School Scene Articles

Community colleges throughout California have seen big, systematic changes in the last two years, and while many of those are still being implemented, even more are coming. In an effort to ease some of the “angst” spurred by recent modifications to the California Community Colleges system’s goals, funding formula, and student placement assessments, Chancellor Eloy […]

When Jessica Collier was in school, she didn’t attend sex ed. Her parents were conservative, and Collier said that along with a strict “no dating policy,” they didn’t want her learning about sex and puberty in school. They signed a contract opting Collier out of sex ed, and each day when health class turned to […]

Among Ernest Righetti High School’s boxy buildings, gated boundaries, and slabs of cold concrete that pave the way to and from each classroom, there lies a budding garden.  Its plants are small and just beginning to grow, but the varying wildflowers are already adorned with red and purple blossoms, butterflies and hummingbirds and students frequent […]

It was last school year in May when Hannah Limon first attended a work day devoted to developing Santa Maria’s first ever pumpkin patch.  Limon, a student at Pioneer Valley High School, had heard a lot about the program from one of her agriculture teachers–about how participants would learn to grow and harvest pumpkins and […]

Trauma.  It affects everyone, and impacts nearly all facets of every community. But with the right steps, trauma can be treated and even prevented.  That was the message at this year’s Bridges to Resilience conference in Buellton on Oct. 11, the third annual event of its kind in Santa Barbara County.  At the event, which […]

In a little more than three months, Santa Marians will be able to get four-year degrees at Allan Hancock College. Representatives of Hancock and the University of La Verne met at Hancock’s Santa Maria campus Oct. 8 to ratify a contract that will launch three bachelor’s degrees on Hancock’s campus.  The degrees, in public administration, […]

Garhett Carter was only 2 years old when he was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer that most commonly affects the adrenal glands in young children. He was only 4 when the disease killed him in 2012. The months leading to Garhett’s death were filled with long hospital visits, astronomically expensive […]

At Los Flores Ranch Park, naturalists use the park’s native oak woodlands to show kids that science really does rule.  “It’s just amazing how many of these kids never get out to an open space or to our forests,” said Susan Tuttle, education coordinator at Los Flores Ranch. “So they really don’t understand how important, […]

“I‘m not smart.” “I’m not good enough.” “I can’t.”  Those are the sentences written in boldly drawn thought bubbles stemming from a distressed stick figure’s mind. His brain inside is clouded and chaotic, his stomach is filled with butterflies, and his heart is heavy and black.  The drawing is one student’s idea of what anxiety looks like, […]

It’s not every day a teenager devotes his free time to raising thousands of dollars for a community project, but 13-year-old Alexander Andrade isn’t your average teen–he’s a Boy Scout. Wait–haven’t we heard this before?  Alexander, a freshman at Ernest Righetti High School and member of Orcutt Troop 95, isn’t the only community-minded Andrade in […]

Since Kate Ferguson and several of her colleagues launched Shoes for Students in 1998, they’ve received scores of thank you letters from local children, educators, and parents who have witnessed the program’s impacts firsthand.  Ferguson saves her favorites in a personal notebook.  “You and I can’t even imagine what is going on in some of […]