YOUR HOMETOWN WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ward Winning News al A pa
Vol. 9, No. 47
Including Nearby Communities
www.thepress.net
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November 20, 2009
Highway widening, Bringin’ in the birds eBART to (re)start by Dave Roberts Staff Writer There’s good news for thousands of East County commuters stuck in a bumper-to-bumper grind every weekday morning and afternoon. More than a year after the completion of the widening of Highway 4 to Railroad Avenue, construction on the widening will begin again in a few months. Work is scheduled to start in February or March on the highway widening from Railroad Avenue to Loveridge Road. The $172 million Loveridge Project will provide eight lanes (four in each direction), including a car pool lane, room for eBART tracks in the highway median and a new bridge at Loveridge. As occurred with the past widening, there will be delays and detours, mostly after midnight, during the three years of construction. “Obviously, there’s going to
be slowdowns,” said Susan Miller, project director for the Contra Costa Transportation Authority. “I’m just optimistic that people will be so excited to finally see construction going on that they will deal with it.” Motorists haven’t seen much construction in a while because the past year has been devoted to redesigning the widening to accommodate an eBART line in the median from the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART Station to Hillcrest Avenue in Antioch, acquiring additional land right-of-way, relocating utilities and obtaining necessary permits. But things will be heating up soon along the entire corridor and continuing for the next five years until it’s finished in 2015. Hard on the heels of the Loveridge Project will be the $436 million Somersville Project, which has been broken into four segments to
THIS WEEK
Matching the miraculous
Photo by Curtis Evans
istrict V Supervisor Federal Glover delivers turkeys at the Antioch Senior Center Tuesday, part of his annual Turkey Drop. More than a dozen locations were on the supervisor’s agenda this year, an unprecidented number. “This is the most turkeys we’ve ever given,” Glover said. “Holiday food donations have never meant so much to so many.”
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see Highway page 26A
AUSD trying not to leave children behind by Dave Roberts Staff Writer
The Antioch Unified School District has made improvements on a number of fronts in recent years: passing a $62 million bond to repair old schools, remaining fiscally sound despite budget cuts, implementing uniforms in most of the lower grades and establishing specialized learning academies. The one thing the district has not been able to do? Teach students as much as they should be learning. “The brutal fact is that we are not really showing much traction” in academic improvement, said AUSD Board President Walter Ruehlig. “And that particularly disturbs me because we have had success in so many other areas.” The district has improved its Academic Performance Index by just four points over the last three years. “At that rate it will take us
“ At (this) that rate it will take us 84 years to get to the state benchmark of 800 ... Obviously, three points a year ain’t gonna get us there.
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AUSD Board President Walter Ruehlig 84 years to get to the state benchmark of 800 – the year 2093,” said Ruehlig. “Obviously, three points a year ain’t gonna get us there. So we have got to do something different. Whatever we have been doing isn’t working.” At the Oct. 14 school board meeting, Stephanie Anello, AUSD director of program improvement, delineated several of what she called “the brutal facts”: • Fewer than 7 percent of the more than 1,000 ninth-grade students who took the Algebra I test scored proficient or better – “10th
grade doesn’t look much better, and 11th grade looks worse,” said Anello. • More than half of Antioch students are not proficient in English or math. • Six schools – Jack London, Lone Tree, John Muir, Sutter, Turner and Park Middle – ranked 3 or lower on a scale of 1 to 10 when compared with similar schools in other districts. AUSD’s newest school board member Wade Harper said that when he read Anello’s report, “it was like a sock in the stomach,” and
asked how often the board receives updates on academic progress. Anello said there will be more frequent reports in the future because in the past “we have spent time looking at student outcome and being surprised that the patient doesn’t come back to life. (In the future) we won’t be performing an autopsy. We will know the patient is sick earlier on.” The school district has failed to meet the No Child Left Behind requirements for the second year in a row. Failure to meet those requirements in the coming years could result in federal sanctions, including replacing district officials, transferring students out of failing schools, cutting funding and implementing a new curriculum. To avoid that, district officials are hoping to get back to basics see AUSD page 26A
Fast finds! Search the business directory. Shopping, dining ... anything you need. Find it in the business directory at www.thepress.net. See page 22A.
A local doctor is challenging the community to give so that he can double the impact.
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Wolverines seal the deal
Deer Valley beat Heritage and finished its regular season undefeated.
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INSIDE Business ...........................22A Calendar ..........................23B Classifieds ........................14B Cop Logs ..........................19A Entertainment .................. 9B Food .................................12B Health & Beauty ............... 8B Milestones .......................24A Opinion ...........................18A Sports ................................. 1B Talk About Town ..............5A WebExtras! ....................... 1B
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