Student Store

A small, homemade bomb exploded Wednesday at La Quinta High School, unnerving students but causing no injuries or damage, authorities said. The explosion occurred about 10:20 a.m. in the school's student store, just as students were returning to classes following the morning snack period, La Quinta Principal Andrew McTaggart said. "There was a sharp, brief but loud noise," McTaggart said. "It came from a trash barrel. . . .

Administrators need to do a better job of tracking funds that go to student government, according to an audit of school district finances. Although the review by Vavrinek, Trine, Day & Co. found only a few minor discrepancies, it was enough to warrant changes in the way the associated student bodies at Santa Susana and Royal high schools keep financial records. The audit was conducted for the district's 1998-99 fiscal year and presented to the school board in December.

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An investigation by Los Angeles police and school district security officials into the disappearance of as much as $30,000 from John Marshall High School student body funds has led to the arrest of one student and the resignation of the school's senior financial manager, a Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman said.

Hunting for the arsonist who they believed had set several mysterious fires around one of the city's high schools this month, police in Irvine say they finally found their culprit before dawn July 24 in an adjacent nature preserve. Police arrested Rainer Reinscheid, a 48-year-old professor at UC Irvine, on charges of trying to light a fire in Mason Park Preserve with newspaper and lighter fluid. It was not far from the wooded spot where his 14-year-old son, Claas Stubbe, had hanged himself four months earlier.

Los Angeles school district officials have begun an audit at a Chatsworth junior high school to determine whether thousands of dollars have disappeared from student body funds supervised by a campus administrator who has failed to report to work for weeks.

Jan Fuller's son was 14 when he was kicked out of three public schools in the course of three months. He couldn't get along with others in a lunchroom, he once forced his way into a girls' bathroom, and he threatened to throw a computer. "I didn't know where to take him. It was extremely frustrating. It cost a lot of tears," Fuller said. "I can't blame the school district here in Rancho Cucamonga.... They tried. But nothing was working." She believed Robert was autistic; his speech was unusual.

Was there ever a "Golden Age" in California's schools? In some ways, schools were notably better thirty years ago. But there were troubles then, too, as seen in these excerpts from a diary kept in 1969 by Richard Arthur, then a history teacher at Jefferson High in South Central Los Angeles. 1968 Sept. 20--A shooting occurred just before lunch. Sept. 23--Students and outside loiterers walked the halls all day. Sept. 24--During a heat wave, I was unable to shut off a heater in the bungalow. Sept.

M. Stephen Sheldon would deny us the opportunity to learn about agriculture, our nation and state's No. 1 industry, just because we happen to live in a city. That is precisely what makes the agriculture program at Pierce College so valuable to us. Agriculture offers careers in production, processing, marketing and distribution. It involves research. It is international in scope. At Pierce College, urban students from throughout Los Angeles have the opportunity to gain both academic and hands-on experience in agriculture.

A former principal in the Inglewood Unified School District was sentenced Friday to 180 days' house arrest and three years' formal probation for embezzling thousands of dollars of district funds. Leonard Matthews, 60, pleaded no contest five months ago to three counts of embezzlement. On Friday, however, he told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gordon Ringer that he had done nothing more than incorrectly mingle his personal money with district funds.