Glendale Ca Schools

Second-grader Natalie Endjilian edged behind her classmates to escape the squat billy goat straining at its leash to sniff the youngster's flowered skirt. "I think they can kick you," Natalie said. But 4-H club member Sarah Clayton assured the children that the 3-year-old pygmy goat--known as Patty--does not kick or bite. In fact, Clayton, 15, takes Patty for a walk in the desert near Lancaster every day after school.

A month after he allegedly shot to death a Hoover High School student near campus, a 17-year-old boy surrendered to police Friday morning. The suspect, Artiom Badalyan, was being held without bail at Eastlake Juvenile Hall on suspicion of murder. Badalyan allegedly shot Avetis "Avo" Demirchyan, a Hoover High junior, after a Sept. 10 fistfight between two groups of Armenian youths in the faculty parking lot. Mortally wounded by a gunshot in the stomach, Demirchyan died Sept.

A proposed election on a shift in the boundaries between school districts in Glendale and La Canada Flintridge was rejected Friday by state education trustees. "The (7-1) vote today basically throws the case out," said Vic Pallos, spokesman for the Glendale Unified School District. Glendale district officials had appealed to the state Board of Education after a Los Angeles County school district organization committee voted to let residents decide on the proposed boundary shift, Pallos said.

A local anti-crime group offered a reward of up to $1,000 Tuesday for information leading to the arrest of the suspected teenage triggerman in last week's fatal shooting of a Herbert Hoover High School student. Glendale police have identified the suspect as Artiom Badalyan, 17. Police allege that Badalyan shot Avetis "Avo" Demirchyan, 15, once in the stomach at 5:20 p.m Thursday.

A sixth-grade Glendale teacher trying to show her students what their blood looks like under a microscope inadvertently taught a frightening lesson in public health, forcing the children to be tested for HIV and hepatitis infection because they pricked their fingers with the same needle. The students probably suffered no harm, health authorities said.

Inching closer to a bond issue of up to $100 million, the Glendale Board of Education on Tuesday night ordered a survey of residents to gauge how much they would be willing to pay to fix up the district's aging campuses. The phone survey of about 400 residents will be conducted by Oakland-based Price Research for about $15,000.

Rosemont Middle School administrators will launch a homework tutoring program this fall to provide students with college-age mentors and give tutors valuable teaching experience. The partnerships between seventh- and eighth-graders and students majoring in education from Glendale Community College, Occidental College and Cal State Northridge will help reach students who haven't participated in other homework programs, said Rosemont Principal Lois Neil.

Former Jefferson School Principal Paul Estep wants to take politics out of education. After 40 years with the Glendale Unified School District, Estep, who retired last month, said lawmakers must allocate more money to cash-strapped districts instead of calling for educational reform. "It grieves me deeply to hear politicians say reform education," Estep said. "The system does not need reform, it needs more resources."

More than half of the city's 28,659 schoolchildren have difficulty reading, writing or speaking English, according to a report released by the school district this week. The number of students in the Glendale Unified School District who have problems understanding English more than doubled since 1982, when about 24% of the district's student body was reported as limited English proficient.

At Rosemont Junior High School in La Crescenta, getting students who have sprained an ankle or are suffering an asthma attack to the health office from the hillside playing fields, three ramp levels down, is not easy. Now, thanks to the recent donation of a wheelchair from a Glendale hospital, it will be a lot easier. School health clerk Cynthia Pageler said Rosemont had a 25-year-old wheelchair, but could not afford to buy a new one, which costs about $1,500.

Amid the holiday shopping frenzy at the Glendale Galleria is the gift shop Bliss Unlimited, the only store in the mall that pays no rent--and pays no salaries, and yet is flooded with young applicants for its jobs. Unique in a nation of malls and the legions of teenagers who teem inside them, the Bliss Unlimited experiment of letting students mind the store is being hailed as a model of community cooperation.

The day after voters overwhelmingly approved Glendale's first school-bond measure in 33 years, administrators Wednesday were plunging into plans for the first phase of their $186-million effort to renovate and expand overcrowded school facilities. Measure K, which received 74.1% of the vote Tuesday in the highest local election turnout in 16 years, will provide the 30,400-student Glendale Unified School District with $156 million for renovations and $30 million for building three new campuses.

Thirty years have passed since Linda Evans whiled away hot afternoons in the windowless cellblock of classrooms that her son at Crescenta Valley High School today calls the "bunker" building. Evans, 46, now the dean of students, wants it leveled. Heartened that Burbank and Los Angeles voters approved school bond measures last month, she and other Glendale school supporters are exhorting residents to pass a $186-million bond measure on June 3 to help renovate facilities that date from the 1920s.

Acting on tips from fellow students, police have arrested three eighth-grade boys at Rosemont Middle School in connection with the planting of two devices suspected of being bombs at local schools. One of the devices has been determined to be a hoax, and the other was probably harmless as well, although police are still awaiting final results from laboratory tests, said Sgt. Rick Young, spokesman for the Glendale Police Department.

Police said Monday that a homemade bomb found hanging on a doorknob outside a classroom at Dunsmore Elementary School was a "very small device" with little power, probably not the work of a sophisticated criminal. If it had been triggered accidentally, "there would not have been a major explosion," said Sgt. Rick Young of the Glendale Police Department.

It was "show and tell" for fifth-grader Azusena Cardenas at Edison Elementary School on Wednesday. For her teachers, too. Azusena, student council president, gave her first speech as the school showed off its new library, the first tangible result of an unusual partnership between the city and local schools.

The group's name states its goal: Make Keppel Special. And that's what the fund-raising group from Mark Keppel Elementary School in Glendale hopes to do Saturday and Sunday with a crafts and carnival festival on campus, 730 Glenwood Road. The foundation, made up of 15 parents, teachers and staff from Keppel, has been organizing events throughout the year in an effort to raise $40,000 for a new, 50-foot-by-30-foot playground. "We're at about $15,000," said Brian J.

The Glendale Unified School District's nine year-round elementary campuses will extend classroom instruction by as much as 13 minutes per day, beginning next month. The action was taken in order that teachers at those schools can have more time to plan. Schools will add 12 minutes to student class time Monday through Friday, totaling 60 minutes for the week. The extra time will be used for weekly, one-hour teacher and staff planning sessions.

About 20 students and staff personnel at a Glendale high school were taken to hospitals Wednesday with various complaints after a student's vial of pepper spray discharged, apparently by accident, officials said. None of the Herbert Hoover High School students and staff--who experienced headaches and eye, throat and stomach irritations--suffered serious injury, Fire Department and school officials said.