Filmmaker tells Edie Sedgwick’s story
Chumash help Buellton center
Kinga Syrek, who looks like Sedgwick, produces animated film ‘Too Late’ - B1
Santa Ynez Band donates $35,000 toward facility’s expansion - B2
Our 166th Year
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W E D N E S DAY, M AY 11, 2 0 2 2
Highway 101 work nears completion in Carpinteria By KATHERINE ZEHNDER NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
KENNETH SONG/NEWS-PRESS
D“When I go to schools, I see a lot of kids engaged and learning and socializing and connecting,” Santa Barbara Unified Superintendent Hilda Maldonado said, praising the district’s employees and students for their resiliency during the pandemic.
State of SB schools
The 2-mile portion of Highway 101 that goes through Carpinteria is almost finished. And the carpool lanes are expected to open soon. A progress report about the highway was presented Monday evening to the Carpinteria City Council. Kristin Ayers of the public relations firm Ayers and Associates provided a presentation on the progress of Highway 101 from Carpinteria to Santa Barbara. This project is a partnership between Caltrans and Santa Barbara Association of Governments. “The Highway 101 Carpinteria to Santa Barbara project is a significant part of the overall ‘Lane and Train’ solution to traffic congestion, and we are doing that with the project by adding a new carpool lane, peak period carpool lane, in each direction. … They are actually already built out there. We are just finishing up right now, and we also are improving freeway operations and safety,” said Ms. Ayers during the regular meeting of the city council on Monday.
Gas prices climb, set new record
Superintendent praises district’s ‘resilience to stay strong’ By KAITLYN SCHALLHORN NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
In a word, the state of the Santa Barbara Unified School District is resilient, according to Superintendent Hilda Maldonado. Students have adjusted to fluctuating schedules and learning environments. Educators have shown up to their classrooms, tangible and virtual, despite a pandemic, despite experiencing great personal loss, despite being exhausted. And Dr. Maldonado remains inspired by what she’s seeing across SBUSD. “When I go to schools, I see a lot of kids engaged and learning and socializing and connecting,” Superintendent Maldonado said. “The thing I’m most proud of is the resilience that has been displayed by everyone who works for Santa Barbara Unified — the resilience to stay strong, to stay connected, to stay together to be honest and have courageous conversations when we don’t agree.” Dr. Maldonado is preparing to give a “State
of our Schools” update to the Santa Barbara community at 8 a.m. May 19. The presentation will be given at the Godric Grove at Elings Park and recorded for the community to view shortly thereafter. And the superintendent will be joined by some very special guests to help give the SBUSD update: students. “Who better than to hear from what the state of our schools is than the students themselves,” Dr. Maldonado said. Dr. Maldonado took the helm of SBUSD in July 2020, just as COVID-19 was wreaking havoc across the country — and it didn’t spare schools. “It was a series of steps and learning that we went through” during the pandemic, Dr. Maldonado previously told the News-Press, recalling how SBUSD traversed ever-changing metrics, created socially distant classrooms and navigated staffing issues. “It’s been layers of learning that happened, but we knew that the best place for students was going to be in person.”
As she reflects on how the district has weathered the pandemic in preparation for her update, it is axiomatic how the myriad changes COVID brought have impacted SBUSD employees’ mental health. “It’s weighed on our mental health, it’s weighed on our emotions, to keep giving, but I know we do it because people who work in education do it for kids,” she said. “We don’t pay a lot. We don’t have promises of fame and fortune. These are very caring individuals that just do it for the love of students. I want the community to really help me in thanking people for that.” Looking ahead, Dr. Maldonado said the district should “focus back on creating the new education system.” “We’ve learned a lot about how we can pivot as a school system when we went from being in-person to a long time in distance learning with the use of technology — which made some things easier, but we need to scale back that Please see SCHOOLS on A4
Board of Supervisors rescinds COVID-19 rule By KAITLYN SCHALLHORN NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
Some Santa Barbara County employees who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 will no longer have to undergo weekly testing beginning next week. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors approved a measure suspending the County of Santa Barbara Employee COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Policy requiring unvaccinated employees to
undergo weekly PCR or antigen testing and providing proof of each result. However, employees will still need to be tested if otherwise mandated by state public health officer orders or Cal/ OSHA’s COVID-19 Prevention Emergency Temporary Standards requirements. The suspension is effective May 16. The board approved the suspension at its weekly meeting Tuesday morning in a 4-1 vote.
