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August 28 – September 29, 2020
Man Fatally Stabbed in Venice Following Argument
Fatal stabbing occurs Sunday night on Venice Boulevard By Sam Catanzaro
A fatal stabbing occurred in Venice Sunday night following an argument between two acquaintances. According to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the stabbing happened
Sunday night around 9:30 p.m. in the area of Mildred Avenue and Venice Boulevard. Police say two acquaintances got into an argument when one of the men, whose description was not immediately available, stabbed the other man and fled. The reason for the argument is not currently known, according to police. The victim was pronounced dead on the scene. According to the LAPD, the incident does not appear to have involved any homeless individuals.
The scene of a fatal stabbing in Venice Sunday night.
Photo: Citizen App
Double-Digit Increases in Venice Property Crime Crime stats the highlight of the August VNC Board Meeting By Angela McGregor The August, 2020 VNC Board Meeting featured a sobering public safety update from Senior Lead Officer Adrian Acosta, who cited double-digit increases in property crime in Venice, especially in the area east of Lincoln near Penmar Park. He noted that Venice now contains 30% of all of the crime in Pacific Division, which also contains Mar Vista, Playa del Rey,
Playa Vista, Palms and Westchester, as well as LAX. Acosta also provided statistics for crime in and around the Bridge Home facility on Main Street. Since the facility opened in late February, there have been 10 violent and/or property crimes, with 25 total crimes and a total of 114 LAPD and LAFD calls. Within the so-called Security Enforcement Zone surrounding the shelter there have been 41 violent crimes, 94 property crimes and 95 part two crimes, including vandalism. Due to LAPD funding cutbacks, the overtime detail will no longer being funded for Bridge Housing.
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State Must Analyze Practice of Dumping Billions of Gallons of Wastewater Into Sea
THE BEST CANCER THERAPY Hyperion Water Treatment Plant.
Los Angeles Superior Court rules in favor of Los Angeles Waterkeeper in case against Water Resources Control Board By Sam Catanzaro Every day Hyperion Water Treatment Plant discharges enough treated wastewater into the ocean to fill the Rose Bowl 2.5 times over. Now a court has instructed state water officials to analyze whether it is “wasteful” and “unreasonable” to dump billions of gallons of wastewater into the sea. According to Santa Monica-based advocacy group Los Angeles Waterkeeper, water treatment plants Hyperion, Tillman, Burbank and Los Angeles-Glendale dump an average of nearly 270 million gallons of treated water into the Los Angeles River and Pacific Ocean every day. Hyperion alone discharges enough treated wastewater into the ocean to fill the Rose Bowl 2.5 times over every day. During most days, treated discharge from sewage plants makes up the majority of flow in the LA River, Los Angeles Waterkeeper, according to Los Angeles Waterkeeper. On August 4, the Los Angeles Superior Court filed a decision, in favor of Los Angeles Waterkeeper that compels the State’s Water Resources Control Board (California’s lead water quality agency) to analyze whether it
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Photo: LA Sanitation (Facebook)
is “wasteful” and “unreasonable” to dump billions of gallons of wastewater into the sea, when it could instead be used productively to ensure the sustainability of California’s water resources. In their decision, the court questioned whether money spent on water conservation efforts would have been better spent on recycling wastewater discharge. “For decades, Californians have been warned of drought or the threat of drought. They have been asked to reduce water usage and many have taken that to heart by, for example, shortening their shower time, using low flow toilets, and reducing lawn sprinkler time…Not long ago, the court had a case in which Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power spent $500 million in rebates for homeowners to plant desert planting in lieu of grass in their lards. The benefits of this expenditure were dubious,” the court wrote in the decision. “Could these monies have been better spent recycling the POTWs’ [publicly owned treatment works] wastewater discharge? We cannot know until the State Board conducts an evaluation of the reasonableness/waste of the discharges.” According to the ruling, the court will not dictate the precise nature of this evaluation, except that the State Board must consider all relevant factors, develop a factual record and “explain how its discretion was exercised by demonstrating a rational connection between the factors considered” and choices made. “Whatever the conclusion, the State Board must evaluate the reasonableness of four POTWs discharge of 400 mgd [millions of gallons per day],” the court said. When reached for comment, the Board said that “We typically don’t comment on pending litigation. Once the trial court judge takes final action, the Board will consider whether
Water, see page 11
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August 28 – September 29, 2020
Back to School 2020
A New School Year with a New Approach
By Nick Melvoin – LAUSD Board Member, Board District 4
