Education

Mayor. Eric Garcetti will be L.A.’s youngest mayor in more than a century.
With every precinct in the city reporting, the 42-year-old City Councilman has 54 percent of the vote, to 46 percent for City Controller Wendy Greuel. Greuel called Garcetti to concede around 2 this morning, and she’ll make it official later today.
The mayoral race generated a record $33 million in spending and dragged …

Campaign’s end. Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel are leaving no stone unturned as they engage in a last-minute scramble to sway undecided voters. The mayoral candidates were in constant motion yesterday, canvassing the city from Sherman Oaks and Westwood to East L.A. and San Pedro in a final push for votes.
Today, the campaigns turn their attention to mobilizing supporters to go to the polls. …

Election’s eve. Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel will be criss-crossing the city today in a last-dash effort to sway undecided voters. After two years of campaigning, the hard fought and expensive campaign for mayor of L.A. comes to an end tomorrow.
A new USC-L.A. Times poll gives Garcetti a seven-point lead over Greuel – 48 percent to 41 percent – with 11 percent of likely …

Just a few more days before you go to the polls.  Let’s review, shall we?
We’re in the final stretch, so here’s some information you need to know about the candidates and propositions before you punch, pull or bubble-in that ballot.
KCRW’s Warren Olney, host of Which Way, LA? and To The Point joined us, as did KCRW reporter Saul Gonzalez, who’s been covering some of the campaigns …

This Tuesday is the Los Angeles general election. Thousands of paid canvassers have taken to the streets to get out the vote. And there have been lots of TV ads that have been increasingly negative.
Much of the money for these efforts isn’t actually coming from the campaigns. They’re coming from outside expenditure groups – PACs. They can pretty much say and do whatever they …

 
Campus threat. A 19-year-old student has been detained as a “person of interest” in connection with threats to Santa Monica College and East L.A. College and lockdowns have been lifted at the schools. 

Police got a call around 8 o’clock this morning from a man identifying himself as a student, saying he was going to bring an assault weapon to the schools and shoot up …

Governor’s budget. Gov. Jerry Brown’s latest budget proposal includes more money for schools, and less money for just about everything else. Even with state revenues surging, Brown’s revised budget trims $1.3 billion from the plan he presented in January.
Brown says there’s no guarantee the surge in tax revenue will last. And he says California’s finances remain unstable because of the federal sequester budget cuts …

Dealing with defiance. The L.A. Board of Education is due to vote tomorrow on a landmark resolution that would ban suspensions for what’s called “willful defiance.” The move comes amid a growing belief in some quarters that suspending students for disruptive behavior is counterproductive.
“Willful defiance” can involve anything from cursing at a teacher to incessant talking or failing to wear a school uniform. The …

On today’s Mixer, we welcomed Gene Maddaus from the LA Weekly and Howard Blume, the education reporter from the Los Angeles Times.
There are a couple of new polls that came out this week. One comes from the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles, showing 46% of likely voters backing Wendy Greuel and 45% who back Eric Garcetti.
Nine percent are still undecided.
The Cal State survey shows Greuel polls …

The UCLA-USC crosstown rivalry took a new turn today with a major case of academic poaching. USC has lured away two prominent neuroscientists from UCLA with a promise to expand their internationally renowned lab.
Their research uses brain imaging techniques to study Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, autism and other disorders. Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson will move to the USC Keck School of Medicine campus next …

Computer scientists and tech companies have been for years engaged to make more gadgets that are human-like.  That not only respond to humans in a life-like way, but also think like a human.
But tech companies are researching and designing and advancing – everyday – algorithms that will make computers as smart, and complicated, and quiet, as the human brain. This month, Wired magazine reported …

Immigrant tally. A new study confirms that the national debate over immigration reform is as important in Los Angeles as anywhere in the country.
One in 10 adults in L.A. County either crossed the U.S. border illegally or overstayed their visa, according to a report by USC researchers. In some parts of Koreatown and South L.A. that number is 1 in 3.
The report by USC’s …

Home stretch. They weren’t exactly making nice, but when pressed both candidates for mayor of Los Angeles said their opponent was basically honest. Still, City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Councilman Eric Garcetti found plenty of other things to disagree about during their latest debate.
Moderator Jim Newton of the L.A. Times noted the sharply negative tone of the campaign in recent weeks and asked …

Algebra was responsible for the first F I ever got.
While I was never a straight-A student, I wasn’t a screw-up either. But tell that to Mexican-immigrant parents who dropped out of school after first grade and took pride in seeing their offspring get the education they never had. I’ll never forget that dreadful parent-teacher conference after that seventh grade F, or the silence in …

In a culture where a tawdry book like “50 Shades of Grey” makes it to the bestseller list, it’s hard to imagine that there are books that are still banned.
Each year, in the interest of promoting free speech, the literary group PEN Center USA selects books that have been banned over time or censored.
To garner support and momentum for Banned Books Week from Sept. …

Prison problems. California is going to need to find a place to put more than 3,000 inmates currently serving time at the Pleasant Valley and Avenal prisons. The federal official responsible for overseeing healthcare in state lockups says prisoners who are at high-risk for contracting valley fever will have to be housed elsewhere. That includes inmates with chronic illnesses, such as HIV infection, but …

Jackson trial. Michael Jackson has been dead and buried for nearly four years. But the answer to the question of who bears responsibility for the pop star’s overdose on the narcotic propofol could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, or a billion, if you believe the Jackson family. Arguments are scheduled to begin today in L.A. in the family’s wrongful death lawsuit against concert …

Who’s in first? A new poll finds a dramatic turnaround in the L.A. mayor’s contest – with City Controller Wendy Gruel edging ahead of City Councilman Eric Garcetti by three percentage points. But not everyone is convinced it reflects the true state of the race. The poll by Survey USA It shows Greuel with 45 percent support, Garcetti with 42 percent, and 13 percent …

A few years ago, the Children’s Nature Institute moved its headquarters from a rustic outpost in Franklin Canyon to the very urban Pico-Union neighborhood with the mission of raising awareness of the nature that exists in the urban world. They also started taking kids and their families on urban nature hikes —  in their own neighborhoods. The Institute also takes nearly 20,000 kids, ages three to …

Bloomberg bucks. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is throwing more money into the L.A. School Board race. Bloomberg gave $350,000 this week to the Coalition for School Reform. The political committee is led by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and supports the policies of L.A. Schools chief John Deasy. Prior to the March primary, the New York’s billionaire mayor donated $1 million to the committee. …