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 […]
Across the country, teacher strikes have become common as educators fight for fair wages. Of the 533,000 American workers who went on strike last year, teachers were the largest group, according to an Alex Caputo-Pearl op-ed in the Washington Post. The two largest strikes were statewide educator strikes in Arizona and Oklahoma, but teachers from […]
Ron Beaulac (center, yellow jacket) poses with former players Last weekend, there was a surprise 75th birthday party for Ron Beaulac, which also served as a kind of history of the sport of soccer in Long Beach. Beaulac started the first club soccer team in Long Beach in 1976, a club that competed in the […]
We’ve got great photos of the 63rd annual event, taken by photographer Stephen Dachman.