The Los Angeles Unified School District welcomed our families back to school, but it is a new year unlike any other as students logged on to learn from home. In the face of this year’s nearly impossible challenges, we have rolled out unprecedented new efforts to meet the needs of the students and families I represent on the LA Unified Board of Education, while also working to safely reopen schools as soon as possible. After hearing feedback from families about the emergency transition to distance learning in March, I pushed for a plan that would ensure this year’s instruction will be more rigorous and equitable than last spring. This includes daily, real-time instruction, time in smaller groups to personalize learning and provide social-emotional support, consistent schedules, more support for English Learners and students with disabilities, and attendance tracking to reach all our students. Administrators
will be able to observe virtual classrooms to help teachers facilitate a semester of learning like we’ve never seen before. We have also reached agreements with our other staff to help with our “all hands on deck” approach, filling holes and helping us provide more small group instructional time, troubleshoot connectivity issues, and facilitate childcare options for staff at school sites. We have also implemented specialized professional development for remote teaching, prioritized content standards, a tutoring pilot, and more. As we work to keep our kids learning, we are also busily preparing for the day we can welcome them back safely. We are working to set campuses up with the resources needed to reopen and have continued ongoing construction on projects like the brand-new Venice High campus, which I had the chance to tour on the first day of school. LA Unified is also rolling out a first-of-its-kind widespread COVID-19 testing and contact tracing system for school communities. Our Grab and Go centers have served over 50 million meals to people in need. Our schools have distributed devices and hotspots to hundreds of thousands of students to bridge the digital divide. And I
August 28 – September 29, 2020
am advocating for free childcare for District families with the hopes that we can create a public “learning pod” option. We will continue these efforts, and others, to address the challenges that come
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but we will do our best to support our kids and families to make it through this crisis and prepare them to learn and thrive.
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Screen Sitters Helping Busy Parents During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Photo: Getty Images
Creating an enriching experience for virtual learning By Toi Creel
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As millions of parents across the world have been forced to work from home and take on new childcare responsibilities, father Mark Kapczynski found himself in the same
Screen Sitters, see page 6
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WHEN STUDENTS EMBRACE A CHALLENGE
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Screen Sitters, From page 4 predicament: home, with his kids, a full work schedule, and a spouse who works too. “My wife Erin and I, we just needed a break from the madness to simply get some work done,” said Kapczynski. “On top of that, we wanted a healthier, more engaging alternative to online gaming and streaming video for our children,” he added. However, looking at other virtual child participation options, the father found that “screen” time still required a lot of parent time. He wanted his kids to have an enriching experience, without taking up too much of his or his wife’s time. So, they started Screen Sitters on March 15 of this year. “Our company mission is to give parents
freedom while enriching children. Kids 5-12 get to connect with a trusted, vetted adult outside their household who can give them a breather from the routine we’ve all fallen into, entertain them with activities especially geared towards the individual child, or just chat,” Kapczynski said. You might even call it kid therapy—one of the parents described it as that after a session his nine-year-old daughter had with a sitter on the platform. In an effort to address more demands put on work-from-home parents, in the fall Kapczynski plans to launch “Homework Sitters” to help children ages 10-18 understand and stay on top of their schoolwork. It’s not a tutoring service; more like “project management” for homework. Screen Sitters aims to help as many parents
as possible with school-age children and they don’t just focus on individual parents. “We started to get a lot of interest from establishments. Our first corporate client was a publicly traded company with a fairly large employee base. We’ve also seen interest from startups and mid-size companies in many industries—from technology and entertainment to banking,” Kapczynski said. By partnering with businesses, Screen Sitters hopes employers continue to reallocate their in-office perks budgets going unused, such as for snacks and commuter incentives, to instead add on their program. “It’s all about supporting remote workers right now,” Kapczynski said. To book some time for your child or expand employee benefits, you can visit the website at ScreenSitters.com.
