The Long Beach Unified School District’s high schools have been honoring their graduating seniors in a variety of ways, including by handing out yard signs to let students’ neighborhoods know that they’re moving on. That has left out some seniors who’ve moved away during the COVID-19 campus shutdowns, since online learning can occur anywhere there’s […]
In an interview last week, current Long Beach Unified School District superintendent Chris Steinhauser and incoming LBUSD superintendent Jill Baker outlined the first stages of the LBUSD’s plan to return to school when the 2020-21 school year begins on September 1. “It’s closer to what has been known as school,” said Baker, who will take […]
Last week, California governor Gavin Newsom released his May Revision to the proposed budget for for the 2020-21 fiscal year. Because of a $54 billion deficit associated with revenue loss due to COVID-19 shutdowns, there are significant cuts to education, a harsh blow for the city of Long Beach, where the Long Beach Unified School […]
The Long Beach Unified School District announced last week that in-person graduation ceremonies are officially off for the class of 2020, and that summer school and other programs will not take place on physical campuses this summer, with a few limited exceptions. There had been some hope of a delayed in-person graduation ceremony, but with […]
It’s been an impossible two months for the Alexanders. The family of four, longtime residents of North Long Beach, are a detailed study of the havoc that the COVID-19 virus can wreak on a single household. Lawrence Alexander went to the hospital in the back of an ambulance more than a month ago–he hasn’t been […]
Easter in the Ili household in Long Beach is usually a well-choreographed parade of activity. In years past Lina Ili would put on music early in the morning while she, her husband Junior, and their four children got ready for church. At St. Cornelius, those six Ilis would be surrounded by around 80 other members […]
Schools are closed across the city of Long Beach, but the city’s largest landholder isn’t letting them sit idle. Anyone driving around town during the COVID-19 shutdown has probably noticed green construction tarps around several Long Beach Unified School District facilities. That’s because the district is using this rare time, when all of its campuses […]
The Long Beach Unified School District held a special Board of Education meeting last week to announce it had selected the district’s 13th superintendent: the historic choice of Dr. Jill Baker. Baker will become just the third superintendent of the LBUSD since 1992, and will replace Chris Steinhauser, who is retiring at the end of […]
Years from now, when I am telling the story of the COVID-19 shutdown to my future students, I will struggle to capture the way in which the news was both incremental and sudden, both inevitable and completely unexpected. My students — 10th, 11th, and 12th graders at Jordan High in North Long Beach — had […]
Its campuses are empty, but the Long Beach Unified School District is trying to make sure students’ bellies are still full. After LBUSD schools shut down to slow the spread of COVID-19, Monday was the first day every campus had their doors open from 8 to 9 a.m. to serve a free breakfast to anyone […]