March 14, 2013
Local News & Culture Marina del Rey
Westchester
Free S a n ta M o n i c a
P l aya d e l R e y
P l aya V i s t a
OPENING DAY 2013 Marina del Rey yacht clubs kick off the yachting season
Photo by Pat Reynolds
The California Yacht Club holds its traditional ceremonies on Opening Day.
Page 18
Moving school’s Mandarin program ignites fierce community debate
By Gary Walker On any given day, one can view the smiling faces of young children heading to Broadway Elementary School in Venice, as is the case in many schools throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District. Parents engage each other after dropping their young charges at the gate and sometimes walk a few blocks away for coffee and more conversation. But these days, unlike the children inside the elementary school, many of the parents un-
fortunately view each other with suspicion, making Broadway the flashpoint of a simmering debate that has pitted parents of a popular language immersion initiative against families whose children and grandchildren have been attending the neighborhood school for decades, and in some cases have graduated multiple generations. The Mandarin Chinese immersion language program at Broadway, implemented three years ago, has been by all rights a highly popular initiative and is
growing at a steady pace. Families have flocked to the school to enroll their children, which in LAUSD Board Member Steve Zimmer’s eyes, is a sign that his plan for an instructional language pipeline is coming to fruition. As a testament to the popularity of the Mandarin program, applicants staked out their positions in front of the school during the early morning hours of March 8 to apply for the 75 student slots for the 2013-14 academic year. (Continued on page 8)
Del Rey
VenicE
Supervisors put brakes on measure to combat stormwater pollution By Gary Walker A bid by Los Angeles County health officials and environmental organizations to establish a fund for new clean water initiatives has been postponed at least until next year. The county Board of Supervisors voted to halt the Clean Water, Clean Beaches initiative at its meeting March 12, dealing a temporary setback to organizations that are dedicated to keeping stormwater runoff from entering the ocean. The county measure would have charged parcel owners approximately $54 annually for storm water runoff cleanup. Money from the property tax assessment would have been used for local water-saving programs as well as creating regional watershed authorities. Property owners would have had the option to vote on the proposal in a mail-in special election. “While I have long supported efforts to ensure clean water and beaches, I have been against this measure from the beginning as it was not fair and transparent in content or process,” said Fourth District Supervisor Don Knabe, the author
of the motion to derail the measure. “We must start over. “Unfortunately, our stormwater problem is exacerbated by the expensive, and often unrealistic, demands placed on us by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, which increased the Total Maximum Daily Loads from two pollutants in the old permit to 33 pollutants, which would cost this region tens of billions of dollars to comply with in the next 20 years alone,” the supervisor added. The motion, which was cosponsored by First District Supervisor Gloria Molina, includes a target election date of June or November 2014. County officials have said for several months that the measure is a regional response to the continuing problem of pollutants entering local and regional watersheds. Last year, according to county authorities, taxpayers spent an estimated $100 million to clean up the urban pollution. Kerjon Lee, a spokesman for the county Department of Public Works, said his agency has been working with various (Continued on page 9)
•This Week•
Photo by Sam Holden
Battle Over Broadway
M a r V i s ta
Page 12
Kim Wilson and The Fabulous Thunderbirds will perform at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica Saturday, March 16.