Zoom Boom in the Classroom -- the Lowdown on ‘Distance Learning By SiMone o. eliAS
(Editors: Following is a guest column written by Simone Elias, 10-year-old granddaughter of columnist Thomas Elias. A rising fifth-grader, she is a veteran of California’s first attempt at mass distance learning, which will involve millions of kids this fall.) When the virus started, I was in fourth
grade in a Berkeley public school. I have one sister, who is three years younger, and we both got free laptops from the school district once everyone had to stay home. They call it distance learning, but they might as well call it laptop laziness. It’s so easy to just go to another website or watch a video. Since this started, it’s been more fun and better learning to do my own projects without
any teacher. For example, I set up Zoom calls with friends or relatives on my own, and I wrote a bunch of short essays about amazing places in the world. Lately I’ve been working on a podcast with my sister and a friend called “Street Spies,” which anyone can listen to on the internet (www.anchor.fm/simone-elias). School was not so good, though. My
Distance Learning, see page 8
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Distance Learning, From page 6 teacher even told us she was not comfortable teaching on the screen. When I thought about it, that made sense because teachers are used to being there with the kids in person. There also always seemed to be problems getting the Zoom code or the sound to work. A lot of kids were constantly leaving and joining the meetings at different times, for various reasons like bad wifi. Things were even harder for my sister, who was in first grade—she says she couldn’t even see or hear the teacher some of the time. I’ve also heard parents say kids from less privileged homes didn’t show up for the virtual classes as much. Kids can leave the room or turn off their video—and the teacher can’t do anything about it. Students can mute themselves, and they can also mute the teacher by turning off the sound. Then they can do whatever they want—get a cookie or anything else their parents let them do (if a parent is even there). That’s not true in school where kids get sent to the principal’s office if they won’t do what the teacher says. My teacher used a set-up for doing homework called Google Classroom. It had problems, too. The teacher puts “tasks” up and then students can just ignore them, and the teacher can’t do anything about it. This set-up also made me feel stressed because there were all these tasks with due dates lined up on the screen that I hadn’t done. Whatever the project, you can’t really do
Photo: Getty Images
anything social. Only one person can talk at a time on Zoom. You can’t have a separate discussion with a student, teacher or small group. Even to get to a “breakout” room— where you can do a video chat with less than all the people—you have to ask the “host” to do it for you. A lot of school is normally about hanging out with friends and being social, and you miss out on that, too. In person, school is longer, and it’s easier to share ideas and finish projects. One specific area where online learning
seemed harder than in-person learning involved paper workbooks. My teacher told students to scan their work and email the scanned pages to turn them in, but that was an extra step and not a lot of the students even had a scanner. There are also some good parts of online learning, though. For one thing, there’s not as much distraction from the other kids, so you can focus on the subject and learn about it. For example, I wrote some essays about the California Gold Rush for online school last spring. Did you know that Margaret Frank
made the equivalent of $400,000 in today’s money by making pies and selling them to miners? Overall, school online is not as much fun as it would be if everyone were there in person. I guess it’s true that something is better than nothing. But distance learning definitely takes some getting used to. Everyone is still figuring it out. (To respond, email Simone’s granddad, longtime California columnist Thomas Elias, at tdelias@aol.com.)
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August 28 – September 29, 2020
Local Students Win Prestigious Scholarship and Mentoring By Sam Catanzaro
Two Brentwood high school students have won prestigious scholarships for their respective work in artificial intelligence and ethics. The Milken Scholars, a joint initiative of the Milken Institute and the Milken Family Foundation, has chosen 11 talented students from greater Los Angeles for its 2020 scholarship program after a rigorous nomination, application and interview process. Open to college-bound high school seniors in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York City, Milken Scholars are selected based on academic performance, community service, leadership and their ability to persevere in the face of personal challenges. Among these 11 students are two students from Brentwood’s The Archer Schol for Girls. As senior chair of the Honor Education Council at The Archer School for Girls, Lena Jones was an ethical compass for her school community. She led discussions about ethical behavior and presided over hearings for violations of the honor code, writing and presenting the council’s recommendations for disposition. The council also created
educational scavenger hunts to honor National Coming Out Day and the International Day of the Girl, and gave presentations to students and faculty throughout the year. Lena’s moderate, collaborative approach led to her selection as a delegate to the American Legion Auxiliary California Girls State, a civics training program, where she campaigned for and won election to the Supreme Court. Lena was one of two students chosen to represent California at ALA Girls Nation, where she was elected Senate Chaplain. She was asked to serve as a Girls Nation junior counselor in 2021. “Learning I’d received the Milken Scholarship was an electrifying start to the never-ending journey offered by the tightly knit community of Milken Scholars. Mere months into becoming a Scholar, I found myself surrounded by myriad mentors who were more than willing to give me advice and guide me to open doors of opportunity. As a witness to the benefits of my mother’s mentoring program, I am already looking forward to becoming a mentor to future generations of Scholars and giving back however I can,” Lena said. “I plan to attend law school after graduating, and I cherish every cent given toward that goal. The gratitude I feel for the Milken Family Foundation and their program could never
