PROGRAM PREPARES HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS FOR COLLEGE, CAREER, AND FUTURE

By Staff Reports

Three Compton high schools - Centennial, Compton, and Dominguez - have joined NAF’s national network of emerging academies for the 2023-24 school year. As NAF Academies of Engineering, students at these schools take career-themed courses and participate in work-based learning experiences to help them become college, career, and future ready. The schools were recently introduced at the NAF Next 2023 Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

CENTENNIAL , Compton, and Dominguez join 32 other schools nationwide as new NAF academies and are three of just four new NAF academies within the state of California. In 2022, NAF academies reported 99% of seniors graduated, with 88% of graduates planning to go to college.

The Compton high schools are participating in NAF’s rigorous Year of Planning (YOP) program. NAF works to ensure all stakeholders develop a lasting relationship with academies and are well-trained and confident in implementing the NAF design. The process establishes a sustainable foundation for a high-quality academy, creating a shared vision and mission to fulfill the school and community goals.

High schools enrolled in NAF’s emerging academy programs gain access to a guided assessment pro-

How the West Coast’s Only Heat Officer is Cooling LA

LOS ANGELES — As triple-digit summer temperatures sweep Southern California, Marta Segura is treating extreme heat as a public health crisis.

Segura, LA’s Climate Emergency Mobilization Director, also became its first Chief Heat Officer (CHO) in June 2022. As the region has seen record July heat with little relief, she has prioritized accessibility to cooling resources, particularly for underserved LA

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Don’t call it ‘toilet to tap’-California plans to turn sewage into drinking water

BY RACHEL BECKER IN SUMMARY

Waste would undergo extensive treatment and testing before it’s piped directly to taps, providing a new, costly but renewable water supply. The state’s new draft rules are more than a decade in the making.

Californians could drink highly purified sewage water that is piped directly into drinking water supplies for the first time under proposed rules unveiled by state water officials.

The drought-prone state has turned to recycled water for more than 60 years to bolster its scarce supplies, but the current regulations require it to first make a pit stop in a reservoir or an aquifer before it can flow to taps.

The new rules, mandated by state law, would require extensive treatment and monitoring before wastewater can be piped to taps or mingled with raw water upstream of a drinking water treatment plant.

“Toilet-to-tap” this is not.

Between flush and faucet, a slew of steps are designed to remove chemicals and pathogens that remain in sewage after it has already undergone traditional primary, secondary and sometimes tertiary treatment.

It is bubbled with ozone, chewed by bacteria, filtered through activated carbon, pushed at high pressures through reverse osmosis membranes multiple times, cleansed with an