Students

If you are a teacher in debt, there's good news and bad news. There are literally dozens of programs that could potentially help wipe out your student loans. But most of them have narrow requirements that may lock you out. Just ask Troy Dale, a high school counselor from Ellis, Kan. He and his wife have $23,000 in student loans that they've been paying down for nearly a decade. At their current rate, they'll still be paying off their student debts when their oldest child enrolls in college.

Jurors awarded an elementary school special needs student $1.4 million after she was sexually assaulted five times by a male classmate during an after-school program in Chatsworth. Santa Monica jurors made the decision Tuesday after an eight-day trial about how much the Los Angeles Unified School District should pay for the injuries the girl suffered because of inadequate supervision at the Superior Street Elementary campus. The jurors apportioned about $731,000 of the damages to the district, with the remainder apportioned to the perpetrator, according to attorneys.

The yellowing government survey map of San Nicolas Island dated from 1879, but it was quite clear: There was a big black dot on the southwest coast and, next to it, the words "Indian Cave. " For more than 20 years, Navy archaeologist Steve Schwartz searched for that cave. It was believed to be home to the island's most famous inhabitant, a Native American woman who survived on the island for 18 years, abandoned and alone, and became the inspiration for "Island of the Blue Dolphins," one of the 20th century's most popular novels for young readers.

Students and activists joined together Wednesday to file complaints against colleges and universities nationwide, alleging that the schools have failed to follow federal laws, including those involving the reporting of sexual assaults and discrimination. Attorney Gloria Allred announced that complaints were filed against Swarthmore College, Dartmouth College, USC and UC Berkeley on Wednesday morning. Some of these were Title IX complaints alleging a hostile environment for women.

Lloyd Charton recalls a fateful knock on the door. At his Dana Point home stood a cheerful man with an impressive knowledge of Charton's personal life. It was a neighbor, Dan J. Harkey. Harkey congratulated him on his retirement and asked about a recent vacation. He told him about his company, Point Center Financial Inc., which raised money from private investors and lent it to real estate developers.

Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion. She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another's hair. Past a cellphone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze. Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework. "No wonder you're going to Harvard," a girl teased her. Around here, Khadijah is known as "Harvard girl," the "smart girl" and the girl with the contagious smile who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago. What students don't know is that she is also a homeless girl.

The first thing one noticed about the students traveling eagerly to Beijing early Sunday was how sure they were that they would not be punished for opposing the government. "We have been promised by our teachers that the army would do nothing to harm us if we remained peaceful," said Chai Chishan, an engineering scholar from the prestigious Qinghua University in Beijing. "We are not afraid of the soldiers," added Wang Binghai, a classmate who studies nuclear engineering. The students had not heard.

Students and teachers returning from China complained Thursday that the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was not helpful in getting them out of the strife-torn nation, leaving them waiting futilely for instructions while citizens of other countries were being evacuated. "We got nothing," said Roxanne Sylvester, 37, a teacher in UCLA's English-language program at the Chinese Academy of Social Science Graduate School in Beijing. She said she saw Canadian, Portuguese, Irish and French embassy personnel arrange charter flights and airport transportation for their respective citizens while the U.S. Embassy remained silent and unreachable.

Odir Romero, 12, and his best friend, Hugo Ruiz, roamed aimlessly across the crowded playground at Le Conte Junior High School on Thursday morning, discussing the teachers' strike that has turned their school lives upside down. The boys, who immigrated to the United States less than a year ago, casually dodged balls and ballplayers as they ambled through basketball and volleyball courts, never breaking stride or losing the thread of their conversation. While more and more of their classmates are staying home each day the strike continues, these two keep showing up for class.

In a corner of the San Fernando Valley, amid auto body shops and Salvadoran pupusa restaurants, a Hawaiian summer is in full swing. At Camp Akela, located at Noble Avenue Elementary School in North Hills, kindergartners read about rainbow fish and draw them. Other students study volcanoes, create travel journals, dance the hula and even play in a portable pool. But the students, most of them low-income English learners, are also learning literacy, math facts and science and are honing writing skills with "coaches" dressed in leis, tropical shirts and grass skirts.

The best role for parents in the anxious process of the college search is to help students discover their paths. That was one message Wednesday from two college counselors who say parents often hijack the process. Colleges are trying to create a community, and a teenager's application "provides a glimpse of what that student could be like" as a student there, says Jennifer Mandel, an independent college counselor in Los Angeles. So a student who takes ambitious math classes or one who takes a six-week yoga class at a community college both offer something to a college, she says.

