Summer School

The Los Angeles Unified School District announced Thursday it is canceling the bulk of its summer school programs, the latest in a statewide wave of cutbacks expected to leave hundreds of thousands of students struggling for classes. The reductions, which will force many parents to scramble for child care, are the most tangible effect of the multibillion-dollar state financial cuts to education. Community colleges also have announced summer program cancellations.

It's time for families to start finalizing their summer vacation plans. And those with high school football players had better ask one specific question of their coach: “When does my son get time off?” In the Southern Section, every school must declare when it will take a mandatory summer dead period of 21 consecutive days, in which there's no practicing or coaching and the only allowable contact is opening the weight room for voluntary workouts. The dead period has somehow survived for decades despite some dinosaur coaches' thinking teenagers should never get a break.

Summers for eighth-grader Jade Larriva-Latt are filled with soccer and backpacking, art galleries and museums, library volunteer work and sleep-away camp. There is no summer school, no tutoring. "They need their childhood," says Jade's father, Cesar Larriva, an associate professor of education at Cal Poly Pomona. "It's a huge concern of mine, the lack of balance from pushing them too hard. " For 10th-grader Derek Lee, summer is the time to sprint ahead in the ferocious race to the academic top. He polishes off geometry, algebra and calculus ahead of schedule and masters SAT content (he earned a perfect 800 on the math portion last fall)

Etsy, the online marketplace for handmade goods, is sending women to Hacker School this summer. Marc Hedlund, Etsy's vice president of engineering, said that in his career he has hired hundreds of men but only dozens of women. “Other managers I know have reported similar experiences,” Hedlund wrote in a blog post . So Etsy is hosting the summer 2012 session of Hacker School at its New York City headquarters, and it's offering 10 $5,000 grants to women who want to join but need financial assistance.

Summer school classes will be offered by the Tustin Unified School District at A.G. Currie Middle School beginning June 26. The classes, which run through Aug. 7, had been conducted at Foothill and Tustin high schools in previous years, but both facilities are scheduled for air-conditioning installation this summer. For more information, call the district student services office at (714) 730-7325.

Adult education teacher Planaria Price is used to the ups and downs of budget planning in the giant Los Angeles Unified School District. Price remembers boom times in the late 1980s, when classes at Evans Community Adult School near downtown ran 24 hours a day. Money was flowing and immigrants flocked to English lessons, hoping for legalization under federal amnesty programs. And Price has stuck it out through tough downturns, when classes were cut, teachers were laid off and many vocational programs closed.

It is a summer of discontent on many California college campuses. Some, including West Los Angeles College and the three campuses in the San Diego Community College District, have canceled the regular summer session because of budget cutbacks, only offering some non-credit classes and a few specialized courses. Others have severely curtailed course offerings, frustrating students like William Diaz, who found that the few chemistry classes being offered in the nine-campus Los Angeles Community College District were all full by the time he was scheduled to register.

First, some housekeeping duties were in order for the youthful Clippers before they mobilized for the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, and their first game Monday against the Lakers. There was the matter of gathering for their first practice Friday, at the team's facility in Playa Vista, a chance for a full session under the direction of Coach Mike Dunleavy and summer league head coach Kim Hughes. Not that prized No. 1 overall draft pick Blake Griffin needed to get acquainted.

So much for dreading summer school. At Santa Ana College, the students are buying it back, one class at a time. Budget cuts at the community college have been severe, eliminating an extra session in January and forcing more than 100 summer courses to be cut, leaving some students panicked that they won't have the classes needed to be able to transfer to a four-year school this fall or next spring.

The Oak Park Unified School District plans to extend its elementary summer school program from four to six weeks, district officials said. The program will be lengthened, officials said, to give students at risk of being held back a grade more time to catch up. Summer school, scheduled from June 19 to July 28 for middle and high school students, already is six weeks on those campuses.

A month ago, I could go for days without checking my email or updating my Facebook status. Now I'm online every morning, looking for that little green video-camera icon next to my daughter's name when I log on to my Gmail account. I'm trying to stay plugged in to a child who is 5,000 miles away, in a city I'd never heard of, in a country I knew next to nothing about. My youngest -- the "Will I ever find an apartment in San Francisco??" daughter -- is studying in Aarhus, Denmark, this semester.

