Tutoring

Seven-year-old Whitney Montoya loves the "Junie B. Jones" series of books for children, and she especially loves the way her mother reads them to her, dramatically voicing the role of Junie, the sassy first-grader who experiences one humorous misadventure after another. For Whitney's mom, Sandra Montoya, the bedtime reading sessions provide mother and daughter with valuable one-on-one time and they help Whitney learn to appreciate books, stories and words.

In search of a local success story, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings visited Noble Avenue Elementary in North Hills during a quick trip to Los Angeles on Monday. Some 51% of its students take advantage of free tutoring established through the federal No Child Left Behind Act. That's one of the top participation rates in the Los Angeles Unified School District. But tutoring services are offered only at schools that are flunking federal standards under the 5-year-old federal law.

The Los Angeles Public Works Board approved a $231.3-million contract Wednesday for construction of a police headquarters, despite complaints that the cost was far above budget and that the winning bidder is using few minority and no women subcontractors. The board was left with little choice, given that Tutor-Saliba Corp. was the only company to bid on the massive project, to be built downtown at 100 W. 1st St.

Hunched over a small table at a West Los Angeles learning center, Sehajpal Singh is a study in concentration as he figures out that the dots on his work sheet add up to 10. Sehajpal is 3, but he already has a good grasp of counting, simple words and sentences and taking directions. After a half-hour of work, he stretches and yawns, then seems eager to jump back into his lesson.

The homework helper in my family, when I was growing up, was Mom. Dad was willing to help but he had a tendency to make up stuff, which is how at a young age I came to believe that the "D.C." following "Washington" stood for "Daddy of our Country." Now there is a more reliable source of help for kids: Cosmeo. Backed by Discovery Communications Inc.

Tutor-Saliba Corp. and several partners have agreed to pay the city and county of San Francisco $19 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that the firm overbilled the city and manipulated minority contracting laws as lead builder on the expansion of San Francisco International Airport. The agreement caps a contentious three-year legal fight, during which the Sylmar-based public works giant personally sued San Francisco City Atty. Dennis J. Herrera. The case was later dismissed.

It could pass for a father-son fantasy camp. You know, bonding through baseball, with pop reliving the past and the kid dreaming of the future. There are two lockers on each side of the entrance to the Dodgertown training room. On the left, Sandy Alomar Jr. and Dioner Navarro dress. On the right are Pat Borders and Russell Martin. Alomar, 39, and Borders, 42, are fathers, absolutely. They have 12 children between them.

The photo is in a drawer at home. I never dated it, but time flies, and it probably goes back seven or eight years. It shows an 11-year-old girl standing next to a tree and wearing a flowing blue dress and a light shawl. It was taken the day of her fifth-grade graduation from a Santa Ana elementary school, and I have a print because for an hour a week during the semester I was her reading tutor.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday against reviewing a contract with a firm that plans to move the southernmost runway at Los Angeles International Airport. That means the project can go forward. The plan is to shift the runway 55 feet to the south -- or closer to El Segundo -- to create a taxiway between the pair of runways on the south side of LAX. The purpose is to reduce close calls involving planes landing, taking off and taxiing.

A few stars are still twinkling in the inky pre-dawn sky when Koyampurath Namitha arrives for work in a quiet suburb of this south Indian city. It's barely 4:30 a.m. when she grabs a cup of coffee and joins more than two dozen colleagues, each settling into a cubicle with a computer and earphones. More than 7,000 miles away, in Glenview, Ill.