Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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The Catalyst Story Institute, a professional development program for TV writers, actors, directors, and producers to advance their work, has selected a finalist from Santa Monica to present at the annual Catalyst Content Festival in Duluth on September 29th to October 3rd. The festival, held in partnership with the National Academy of TV Arts & Sciences & ATAS, is the premier showcase for the independent television industry. In the same vein as independent film festivals, Catalyst discovers new...
The City of Santa Monica is partnering with McCabe's Guitar Shop to present Americana in the Park in Gandara Park, on Sundays between September 19 and October 10 from 3 p.m. – 6 p.m. Americana in the Park is a pilot project to create a new partnership model for outdoor events, where local organizations are provided funding and support from the City to bring unique and diverse events to the Santa Monica community. Of the new partnership, Cultural Affairs Manager Shannon Daut shares, "Our hope i...
I am a 64 year-old person suffering from AIDS, diabetes and severe mental illness. StepUp is providing formerly homeless people with dysfunctional housing and mental health counseling. Over the past year, I have gone through five therapists who offered no assistance but harmed me. All of the therapists were untrained interns right out of school. They don't have any supervising therapists. They each only served as my therapists for one or two months, then dumped me without any interim...
Courts & Rulings Removing boy from mother's custody appropriate despite lack of blameworthiness on her part The Court of Appeal for this district declared yesterday that a suicidal and aggressive teenager suffering from traumatic brain injury was appropriately removed from the custody of his mother toward whom he displays animosity, notwithstanding a lack of fault on her part. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael E. Whitaker expressly found that the mother, "Sharon M.," had not abused,...
Students in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District will have the option to eat school meals for free in the upcoming school year, regardless of their family's income. Flush with an unexpected budget surplus, California announced on Monday it will offer free school meals to all 6.2 million public school students this fall. The undertaking will be the largest free student lunch program in the country, state officials said. SMMUSD officials have not yet commented on the free lunch...
Santa Monica High School has announced another Covid case among its students attending one of its summer programs. The text of the email is below. While 60% of adults in Los Angeles County have been vaccinated and are not at risk for Covid-19, many younger people are not vaccinated. Opinions vary about how much risk teenagers have with respect to Coronavirus. Text of the email from SamoHi follows. Dear Samohi Summer School families, You're receiving this email because your child was enrolled or...
Rachel Newton Broome passed away peacefully with her children by her side on July 5, 2021 in Santa Monica. She was 89 years old Born in Denmark, South Carolina in 1931, Rachel grew up in Charleston, and graduated from Memminger High School in 1949. As a teenager, Rachel won numerous local beauty pageants and was featured in magazines and brochures promoting the area. A photo of Rachel on the Folly Beach Pier in 1946 was featured on the cover of Charleston Magazine's July 2007 edition. Rachel...
Courts & Rulings Thomas slams 'One-Size-Fits-All' immunity approach Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used a college campus First Amendment case to sound off Friday about jurisprudence that affords school officials the same immunity give to police officers. "But why should university officers, who have time to make calculated choices about enacting or enforcing unconstitutional policies, receive the same protection as a police officer who makes a split-second decision to use force in a...
Bruce Thomson was a beloved track and cross country coach and teacher. After graduating from Hamilton High School in 1978, Bruce taught for over 20 years at San Pedro High School. He suddenly collapsed during a workout on Tuesday, July 6, 2021, and died of uncertain causes. Below is an obituary written by a friend of his, Richard Greifinger. RIP Bruce Kinloch Thomson , 2/2/60 - 7/6/21 There are times when us mere mortal people realize that there are powers greater than us, and this was never mor...
Courts & Rulings Judicial misconduct requires reversing murder conviction The Court of Appeal for this district on Friday reversed a conviction for second degree murder based on judicial misconduct on the part of then-Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Edmund Willcox Clarke Jr. It is a foregone conclusion that defendant Phillip Dorsett, convicted of a second-degree murder, will not be retried in light of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s stated aversion to lengthy sentences. Me...
Courts & Rulings Judge asked to boot Gascón's special assistant from case Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brian C. Yep will be asked this morning to recuse a prosecutor who, according to a motion on behalf of the family of a murdered man, is a former deputy public defender who, after becoming a special assistant to District Attorney George Gascón, continues to fight for the interests of criminal defendants. The recusal is sought in a case where, at stake, is whether a man who committed a g...
Courts & Rulings Tentative ruling stops LA County's most ambitious justice reform measure A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has published a tentative ruling that it appears will stop the voter-approved Measure J from taking effect. The ruling does not address the intent of the measure, which was to divert hundreds of millions of dollars from the County's budget each year away from law enforcement activities, but instead focuses on an underlying authority of government issue, which is whether...