Adult education teacher Planaria Price is used to the ups and downs of budget planning in the giant Los Angeles Unified School District. Price remembers boom times in the late 1980s, when classes at Evans Community Adult School near downtown ran 24 hours a day. Money was flowing and immigrants flocked to English lessons, hoping for legalization under federal amnesty programs. And Price has stuck it out through tough downturns, when classes were cut, teachers were laid off and many vocational programs closed.

She has the skin of English royalty — very fair, a little peachy in the cheeks, freckles. The little girl carries herself like that too, as if there will always be some manservant to open the door or carry her across rain puddles. That manservant is usually me, but when I'm not around, others step up to the task. She is 20 and lovely as a jar of honey. I've been making her breakfast all summer, her and her little bro, the one who latched on to me like a tiny mollusk some eight years ago. Him: "Dad, I caught a praying mantis.

It is a summer of discontent on many California college campuses. Some, including West Los Angeles College and the three campuses in the San Diego Community College District, have canceled the regular summer session because of budget cutbacks, only offering some non-credit classes and a few specialized courses. Others have severely curtailed course offerings, frustrating students like William Diaz, who found that the few chemistry classes being offered in the nine-campus Los Angeles Community College District were all full by the time he was scheduled to register.

The general assumption is that when it comes to educating American kids, more is more. Longer school hours. Saturday school. Summer school. Yet more than 120 school districts across the nation are finding that less can also be more — less being fewer days spent in school. The four-day school week has been around for decades, according to the National Council of State Legislatures, but it's quietly spreading as a money-saving tactic, especially after several states — including Montana, Georgia, Missouri and Washington — passed legislation allowing school districts to make the switch as long as they lengthened each school day so that there was no reduction in instructional hours.

Summers for eighth-grader Jade Larriva-Latt are filled with soccer and backpacking, art galleries and museums, library volunteer work and sleep-away camp. There is no summer school, no tutoring. "They need their childhood," says Jade's father, Cesar Larriva, an associate professor of education at Cal Poly Pomona. "It's a huge concern of mine, the lack of balance from pushing them too hard. " For 10th-grader Derek Lee, summer is the time to sprint ahead in the ferocious race to the academic top. He polishes off geometry, algebra and calculus ahead of schedule and masters SAT content (he earned a perfect 800 on the math portion last fall)

Summer school registration is underway for Saddleback Valley Unified School District. The elementary summer school program will run from June 30 to July 25 and will be offered at Valencia, Montevideo, Gates and Trabuco Mesa elementary schools. Lomarena will also be used as a site for English Language Development classes. Beginning June 23, the intermediate summer program will run through Aug. 1 and will be available at all four Saddleback Valley intermediate campuses.

"Summer School! What Genius Thought That Up?" by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver Hank Zipzer, a kid with learning disabilities, has to go to summer school. All of his friends are going to camp and he is left behind because he is a mostly C and D student. Hank's friends, Frankie and Ashley, try to make Hank feel good about himself. Hank is determined to get an A on his report card so he can join his friends at the talent show. Hank's friends need him. This book is filled with a lot of adventures.

More than 500 people lined up in the heat Wednesday to pay their respects to 17-year-old Norma Lopez, walking silently into a Moreno Valley chapel and past a coffin draped with pink roses and a tearful mother and father saying their final goodbyes to their young daughter. Many who came expressed both anger and fear that such a good child could suffer such a gruesome end to her young life. Norma was abducted while walking home from summer school earlier this month and found dead in a grassy field days later.

Seantrel Henderson, the nation's biggest — and by many ratings, the best — major-college football recruit, didn't show up for summer school classes at USC this week. Instead, he remained at home in Minnesota, igniting renewed speculation that he might ask to be released from his scholarship and prompting Trojans coaches to make their second trip to see him in just the last few weeks. Henderson, a 6-foot-8 offensive tackle who weighs in at well over 300 pounds, is vacillating about his decision and perhaps considering playing for Miami or Ohio State, according to various reports, though neither he nor his father has been quoted saying much more than no comment.