be fully expressed. Still, from the short time I’ve been a part of this group, I can tell you that Lori and Michael Milken built something greater than a scholarship fund. Money and connections draw the eye, but I believe the inner workings of the Milken Scholars Program will change lives.” Hannah Kim believes artificial intelligence (AI) holds the key to our planet’s future. As an intern at the University of Southern California Bridge Institute, Hannah helped create detailed 3-D model of the pancreatic beta cell, key to understanding diabetes and creating targeted drug therapies; her team’s work was published in Cell, a Cell Press scientific journal. For her honors research project at The Archer School for Girls, Hannah developed a convolutional neural network that analyzes Doppler-shifted sound waves to let hearing-impaired drivers distinguish emergency vehicle sounds from background noises. Her prototype mobile app and windshield-projected display won an honorable mention from National Center for Women and Information Technology and an Archer RISE Award in engineering and technology. Hannah researched biodegradable manufacturing and recycling as an intern at Los Angeles Sanitation & Environment, presenting her conclusions to members of the
Photo: Courtesy
Hannah Kim (left) and Lena Jones (right).
Los Angeles City Council at City Hall. “Being named a Milken Scholar is a true honor. The mentorship and support network that this program offers is unparalleled. I’ve already made connections with my fellow scholars and advisors, and I look forward to developing profound friendships so that we can collectively make positive change in the world as future global leaders,” Hannah said. Hannah will study computer science at Stanford in preparation for a career in scientific research.
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August 28 – September 29, 2020
City of LA’s Top Homeless Advisor Resigns Christina Miller stepping down at end of month By Toi Creel Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s top advisor on homelessness Christina Miller has told her colleagues she will be resigning at the end of the month. Deputy Mayor Christina Miller has held the position since December 2018. Miller did comment on her resignation, saying the following in an email to those working on homelessness around Los Angeles. “It has been an incredible journey and unique privilege to serve under Mayor Garcetti who has been and continues to be deeply committed to solving homelessness in our region,” Miller wrote. “From growing the homelessness budget for the City exponentially, to banner initiatives such as HHH and A Bridge Home, it has been a meaningful and exciting time to be part of the City’s work to address this crisis.”
Under the 2016 bond initiative Measure HHH the city was able to raise $1.2 billion to relieve homelessness. A Bridge Home is a program that aimed to have homeless shelters built in every council district. At her new position, Miller is going to do more policy work. On September 1st she will become a senior policy fellow with the Washington-based National Alliance to End Homelessness on Sept. 1. In an interview, Miller told the community “Homelessness is going up across the state.“ She also said highlighted how much can be done at a local level. “There’s so much stuff the mayor can do and has done, but if we can’t figure out a regional plan that originates in some respects from Sacramento, we’re just holding our head above water.” Through her tenure, Miller was able to advocate for additional state funding and has also been present with Mayor Garcetti during the lawsuit filed against the city by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights to help reduce encampments. After departing the Mayor’s Office, Miller will take on a leadership role with The National Alliance to End Homelessness, where she will
continue contributing to the battle against homelessness across our country. Garcetti recently named longtime homelessness services advocate and provider, Jose “Che” Ramirez, as the new Deputy Mayor for City Homelessness Initiatives. “When COVID-19 reached our city, we doubled down on our work to deliver housing, healing, and hope to Angelenos experiencing homelessness — and we remain laserfocused on putting a roof over the heads of our most vulnerable neighbors,” Garcetti. “Homelessness has long been the most urgent moral and humanitarian crisis of our time, and Che’s life experience and professional expertise make him the perfect person to lead our efforts to confront it.” Before joining the City, Ramirez was the Executive Director of the St. Anthony Foundation in San Francisco, where he took the helm of a landmark institution’s work to feed, clothe, serve, and house homeless residents from the surrounding community. “I’m excited to come back and work in Los Angeles with an amazing team and Mayor who are dedicated to serving our homeless community,” Ramirez said. “I look forward to leading a movement of compassion in Los
Photo: Yo! Venice Archives
Angeles to house and heal our homeless guests in these challenging times. We all have a role to play in solving homelessness, and it’s in these unprecedented moments that we truly learn what it means to be a community.” Previously, Ramirez served as Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer at St. Francis Center (SFC) in Downtown Los Angeles, where he led programs to connect people experiencing homelessness to housing, employment, medical needs, and referral services.