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Supervisor Das Williams was the lone vote against the measure. He suggested loosening the testing requirement to every other week as an alternative to rescinding the obligation altogether. “As much as all of us would like to leave COVID behind, we have not eradicated the disease, and I respectfully disagree with the idea that we should rescind our vaccination or testing policy,” Supervisor Williams said. “County workers are emergency workers,
and we will get another wave — hopefully, it will be smaller — there will be people who get sick from that wave; there will likely people who die from that wave, and if our policy with our workforce can help diminish the numbers, then we should do so.” As of Monday, there were still 510 infectious cases in Santa Barbara County. About 73% of those who are at least 5 years old are fully Please see COUNTY on A2
“We are almost finished. That is exciting for the city of Carpinteria,” Ms. Ayers told KEYT-TV. “So over the next month you are going to see a new carpool lane open in Carpinteria on the northbound side, and in the middle of June we will be announcing when the southbound carpool lane will be opening as well. We are going to have a big completion event because we are almost finished in Carpinteria,” “We have three segments of the project under construction right now from Carpinteria to Summerland. But you can see on the map we have two more segments of the project after that in Montecito and Santa Barbara,” said Ms. Ayers. “We have really exciting news about applying for funding at a state and federal level this year to finish the Santa Barbara and Montecito segments, and we will get those ready for construction,” Mr. Luna told KEYT. Ms. Ayers explained the process for how the freeway is rebuilt: “We started in 2021. We take it all the way down and we regrade, and we fix some of those profiles to help Please see HIGHWAY on A2
By BETHANY BLANKLEY THE CENTER SQUARE CONTRIBUTOR
(The Center Square) — Gasoline prices set a record Tuesday as President Joe Biden blamed inflation on COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to the American Automobile Association, the cost at the pump for both regular gasoline and diesel fuel reached their highest recorded average price Tuesday morning. The national average of a regular gallon of gasoline was $4.374, up five cents from Monday, and $5.55 for diesel, up one cent from Monday. The nation’s 10 largest weekly increases, AAA reports, were in Michigan (+26 cents), New Jersey (+25 cents), Connecticut (+19 cents), Kentucky (+19 cents), Indiana (+19 cents), Rhode Island (+19 cents), Illinois (+18 cents), Washington, D.C. (+18 cents), Alabama (+18 cents) and Tennessee (+18 cents). The nation’s 10 most expensive markets continue to be in California ($5.82), Hawaii ($5.28), and Nevada ($5.11), followed by Washington ($4.83), Oregon ($4.81), Alaska ($4.73), Washington, D.C. ($4.69), Arizona ($4.66), Illinois ($4.59) and New York ($4.51). In Santa Barbara County, the average gas price was $5.87 a gallon. Elsewhere, the average was $5.905 in Ventura County, $5.89 in Los Angeles County and $6.042 in San Luis Obispo County. For the week ending March 14,
weekly retail average gasoline prices across all grades was $4.41 a gallon, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported, the highest on record. As of Tuesday morning, the domestic benchmark, WTI Crude, was $102.74 a barrel and the international benchmark, Brent Crude, was $105.44 a barrel. Gas prices also are reaching record highs at a time of the year when they traditionally go up because refiners switch to producing more expensive summer blends. As travel picks up over the summer and demand for gasoline increases, gas prices are only expected to go up even further. Gas prices have been rising since President Biden first came into office and began implementing a range of restrictions on domestic production. Within months of doing so, well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. gas prices reached a seven-year high. President Biden on Tuesday acknowledged rising costs were hurting Americans but didn’t offer many details on what he would do about it. “Families all across America are hurting,” he said. “They’re frustrated. I don’t blame them. I really don’t blame them. There’s a lot we have to do.” The president also blamed the pandemic and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Please see GAS PRICES on A2
INSIDE
L O T T E RY RESULTS
Classified................. B4 Life...................... B1-2 Obituaries............... A4
Saturday’s SUPER LOTTO: 13 20 21 29 46 Meganumber: 8
Tuesday’s DAILY 4: 1-2-9-6
Tuesday’s MEGA MILLIONS: 15-19-20-61-70 Meganumber: 17
Tuesday’s FANTASY 5: 1-9-22-23-35
Tuesday’s DAILY DERBY: 07-12-08 Time: 1:47.68
Monday’s POWERBALL: 18-30-35-52-56 Meganumber: 5
Sudoku................... B3 Pet of the Week ..... B4 Weather................. A4
Tuesday’s DAILY 3: 1-3-8 / Tuesday’s Midday 6-1-2