Students

In January, Beverly Hills Unified School District voted to expel hundreds of students who attend its schools but live outside its boundaries because, under a change of funding formula, those students no longer would bring in extra money. Now Los Angeles Unified is forcing thousands of students who live within the district but attend schools elsewhere to return. Rich school or poor, it's not pretty to see students treated like walking dollar signs. The L.A. Unified students need annual permission to enroll in such places as Torrance, Santa Monica and Calabasas, and now that the district's budget is sinking into a seemingly bottomless hole, each of those students represents a chance to recapture thousands of dollars in funding.

At Hawthorne High School recently, students easily identified areas where different groups hang out: the basketball players are in a corner near the cafeteria, the rockers near the stage, ditchers and smokers near the school gates and the JV football players and cheerleaders near the field. The exercise was aimed at focusing students' attention on the many social and cultural barriers formed by cliques on campus and the stereotypes they can engender. Afterward, Hawthorne senior Naya Pierce said she hoped her classmates would begin to reach beyond their tight-knit circles but admitted it would be slow going.

Growing up, I became an expert test-taker at my college prep private school. There wasn't a fact I couldn't memorize and I was determined to ace every exam. Problem was, I wasn't actually learning much of anything. That sad realization didn't come to me for years until a friend introduced me to her new school, a humanities magnet that forced students to think critically, to debate in class, to make persuasive arguments in essays, and to have real-world experiences that put all of this new knowledge into perspective.

On a recent stroll in her Westchester neighborhood, Leslie Rittenour watched a dusty white Cherokee with Washington plates wedge its way into a small parking spot on the street in front of her home. Like the two cars it squeezed between - a gray Prius and a beat-up Honda - it had a Loyola Marymount University decal on its windshield. Rittenour pursed her lips as she walked past the cars. "They say it's a public street," Rittenour said, scoffingly. "If every day it's like this, it's really just an LMU parking lot. " For Rittenour and others whose homes border the edge of the university campus, competing with students for parking leads to frequent frustrations - ones they fear will get worse when the school starts charging for on-campus parking in January.

A science teacher at an intermediate school in Oxnard was fired after students claimed to have seen her in a porn movie. No one asked why children were watching porn movies. ALSO: Clear the tracks, Beverly Hills Photo gallery: Ted Rall cartoons Doctor finds the G spot -- in Poland For more from Ted Rall, visit tedrall.com or follow him on Twitter: @TedRall .

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 45-year-old assistant high school principal in Hemet accused of sex crimes with three boys over several months is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday. Erin Henton, who works at Tahquitz High School, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of sexual battery and other crimes, according to the Hemet Police Department. Police said she was placed on administrative leave when an allegation was made March 8. The three boys are students at the school, but none of the alleged acts occurred on campus, police said in a statement.

Three middle school students in Orange County were  hospitalized Wednesday after eating a marijuana brownie while on campus, school officials said. It was the second such incident in as many months at a school in Costa Mesa. Two seventh-graders went to the front office at TeWinkle Middle School at 12:40 p.m., complaining of stomach problems, Newport-Mesa Unified School District spokeswoman Laura Boss said. A short time later, a third seventh-grader came to the office complaining of similar symptoms, she said.

The adults in the church sanctuary were itching for a fight, eager to redress years of indignities absorbed growing up black in San Diego. The black UC San Diego students were nursing a different sort of wrath: the psychic pain of hardworking high achievers, envisioning post-racial acceptance but reduced to crude racial stereotypes instead. The generations met at a San Diego community forum that drew more than 600 people who were upset over a string of racial incidents spawned by a party promoted by white fraternity members from UC San Diego, "in honor of" Black History Month, that promised a taste of "life in the ghetto" -- cheap clothes, watermelon, malt liquor, gold teeth.

Nobody has yet used the "c" word — cheating — to describe the imbroglio that has scrambled the testing schedule at Chatsworth High this month. But another "c" word — confusion — has forestalled end-of-the-year revelry for dozens of hardworking students, who will have to retake or reschedule a series of Advanced Placement exams. The official statement from Los Angeles Unified about the testing problems blames "an irregular pattern in conducting" an AP psychology exam last week.