WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2012
Volume 11 Issue 141
Santa Monica Daily Press
INNOCENCE LOST? SEE PAGE 5
We have you covered
THE TAKE COVER ISSUE
One airport, two visions BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
CITY HALL City officials remained silent as the Airport Commission hosted a series of presentations Monday night examining how flights at Santa Monica Airport could be reduced or altogether ended and what could be done with the land afterward.
Each presentation was prefaced with the same disclaimer: “The views contained in this presentation are those of the presenter and not of the city of Santa Monica or the Santa Monica Airport Commission.” The evening was a sign of continued tension between residents of Santa Monica and surrounding communities impacted by operations at SMO, and City Hall, which is
in the process of studying what the future of the airport will look like if and when it can win back some measure of control of the property from the federal government. Those residents and the commissioners — all of whom live in close proximity to SMO — felt that the will of the public to
told Culver City it was Kelly Ricard’s birthday. On the same day Samohi’s Ricard was
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PICO BLVD The Pico Youth & Family Center
SEE GRADES PAGE 9
Happy day all around for Samohi Vikings MEMORIAL PARK Somebody should have
Daily Press Staff Writer
SEE SAMOHI PAGE 12
HIGH SCHOOL SOFTBALL
celebrating her 18th year, her softball team celebrated a 9-1 win over rival Culver City at Memorial Park on Tuesday. Not only did Ricard receive a victory for her special day, but the senior third baseman drove in three runs and collected a double to
BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD
deep left. The only downside to her day was being thrown out at third base trying to extend her double into a triple. “I feel wonderful,” Ricard said. “Glad my
SEE SMO PAGE 9
Daniel Archuleta daniela@smdp.com Santa Monica native Efrain Gonzalez signs the window in front of Lush Tuesday as part of a nationwide campaign to draw attention to animal testing of cosmetics. Locations across the country took part in the event as part of the United Nations Day for Animals in Laboratories.
Managing Editor
New program to pay students
plans to launch a new program next week that takes an unorthodox approach to improving students’ grades — paying them. The program, fittingly called Cash for Grades, promises 20 students $100 if they finish the year with an A in their math or English classes. A B will get them $50. To qualify, they’ll need to attend one study session a week with volunteer tutors at PYFC, said Oscar de la Torre, the center’s director and a member of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education. The goal is to give youth that are struggling academically incentives to show up to the free tutoring resources that are already available to them. “We have free tutoring, and they obviously have a need, so why are they not accessing the services that are free and that they need?” de la Torre said. “We’re trying to answer that question.” Cash for Grades is the brainchild of two PYFC volunteers — Jason Eng and Jake Solomon. In their day jobs, the two conduct research for a local think tank, and they brought those skills to bear when seeking out ways to encourage their tutoring students to get the most out of the extra help. Eng discovered a paper by Roland G. Fryer, an economist with Harvard University, that studied the impacts on student learning and achievement when he literally paid them to do work. Fryer’s research took place in 203 schools located in Dallas, New York City and Chicago. In each city, he took a different approach. In New York, he paid students based on their performance on certain tests. In Chicago, children got money for good classroom grades, and in Dallas they were paid for every book read. Researchers distributed a total of $9.4 million across the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years to roughly 27,000 students. The results were decidedly mixed. According to the paper, students in New York City actually performed worse on tests
NO CRUELTY
BY DANIEL ARCHULETA
Getting paid for good grades
SMALL BUSINESS STARTUP? TAXES • BOOKKEEPING • CORPORATIONS
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