James Dean walked down the hallways of the History Building at Santa Monica High School in Rebel Without a Cause. Protestors at SamoHi last Saturday tried a last minute effort to save the building. The History building was originally constructed in 1913, but largely rebuilt as a WPA project in the 1930's. The building is undergoing asbestos abatement. Which means the contractor awarded the $200 million contract to replace the historic structure with a "state of the art Career Building," is...
A high school student from Santa Monica has been selected to participate in the 17th annual GRAMMY Camp program., operated by the GRAMMY Museum. Jaq Adelman will be among 81 talented high school students from 67 U.S. cities who will take part in the annual summer camp that will be held virtually from Tuesday, July 20 to Saturday, July 24. Adelman will focus his efforts on the Keyboard Instrument. All Time Low, Echosmith, and The War and Treaty will be this year's guest artists at the music...
SamoHi's first 2021 graduation was on a gorgeous day, as California loosened its Covid restrictions. There are still many rules to follow for everyone's safety. We were all sent the guidelines ahead of the ceremony. The principal read the rules to us ahead of the ceremony, because it was only by complying with the county guidelines, were we able to have a graduation. People were asked not to congregate afterwards, and to keep their masks on. But I would say most family kept a distance from other...
The Santa Monica-Malibu(for now) School District seeking to demolish the art moderne History building in the center of the Samohi campus teaches the public an important civics lesson. Never vote in favor of school bond measures. You may have five children in the district - you still shouldn't vote for them. Here's why. School bond money cannot be used for the things your children actually need: more teachers, smaller class sizes, high-quality teaching staff. It can't even be used for better...
May 18, 2021 - In the early hours of the morning on Monday, a man who was openly carrying a handgun in his waistband walked into the AM PM market at 3rd and Pico together with a woman companion. Police were alerted and arrived to detain the man as he exited the store. They successfully disarmed him and discovered he was a convicted felon. For most people, it is illegal to carry a firearm in California. It is an additional crime to carry a gun if you are an ex-felon. The woman was questioned and...
More than half of the students in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District have returned to campus for in-person instruction and the percentage is increasing daily, school officials said on Monday. But SMMUSD parents have until this Friday, May 14, to finalize their decision about in-person or distance learning for their children for the rest of this school year, said Supt Ben Drati in an email to parents. "Following this date, parents will no longer be able to switch between the two...
During the Covid-19 lockdown, at least one person noticed the increased workload on the delivery personnel, the drivers for Amazon, FedEx, UPS, and the post office. During the summer heat wave, Eileen Tennant-Grant was unable to watch the delivery workers come and go without feeling that something should be done to help them out. So Eileen took to keeping cold bottles of water in the refrigerator, which she handed out to every delivery person who came to the door. Using the family's Ring...
Santa Monica and Malibu high schools are now among the top 150 high schools in California. Santa Monica was ranked 98 while Malibu placed 146 among more than 2600 public high schools in the Golden State, according to rankings by U.S. News and World Report. U.S. News rankings are determined by college readiness scores, based on demographics, state test scores and college prep exams. Both SMMUSD high schools ranked in the top 1,000 nationally. The publication surveyed more than 17,800 public high...
The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District is preparing to sell $280 million of bonds for both Measure M (for Malibu Schools) and Measure SMS (for Santa Monica Schools) in the coming months, district officials announced this week. Projects to be funded for by these new bonds include multiple improvement projects at Santa Monica elementary and middle schools; Samohi Exploration and Gold Gym program; and the new administration / library / classroom building at Malibu High School, district...
Courts & Rulings Reasonable jury could find officer liable for breaking woman's arm during arrest A District Court judge erred in granting summary judgment to a police officer who was sued by a woman on whom he applied such force in arresting her for trespassing as to break her arm, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held yesterday. The memorandum opinion reverses a Feb. 21, 2019 order by Judge William B. Shubb of the Eastern District of California awarding summary judgment to Vacaville...
Students in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District won't be required to take the federal and state-mandated assessment tests this school year. But they will have to take local standardized tests that measure their literacy and numeracy skills, Supt. Ben Drati said this week. In a letter to parents, released on Wednesday, Drati said school districts in California have recently been given the flexibility by the federal and the state governments to use locally selected tests rather the...
Courts & Rulings New trial required in action over death of tased suspect The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, in a 2-1 decision, reversed a judgment pursuant to a jury verdict in favor of the City of Los Angeles in an action brought by the family of a man who died after an officer used a Taser on him, holding that an initially proper order barring introduction of Police Commission findings that the officers acted unreasonably was rendered invalid in light of testimony by a...
Courts & Rulings Commissioner Campos says DA's policy doesn't override CA's remand order Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Benjamin Campos on Friday reconsidered his March 3 order that dispositional proceedings involving a man who was convicted in 2016, at age 22, of a murder committed six years earlier, while a minor, will take place in Juvenile Court, deciding that, instead, he will conduct a "transfer hearing" to determine if the case did belong in the criminal court, where it was origi...