Hacienda La Puente Unified School District

Voters in seven school districts went to the polls Tuesday to decide the fate of nearly $372 million in bonds for school construction and improvements, while a measure that would have blocked a town square development in Manhattan Beach went down to defeat. In the Hacienda-La Puente Unified School District, a $100-million bond measure, the largest in Tuesday's election, was leading by a 4-1 margin in early returns.

The Hacienda La Puente Unified School District Board of Education early Tuesday upheld a temporary ban on reading books that sparked a debate about morbid imagery but agreed to reprint and keep teaching some less controversial stories and poems while it evaluates the entire series. The compromise, reached after more than five hours of heated discussion, failed to appease many of the 500 people who squeezed into the Cedarlane Junior High School auditorium in Hacienda Heights.

A group of parents is gathering signatures for a recall of the entire Hacienda La Puente school board, claiming the board has mismanaged district funds and failed to listen to the concerns of the community. Board members deny any wrongdoing, maintaining they have acted responsibly and fairly. The 12 parents behind the recall effort, who have collected about 100 signatures since beginning Feb. 17, also charge the board with engaging in nepotism and letting their children down academically.

Teachers in the Hacienda-La Puente Unified School District tried to resolve a contract impasse Thursday by giving students and administrators the silent treatment. After working since August without a contract, teachers proclaimed the "day of silent protest," during which they vowed to not speak to anyone while school was in session. Keeping quiet required a little creativity at times.

Come the first day of class in the fall of 1997, some schoolchildren in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District may have to go a little farther to get to their nearest school. Looking for savings that could be used to improve learning conditions throughout the school district, the Board of Education has launched a two-year consolidation study that could end up in school closures. District Supt.

It's more than symbolic to the girls of the Los Altos High School soccer team that their playing field is uneven. It has a wide hump in the middle and then slopes downward. The girls team has always had to practice and play varsity soccer at a middle school a good 20-minute walk from their Hacienda Heights school. The boys team has always practiced and played on a nicer soccer field on campus. The boys use campus bathrooms. The girls use a portable toilet. The boys change in their locker room.

Fractions are not the most scintillating topic when you're in eighth grade, but Margaret E. Wallace found her math students focusing like a laser beam when she strode to the head of the class Tuesday. They were all ears, but Wallace stayed mum throughout the class, wearing a Mona Lisa smile as she tapped the day's lesson into a computer linked to an overhead projector at Orange Grove Middle School in Hacienda Heights. Wallace, who is also president of the Hacienda La Puente Teachers Assn.

The publisher of a controversial series of elementary school texts said Wednesday that he was perplexed as to why two Los Angeles area school districts received books with far more graphic imagery than the version they ordered. Ralph Caulo, president of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., said officials were searching through sales receipts and shipment bills trying to determine why the East Whittier and Hacienda La Puente school districts were sent the U.S.

Voters in the Hacienda La Puente School District on June 6 will decide the fate of a $100-million school bond measure to modernize and renovate aging campuses. The Board of Education unanimously approved the measure's placement on the June ballot. "In order to learn well, students need safe, adequately lit and ventilated classrooms with appropriate technology," said board President Joseph Chang.

Members of the Gabrielino Band of Mission Indians gathered at the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary on Thursday to denounce plans to build a $22-million discovery center on a site they regard as ancestral lands. During a blessing ceremony held in a glade of century-old sycamores, tribal spiritual leader Ernest Perez Salas Tautimies said, "This is our last frontier close to home. We want to keep it just the way it is so that we never forget the lessons hidden under every leaf and rock.