Parochial Schools Los Angeles

About 1,200 students, teachers and civic leaders gathered in front of the Los Angeles Coliseum Tuesday in the opening of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League's "World of Difference" program, organized to fight racial, ethnic and religious prejudice in area schools. "(Los Angeles) is the most ethnically diverse city in the entire world . . . and unfortunately tensions still exist based on our racial and religious differences.

Entrepreneur Kevin Pickett and attorneys Dwight Bolden and Winston McKesson are helping St. Raphael's elementary school in South-Central Los Angeles, where all three successful men graduated in 1971. They are not alone. Also helping St. Raphael's is the charitable foundation of A.C. Green of the Lakers plus lawyers and investment experts from Brentwood and local community counselors. The effort at St.

The Los Angeles Times Fund this year has awarded $100,000 in grants-in-aid to 200 graduating high school seniors throughout Southern California to enable them to pursue their education. The $500 awards were presented to the students during ceremonies at public and parochial schools in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. Started by The Times in 1967, the grants-in-aid program has awarded more than 6,000 grants totaling more than $2.3 million.

Theresa Simpson reluctantly took her son Bruce out of parochial school because she couldn't afford the $1,200 annual tuition. Simpson, a single mother of three from San Pedro on a fixed income, says she would leap at the chance to return Bruce, now 16, to a private school with top-flight academics, religious training and a path to college. She might get that chance. Like other parents across Los Angeles, Simpson on Tuesday welcomed the news that Wall Street investor Theodore J.

The Los Angeles Times Fund has awarded $100,500 in grants-in-aid to 201 graduating high school seniors throughout Southern California, enabling them to continue their education in the next school year. The $500 awards were presented to the seniors at ceremonies at public and parochial schools in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties last week. The grants-in-aid program, started by the Times Fund in 1967, has awarded more than 5,400 grants totaling more than $2 million.

The issue of school vouchers is resurfacing in the California Assembly. The voters expressed their opinion in November 1993, but the combination of real, unresolved problems in public education and special-interest groups seeking government handouts keep the issue alive. My children go to Fountain Valley High and Masuda Middle schools.

Only a quarter of city voters hold a favorable opinion of the Los Angeles Board of Education, according to a Times poll, which also found that a small but potentially critical number of voters said Mayor Richard Riordan's endorsements would make them more likely to support his candidates in the April 13 election.

Before shuffling off to prison last fall to begin serving a life sentence for molesting his children decades earlier, retired schoolteacher Albert Rosen, 76, apologized for any harm he had done to his son and daughter. Now the former Ventura County school board member, as well as hundreds of other convicted child molesters, will probably be released from prison after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law Thursday that allowed prosecutors to file cases even after legal deadlines had passed.