Bridge Housing Stats, Motion to Close Lane of Venice Boulevard August Venice Neighborhood Council meeting recap By Angela McGregor At the most recent Venice Neighborhood Council (VNC) meeting, a Mike Bonin field deputy gave stats relating to the Bridge Home facility while a motion was pulled that called for the closure of one lane of Venice Boulevard due to homeless encampments. Nisa Kove, Venice field deputy for CD11, stated that the Bridge Home is currently housing 124 persons (43 youths/81 adults), which would indicate that the facility has 30 empty beds. She promised to respond by email to questions that several Board members had asked her regarding Bridge Home prior to the meeting. She also stated that Councilman Bonin is “working with ABH operators on what is going wrong and right over there.” In her subsequent email to the entire VNC Board, she reported the following statistics for August: A controversial motion put forward by the Parking and Transportation Committee to close a lane of Venice Blvd. between Electric Avenue and Irving Tabor Court to automobile
Water, from page 2 to appeal.” Hyperion Water Treatment Plant could not be reached for comment. In July, however, Los Angeles Sanitation began working on a new Membrane Bioreactor Project at the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant. LA city
traffic was pulled from the Agenda by Jim Murez, the Committee Chair. The motion, which justified the closure because “the current condition of the sidewalks forces pedestrians and bikers into the traffic lanes on Venice Blvd.” due to the overwhelming number of encampments, had generated a great deal of emailed opposition from Venice residents who viewed it as a “road diet”. In fact, according to Murez, the motion was designed to call the City’s attention to the impassibility problem, and was apparently successful in doing so — Murez cited the fact that the City has cleaned up the sidewalk in question as the reason for the motion’s removal. Another motion, put forward by the Homeless Committee, also addressed the issue of sidewalk impassibility due to encampments. It called for sidewalks in Venice to be cleared if they were in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to allow 36 inches of clearance for pedestrians with mobility challenges. Public comment was largely in favor of the measure, but at least two speakers felt the motion was incompatible with the Board’s support for sidewalk planter boxes and was calling for encampments to be removed. Board commentary pointed out that those planter boxes were carefully placed to allow for leaders have expressed a goal of recycling 100 percent of wastewater by 2035. Los Angeles Waterkeeper for their part celebrated the decision, claiming that the ruling has the potential to benefit 10 million residents by increasing local water supplies, reducing the carbon footprint associated with pumping nearly two-thirds of water from Northern California and lowering rates for
August 28 – September 29, 2020
Photo: Sam Catanzaro
The Venice bridge housing facility.
Venice Bridge Home statistics
ADA compatibility, and Board President Ira Koslow noted that when he had called about an encampment near his home blocking the sidewalk, the campers were merely asked to move in order to allow clearance. The motion passed unanimously. The VNC Board elected Jim Murez, one of two candidates, to be its new Communications Chair, following the departure of former Chair Theresa White. Murez, who in 1979 patented a prototype of the portable computer, will now be responsible for managing the VNC’s website and email list, as well as continuing as Chair of the Parking and Transportation committee. He will, however, be required to give up his seat on the VNC’s Agenda Committee, as well as vacate his current Community Officer position. These seats will be filled at a future meeting.
Murez was also the beneficiary of a LUPC Board motion which will allow him to convert 2027 feet of his current, live/work residence on Main Street into a six seat restaurant featuring locally grown produce from the Venice Farmer’s Market, which he has managed since 1986. EmpowerLA has announced that the 2021 VNC election will be held on May 18th, a Tuesday, and will be conducted entirely by mail due to the pandemic. According to VNC Parliamentarian Ivan Spiegel, this year they will be providing no money for outreach due to budget cutbacks, but are nevertheless focused on including as many unhoused residents as possible among the electorate. The next meeting of the VNC Board will be held Tuesday, September 15th.
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