Long Beach Unified School District

Even as a school testing contractor scrambles to correct a scoring error on statewide achievement tests, an additional problem in Long Beach has resulted in a warning for districts throughout the state to check their results. San Antonio-based Harcourt Educational Measurement acknowledged the problem but said it could not be corrected before next week, when statewide data are expected to be posted on the Internet.

With a windfall $295 million heading for their coffers, Long Beach school officials will begin prioritizing the repairs and construction to be funded by the bond measure passed Tuesday. Final poll results show that 71% of the voters in the Long Beach Unified School District approved the bond measure, which required a two-thirds majority for passage. In all, 34,778 voters in Long Beach, Lakewood, Signal Hill and on Catalina Island voted.

Voters will decide today on a bond measure that would allow the Long Beach school district to spend $295 million to build schools and repair and upgrade existing facilities over 30 years. If Measure A is approved, funds would total $495 million with the addition of $200 million in matching state funds. Money would be spent to repair and upgrade plumbing, heating and ventilation, upgrade electrical systems for computers and build 13 schools. No argument was filed against the measure.

Five high schools in the Long Beach Unified School District have been promised state and federal grants totaling more than $8.5 million, district officials said Tuesday. Lakewood, Jordan and Millikan high schools were selected at random for state grants of more than $1 million each to upgrade their computer technology, said district spokesman Richard Van Der Laan. In addition, Cabrillo and Wilson high schools are slated to receive federal grants together worth more than $5.

A classroom crunch in Long Beach has forced teachers and students to meet not only in portable facilities but also in libraries, auditoriums and--in at least one case--an open-air courtyard. The crunch comes in the wake of a surge in student enrollment seen across Los Angeles County just as school districts begin class size reductions in the third grade. Most districts, however, were able to absorb the enrollment growth with few problems.

Along with their books and backpacks, more than 6,000 students took firearms to school during the 1996-1997 academic year and were expelled, according to a report released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education. "This report is a clear indication that our nation's public schools are cracking down on students who bring guns to school," Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley said in a statement. The report gives the first state-by-state view of the impact of the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994.

Prompted by a statewide shortage of teachers, the Capistrano Unified School District has approved plans to cultivate its own--becoming the first in Orange County to adopt a formal program to train and pay for instructional aides to become teachers. After earning their bachelor's degrees and teaching credentials, the new teachers would have to agree to stay with the district the same amount of time they went to school under the program.

The city has settled a lawsuit it filed last year objecting to the opening of the Long Beach Preparatory Academy on the grounds that it would be a magnet for crime and juvenile delinquents. The academy is attended by eighth-graders who have received at least one failing grade. The settlement, agreed upon Tuesday by the Long Beach school board, permits the academy to operate until June 2001.

Outside Franklin Middle School in Long Beach, scavengers carry garbage bags full of cans or fill shopping carts with anything that can be recycled. High-occupancy, low-cost apartments with peeling paint are packed along litter-filled streets. This is where some of the city's immigrant population lives in one of Long Beach's most densely populated and lowest income neighborhoods.

Signal Hill has hired a consultant to assist its school district formation committee in determining whether the city could support a school district. The Sage Institute will work with the 11-member committee in preparing a feasibility report on the city withdrawing from the Long Beach Unified School District to form a district in Signal Hill.