Orange County Department Of Education

A 27-year-old teacher's aide was arrested Thursday on suspicion of lewd conduct involving a 14-year-old boy at Venado Middle School, police said. Raymond Novella of Orange was arrested at the offices of the Orange County Department of Education in Costa Mesa, where he is employed as an aide in a program for hearing-impaired students. The program is based at Venado school.

Kevin Cavanaugh raised his voice just enough to be heard over the din of the oil derrick 50 feet behind him. "OK, everybody look with your eyes first. You can use the binoculars later," he told a group of 15 second-graders, pointing to the snowy egret treading through the the marsh water of the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. "See how he wiggles his feet? He's using his toes like worms to catch the fish." "Ohh, look," responded several of the kids. "Look, he got one!"

A Whittier College education professor filed nominating petitions in the race for Orange County superintendent of schools Tuesday, marking the first serious challenge in more than a decade for longtime schools chief Robert D. Peterson. John F. Dean, 63, a Newport Beach resident who has been chairman of Whittier's education department for 19 years, submitted 3,000 signatures to the county Board of Elections on Tuesday morning, officially placing him on the ballot for the June 5 election.

What Joe Montana is to the Super Bowl, Cynthia Hernando is to a spelling bee--accurate and possessed of steely nerves. And a winner. She displayed all her talents Thursday night, joining two other students to cop top honors at the Eighth Annual Orange County Elementary Spelling Contest. Through round after round, word after word, Cynthia ticked off all the right letters, even tackling such personal nemeses as peninsula.

A retarded 17-year-old boy was nearly killed at a county-run school in Placentia after staffers immersed him in scalding water "to cause injury and punishment" for defecating in his pants, according to a lawsuit filed by the youth's mother. The suit charges that Robert Herrell was immersed in bath water "heated to approximately 150 degrees" and suffered "second- and third-degree burns over 35% to 40% of his body" while attending George Key Special Center last summer. Sgt.

Orange County Education Supt. Robert D. Peterson labors in a strange kind of obscurity. He is one of the highest-paid public educators in the state-- only two elected officials in the county make more--and he sits at the helm of a sprawling $66-million-a-year educational bureaucracy. And yet, after 23 years and six countywide elections, Peterson still maintains a low political profile.

A Whittier College education professor, using a novel appeal to area school district superintendents, is quietly testing the waters for a bid to unseat controversial longtime Orange County Supt. of Schools Robert D. Peterson. The professor, John F.

The UC Irvine Child Development Center has received a $65,000 grant for a teaching and treatment program for children with hyperactivity and other behavioral disorders. The grant, from the Educational Foundation of America, will fund a program that began last year in cooperation with the Orange County Department of Education, which has involved more than 60 Irvine-area schoolchildren. The program teaches children social skills in group therapy and closely monitored classroom situations.

After a 3-month investigation, the federal Office of Civil Rights has determined that the Orange County Department of Education responded adequately last fall to a bus shortage for handicapped students and did not violate their civil rights. The federal agency said the county department "is currently in compliance" with a U.S. law requiring free transportation of the handicapped, and the agency dismissed a civil rights complaint against the department.