As an immigrant and an engineer, I know the magnetic pull that the United States exerts on anyone who dreams of a career in science. From the time I watched NASA technicians on television during the first lunar landing in 1969, I resolved to get the best scientific education that my talents and circumstances would allow. That quest initially took me to National Technical University in Athens, where I became the first person in my family - and the first woman from Salamis, the Greek island where I grew up - to earn a college degree.

Re "Struggling with suspensions," Column, May 18 It is encouraging to read of efforts to reduce the number of suspensions in the Los Angeles Unified School District. But I do have a comment about what Sandy Banks calls "grumbling like that from parents and teachers, who imagine good kids held hostage by troublemakers. " This is a real problem, not something imagined. To those non-educators who criticize suspensions for "willful defiance," when was the last time you faced 35 students with a planned lesson only to have it disrupted by a student?

A motive remains unclear in the slaying of 36-year-old Army veteran and soon-to-be college graduate Maribel Ramos, whose body was found in a remote Orange County canyon. Authorities on Friday announced that they had arrested her roommate in connection with the slaying. Police said Kwang Chol "KC" Joy, 54, voluntarily submitted to an interview with detectives after he was contacted Friday morning, and was later arrested on suspicion of killing Ramos. Police declined to release additional information, saying that the case was being submitted to the Orange County district attorney's office.

At least a dozen schools were put on lockdown, streets were sealed off and a wave of law enforcement swept across eastern Los Angeles and Santa Monica early Thursday after an anonymous caller threatened to "shoot up" a campus. A 19-year-old Santa Monica College student was arrested 90 minutes later on campus when he surrendered to school psychological services after police identified him as the person who had called 911, saying he had a gun and was going to attack a school and shoot himself on campus.

Re "Rule on defiant students revised," May 15 The Los Angeles Unified School District's ban on student suspensions for "willful defiance" reminded me of when I was observing class as a requirement for my teaching credential roughly 40 years ago. The teacher I was observing sent a defiant student out of the room. Not having had a classroom of my own yet, I still believed everything I had been told in my teacher training classes. After class, I questioned the instructor, noting that the student sent out of the classroom wasn't learning anything.

In exactly one week, Los Angeles will wake up with a newly elected mayor. The lucky leader of 4 million restless campers with cracked sidewalks could be Wendy Greuel, the business-suited Valley kid who worked for Mayor Tom Bradley and President Clinton and would be the first female mayor in city history. Or it could be Eric Garcetti, who seems to have done everything in his 42 years except pitch for the Dodgers and kayak to Borneo, and whose adopted daughter may one day celebrate both a bat mitzvah and a quinceañera . Last week, I wrote about a Greuel visit to Tolliver's barbershop in South Los Angeles, where she was relaxed and sharp in front of a crowd that thinks she's the one. Today I'll report on my outing with her opponent, who, like Greuel, helped create some of the city's problems but now promises to deliver peace and prosperity to one and all. L.A. ELECTIONS 2013: Sign up for our email newsletter When Garcetti walked into a Westwood Village pizza parlor late Monday night, he was not recognized until after he'd selected artichokes, olives, onions and peppers as toppings.

Carpenter Community Charter is among the best elementary schools in Los Angeles. Its students surpass standardized testing goals, its art and music programs are thriving and it enjoys robust support from parents and the community. The campus also, officials say, is harboring scores of cheaters: families who have provided false addresses so their children can attend the esteemed Studio City school south of Ventura Boulevard. Faced with the possibility of over-enrollment this fall - and armed with new verification powers - Carpenter is taking action.

The limits on student suspensions approved by the Los Angeles Unified school board this week may burnish the district's progressive credentials, putting L.A. in the forefront of a national shift away from zero-tolerance policies that ban kids from campus for minor offenses. But the measure, which forbids suspensions for "willful defiance," has also shown how complicated and emotional the issue of student discipline can be. The two school board members who voted against it have markedly different perspectives that rarely make them allies.

In exactly one week, Los Angeles will wake up with a newly elected mayor. The lucky leader of 4 million restless campers with cracked sidewalks could be Wendy Greuel, the business-suited Valley kid who worked for Mayor Tom Bradley and President Clinton and would be the first female mayor in city history. Or it could be Eric Garcetti, who seems to have done everything in his 42 years except pitch for the Dodgers and kayak to Borneo, and whose adopted daughter may one day celebrate both a bat mitzvah and a quinceañera . Last week, I wrote about a Greuel visit to Tolliver's barbershop in South Los Angeles, where she was relaxed and sharp in front of a crowd that thinks she's the one. Today I'll report on my outing with her opponent, who, like Greuel, helped create some of the city's problems but now promises to deliver peace and prosperity to one and all. L.A. ELECTIONS 2013: Sign up for our email newsletter When Garcetti walked into a Westwood Village pizza parlor late Monday night, he was not recognized until after he'd selected artichokes, olives, onions and peppers as toppings.