled by traffic signals. And finally, parents: Do not double park in front of school, follow school drop-off procedures, and teach your child to always cross the street at a crosswalk. It is equally important for pe...

SAN FRANCISCO >> Califoia’s $64 billion high-speed rail plan lacks reliable funding sources and is in danger of ending up with only one line that doesn’t coect to San Francisco or Los Angeles, members of a Congressional panel said Monday during a hearing. Proceeds from a state environment program that is supposed to help fund the project were far below expectations and private funding for the train has yet to materialize, Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Califoia Republican, said. “Where is the money going to come from,” LaMalfa asked Dan Richard, chairman of the rail authority’s board. Richard said private firms have expressed interest in the system but want to see the first leg up and ruing. Th...

May 2014: The Teachers Association of Long Beach distributed surveys to its members to determine how many classrooms in Long Beach Unified experience stifling heat. TALB received 200 responses from teachers with mixed results. September 2014: The district asked schools to curtail physical activity and canceled all nonleague and league competition for two days. Additionally, Long Beach Unified communicated with parents about “hot weather precautions, including the need to stay hydrated.” Parents, meanwhile, attend a school board meeting, pleading with the district to do something about the lack of air conditioning in older buildings across the district, which they say creates an unhealthy lea...

In Long Beach, school isn’t cool. That’s generally speaking. It’s cool at about 40 percent of the 87 school buildings in the Long Beach Unified School District that are lucky, or mode, enough to have air-conditioned classrooms. It’s no sweat for students at, say, Chavez Elementary School, built in 2002, or Powell K-8 School, built in 2000, or Signal Hill’s Nelson Middle School built four years ago, or McBride High School, built in 2013. But when students retu to class Wednesday at schools built during the two biggest boom eras in Long Beach history — 27 schools were constructed in the two years following the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake, and 25 opened between 1950 and 1959 to serve the then-ne...

EXPOSITION PARK >> Kendrick Lamar celebrated a homecoming of sorts at the FYF Fest on Saturday, headlining the main stage just a few miles north of his hometown of Compton and, over the course of a terrifically compelling set, underscoring his standing as one of the top rappers in the game today. Lamar, alone on stage for most of his performance, his band positioned in the wings, offered all the things for which the 29-year-old hip-hop artist has been rightly celebrated during his rapid ascent in the past two or three years. Passionate poetry both personal and political that flows smoothly from the mic. A deep understanding of the soul and jazz and funk that predates hip-hop and inspir...

Between 1999 and 2013, Califoia’s Academic Performance Index boiled everything about the state’s K-12 public schools down to a single number between 200 and 1000. That’s going away in a new, more nuanced system that’s now under construction. In the old model, the desirability of neighborhoods or even whole communities in large part hinged on their API score. Careers were made or lost based on how far a school or district was from the magic 800 target number. And under the federal No Child Left Behind law, failure to steadily increase an API score — even an already high one — could mean dire trouble for a school or district. But the API was only based on the results of standardized tests tak...

PARAMOUNT >>The Paramount Unified School District will ask voters in November to approve a $106 million bond measure to help fund upgrades and repairs across its 19-campus system, officials said Wednesday. Superintendent Ruth Perez said many of the 15,500 students enrolled in the district attend campuses equipped with aging facilities, some built over 50 years ago. While many campuses are in need of repairs and upgrades, she said, top priorities include replacing outdated portable buildings at Paramount High School and other large campuses, upgrading school security systems and facilitating access for disabled students and faculty. “Our local schools need basic safety improvements,” P...

Before Steve Jobs invented the PC, computers were room-sized, difficult to operate and expensive. Now they fit in the palm of your hand and perform complex functions at the sound of your voice. Likewise, air pollution sensors are going mainstream, changing from complex devices operated by scientists in white lab coats to hand-held detectors sold on Amazon.com or e-bay for a few hundred bucks to citizen scientists sitting in their backyards. There are so many devices sold online that measure particulate matter (PM) near your home during a wildfire or ground-level ozone on a hot-and-smoggy day that the folks at the South Coast Air Quality Management District began studying which ones work the ...

While the U.S. men’s 4x100 relay team made headlines Sunday with its gold medal performance, Valencia’s Anthony Ervin was also key part of the story and one of the Rio Olympics’ unlikeliest gold medal wiers. Ervin helped the men’s team advance from the prelims Saturday, but didn’t swim the finals and wasn’t on the podium Sunday. Nonetheless, he received a gold, along with finals swimmers Caeleb Dressel, Michael Phelps, Ryan Held and Nathan Adrian. It was Phelps’ 19th gold medal and 23rd altogether, but Ervin’s story is as extraordinary. This spring, Ervin answered questions from Southe Califoia News Group columnist Tom Hoffarth about his...

