Public Campuses

Today is Memorial Day. The following schedules are in effect: -- Schools: Public campuses are closed. -- Mail: No delivery; post offices are closed. -- Banks: Most are closed. -- Libraries: Most are closed. -- Public transit: MTA buses and Metro Rail lines operate on a Sunday schedule. Metrolink trains do not operate. -- Trash collection: The city of Los Angeles maintains regular pickup schedules. -- Government: City, county, state and federal offices and courts are closed.

Along one edge of the old Ambassador Hotel site, where the Los Angeles Unified School District has been building a controversial collection of schools, there is a new park dedicated to the life and work of Robert F. Kennedy. Created by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt and running parallel to Wilshire Boulevard, the park includes a series of quotations from Kennedy, who was shot and killed inside the hotel on a June night in 1968, and a few others. Among the lines by Kennedy is one that seems tailor-made to address the controversy that has followed the LAUSD's attempts, adamantly opposed by the Los Angeles Conservancy and other preservationists, to knock down Myron Hunt's 1921 hotel complex and replace it with a new campus costing more than $578 million, a streamlined but conservative piece of work by Pasadena firm Gonzalez Goodale Architects.

The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see. He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide. Polanco looked at the cuts and said they "were weak," according to witness accounts in documents filed with the state. "Carve deeper next time," he was said to have told the boy. "Look," Polanco allegedly said, "you can't even kill yourself."

Holiday closures Monday is Presidents Day. The following schedule will be in effect: Government: City, county, state and federal offices will be closed. Mail: No delivery; post offices will be closed. Libraries: Most will be closed, including Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills systems. Banks: Most will be closed. Schools: Public campuses will be closed. Public transit: MTA buses, Metro Rail and Metrolink lines will offer regular weekday service.

For 50 years, they've avoided it. But California's public universities are now inching closer to using the word they've long viewed as taboo: tuition. Unlike schools in every other state, California's public campuses in effect have banned official use of the word and what it means — that students pay at least a hefty share, if not most, of their education costs. The state's renowned master plan for higher education, which in 1960 established separate roles for the University of California, California State University and the community colleges, also declared that the public institutions "shall be tuition free to all residents."

Seeking to calm a backlash at traditional Los Angeles schools, a top district official promised this week to reconsider offers of classroom space on those campuses to charter schools. The idea of privately operated charter schools sharing space with regular schools was met with fury at many affected campuses, including Taft High in Woodland Hills and Crenshaw High in South Los Angeles. Teachers and parents have complained that their own reforms and programs would be harmed.

The faculty at tradition-proud but low-performing Fairfax High School has worked for two years on a plan to improve the school while also attracting long-absent middle-class families. Scheduled to start next fall, the new setup includes dividing the sprawling campus into small academies -- each with a different theme, each designed to devote attention to every student. But there's something Fairfax wasn't planning on.