Differences in proposed federal and state criteria for intervening in the lowest-performing schools could lead to what Califoia education officials have insisted they want to avoid: two conflicting school-improvement systems. The Legislature required and the Califoia State Board of Education is designing a multidimensional school accountability system that will incorporate measures of school climate and students’ readiness for college and careers. But, according to a new analysis, proposed federal regulations would, in effect, prohibit states from using these and other indicators to determine which schools receiving federal aid require intensive state assistance. It would be an echo of the ...

Long Beach voters now have three marijuana-related ballot measures to decide on come November. Adding to an already lengthy statewide general election ballot, the City Council on Tuesday voted to add a tax measure that City Clerk Maria de la Luz Garcia said would help fund public safety, police officers, emergency response, homelessness and general city services should voters pass ballot measures proposed at the local and state level. The two initiatives facing voters are: Proposition 64, a statewide initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana for those 21 and older; and a local initiative that aims to allow as many as 32 medical marijuana dispensaries throughout the city. The cit...

FONTANA >> A trio of Fontana teens reported missing Saturday after they failed to retu home from a hiking trip in the Angeles National Forest have been found dead, according to Los Angeles County Fire officials. Daniel Gamboa, 19, Kasey Vance, 18 and Samantha Oelas, 17, all of Fontana, left their homes Saturday, telling their loved ones they were going hiking possibly near Mount Wilson. That’s where fire officials found Gamboa’s white Toyota Tundra pickup truck, authorities said. • Video: Teen’s sister addresses the media The trio was found in the pickup in a ravine about 600 feet below Angeles Crest Highway near mile marker 40, Fontana police spokesman Brian Heaviside said. Police sa...

A lot of dirt has been moving around this week at a pair of Long Beach middle schools. Grading for new all-weather athletic fields was under way at Perry Lindsey Middle School, 5075 Daisy Ave., and Jessie Nelson Academy Middle School, 1951 Cherry Ave., in Signal Hill. Dump trucks were at both sites this week hauling dirt away in preparation for storm-drain installation, according to Les Leahy, Business Services Administrator at the Long Beach Unified School District. The fields, funded by Measure K, are expected to be finished by Oct. 1. Advertisement Let's block ads! بخوانید...

FONTANA >> A trio of Fontana teens reported missing Saturday after they failed to retu home from a hiking trip in the Angeles National Forest have been found dead, according to Los Angeles County Fire officials. Daniel Gamboa, 19, Kasey Vance, 18 and Samantha Oelas, 17, all of Fontana, left their homes Saturday, telling their loved ones they were going hiking possibly near Mount Wilson. That’s where fire officials found Gamboa’s white Toyota Tundra pickup truck, authorities said. • Video: Teen’s sister addresses the media The trio was found in the pickup in a ravine about 600 feet below Angeles Crest Highway near mile marker 40, Fontana police spokesman Brian Heaviside said. Police sa...

Violence and substance abuse are down among Califoia students, but more have experienced harassment and bullying, according to a new health survey. Compared with its 2011-13 report, the Califoia Healthy Kids Survey found that among more than 36,000 students in middle and high school, the percentage of students involved in a fight dropped by four to five points, with fighting among 11th-grade students dropping from 17 percent to 11 percent. The Califoia Department of Education and the Califoia Department of Health Care Services coordinated the report, which takes a random sample of seventh, ninth and 11th grade students, and addresses school safety, substance use, mental health and other issu...

NEWTOWN, Co. — When the public gets its first glimpse Friday of the school built to replace the one where 20 first-graders and six educators were massacred, they’ll see a building designed to be attractive, environmentally friendly, conducive to leaing and, above all, safe. The old Sandy Hook Elementary School was to down after the gunman’s rampage in December 2012. The new $50 million, 86,000-square-foot school was built on the same property but not in the old footprint, and is scheduled to open next month. A media tour will precede a public open house on Friday. Local officials hope that allowing everyone a look at the school this week will give students a “quiet, respectful, and appropri...

ATLANTA — The Democratic National Convention speaker’s lineup has highlighted an increasingly diverse country that could soon elect the first female president to succeed its first black chief executive. Yet the stream of women, African-Americans, Latinos, gay Americans — from U.S. senators and celebrities to activists, rank-and-file citizens and, Thursday, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton herself — also serves as a tacit reminder of Democrats’ struggles to coect with a majority of heterosexual white men. “It’s just sad,” says Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a Democratic strategist tued Donald Trump supporter who says his party “has abandoned” culturally conservative white men like himself. It’s a...

About 30 people gathered Sunday night at Hart High School in Santa Clarita which offered cots and food to those displaced by the Sand fire. Red Cross shelter supervisor Deidre Lopez said about 50 people had come through the shelter since Saturday. A class from the Inteational Dance Camp at Robinson Ranch was getting ready to bunk down Sunday night after also spending Saturday at the high school. The dance troupe included students from Norway, Denmark, Africa, and Sweden. “We’re taking it one hour at a time,” said Denmark resident Ae Greve, 25. Standing in the parking lot outside the shelter, Leena Shah, 12, helped her family unpack items from their two cars. The Shahs fled their Fair Oaks R...