La Vista

By Kate Robak
Calendar Editor

At the Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees meeting on April 10, MBX Representative Gary Wayland presented ideas for a new online health program in coordination with the MBX booster umbrella organization.

MBX’s proposed online health program is not finalized and will require the Board to approve it in the coming future.

“We felt we could be a great provider of an online health program,” Wayland said. “Also, it could be a way for MBX to raise additional funds, which would be directly invested back into MBUSD.”

Costa requires each student to take one semester of health in order to graduate. The online health class would provide an additional period for class scheduling.

“Some of the students who can’t fit health in their schedules save this class for their senior years when the content is not as relevant,” MBUSD Board member Ellen Rosenberg said. “Also, there are very few one-semester classes that health can balance out, and online health would address this problem.”

If implemented, the online health course in MBUSD will use a computer program created by Da Vinci High School.

“We reviewed a variety of programs before eventually contracting with some representatives from Da Vinci in Hawthorne,” Wayland said. “Their director of technology agreed to develop the program for us.”

For the purpose of incorporating in-class learning, Mira Costa teachers will teach part of the online class curriculum.

“I do hope that this online health program is not something that in the future will result in the elimination of a teacher,” Costa health teacher James Beaumont said. “We are supposed to be a comprehensive high school. We should act more like one and maximize course offerings to the best of our ability.”

The program will include an online textbook and study materials for the class. Required check-in dates with a teacher will be set throughout the semester of the class. Also, a teacher will administer assigned tests in a class at Costa.

“The only downside to this program will be the loss of student-to-student contact during class,” Executive Director of Educational Services Carolyn Seaton said. “Thankfully, the program will be partially in-class so that students will not lose all personal interaction with teachers.”

The proposed online health program will include all of the state requirements, and its content is slated to be similar to the normal in-class health program. Also, the community service requirement from the regular health classes are supposed to be included in the online health program.

“We still have to make sure that the California content standards and HIV/AIDS prevention education are covered in the proposed program,” Seaton said. “[Online health] is not ready yet. There are still steps we need to take.”

By Courtney Hughey
Staff Writer

At an April 22 joint Manhattan Beach City Council and Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees meeting, the city and Board members discussed an updated shared use agreement of district property between the city and MBUSD.

The proposed agreement would span over the next five years and includes 14 district facilities including Polliwog Park, fields, pools and outdoor tennis and basketball courts. The city is expecting to pay an additional $500,000 to the district for the facilities.

“We found a price that will allow the district to get compensation, enabling the city to provide the best facilities,” MBUSD Superintendent Dr. Michael Matthews said.

Additionally, the new proposal addresses city use of the Mira Costa pool, which is not included in the current agreement. The city requests use of the pool starting at 5:30 p.m on weekdays and all day on weekends, holidays and school breaks. Manhattan Beach will pay $250,000 to compensate for maintenance of the facility and other costs.

“The school district has properties that are valuable to Manhattan Beach residents,” Manhattan Beach City Manager David Carmany said. “The city is proposing this to gain more community value within Manhattan Beach.”

The costs for the use of the new facilities will be $250,000, which is comprised of maintenance, lease and labor costs. However, the city must raise an additional $36,790 in order to pay for the new facilities in the revised agreement.

“The city has the ability to put programs in place and to provide workers for managing and maintaining conditions of all of the facilities,” Mayor Pro Tem Amy Howorth said. “Especially with the five-year proposal, the city has an opportunity to efficiently integrate this agreement appropriately into our current budget.”

Currently, sources of revenue for the new facilities and ways to solve poor field conditions and decreased pool space for residents are still being worked out. These issues will be discussed at the next City Council meeting on May 7.

“I hope that we will reach one unified agreement,” Matthews said. “City services are a part of what make our city great.”

CON: Chevron’s practices deter education’s cause

By Danny Kelleher
Editor-in-Chief

While Chevron Corporation’s financial support of Manhattan Beach Unified School District helps the fiscally struggling district, the company fails to back the long-term goals of California state education and also unnecessarily supports a wasteful STEM program.

Chevron is California’s largest oil company. In 2010, as part of a national community outreach campaign, Chevron’s El Segundo refinery gave more than $1 million in “Energy for Learning” science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) grants to 15 South Bay schools, Mira Costa included. These donations came in addition to Chevron’s annual monetary support of the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation through sponsorship of MBEF’s Wine Auction. MBUSD is also currently looking into contracting Chevron engineers and experts to make the district “greener” and more energy independent over the course of the next 30 years, with Measure BB projects.

Chevron has recently been involved in a variety of lawsuits around the globe, centering on its excessive pollution, environmental degradation, tax manipulation and a plethora of other heinous abuses of the environment and communities. Its archaic equipment at its El Segundo location emits hydrocarbons and nitrogen-based particulates into the South Bay atmosphere on a daily basis. The company is no friend of the environment or the planet’s future. Though Chevron’s “green” initiatives within school districts provide strong community reputation boosts, they clearly should not cause the disastrous overall impacts the company has on the environment to be overlooked.

On top of this gross abuse for the environment, Chevron displays a similar deceptive apathy for California’s public education. California is the only oil-producing state in the United States without an oil severance tax, which typically requires companies to pay a percentage duty to the state with each barrel of oil it extracts from the ground. Chevron has repeatedly fought off attempts by the California legislature to impose such a tax.

In 2010, Assembly Bill 656 would have enacted a 12.5 percent oil and natural gas severance tax, bringing in $1.2 billion for California public higher education and $800 million toward public K-12 education annually. But the bill was repeatedly shot down, and according to Cal-Access, California’s official lobbying activity database, Chevron spent millions of dollars throughout 2010 crusading for opposition to AB 656. A similar issue arose when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a 9.9% severance tax a year later.

Chevron is harming the land Californians live on and the schools they learn in. Chevron donations that come on a close-to-home basis do appear desirable at face value, but the direct benefits of taking them do not outweigh the overall negative effects the corporation has on the state and the world. Public education is just as much about teaching morals and discipline as it is academia. If MBUSD continues to accept contributions from Chevron, it will be condoning an absence of ethical values in place of sheer pragmatism for its students and indirectly advocating a “Tragedy of the Commons” approach toward funding public education.

And along with this, while the STEM grants are nice educational luxuries, they don’t address the problems the school district is facing, most notably the pending layoffs for multiple teachers. These binding donations do not seem to be meant to help MBUSD in areas where funds are truly needed, and instead appear more as public relations stunts aimed at bringing the company positive attention rather than actually alleviating MBUSD’s ongoing issues.

The Chevron Corporation sets a bad example for students in our district. The MBUSD administrators responsible for repeatedly accepting the company’s grants should rethink their actions; in doing so, they condone a lack of ethics that shouldn’t exist in MBUSD.

PRO: All Chevron grants benefit the district

By Dana Sternthal
Staff Writer

For numerous years, the Chevron Corporation has been donating money to school districts throughout the South Bay, including the Manhattan Beach Unified School District; however, these funds have recently come under scrutiny due to the specificity of the grants. Without these funds, Mira Costa High School and Manhattan Beach Middle School would be deprived of programs and facilities that greatly improve Costa students’ math and science educations.

Through their charitable donations, Chevron puts an emphasis on kindergarten through 12th grade education in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (or STEM) courses and facilities. In 2009, Chevron tripled its annual donation to the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation to $1 million, and in 2010, gave $1 million dollars to fund STEM programs in 15 different schools in the South Bay, including MBMS.

A significant contribution that Chevron made directly to Mira Costa was in 2007 with the math and science technology lab. Without the important funding from Chevron, the lab would not have been built, and it is a valuable resource for our school since it allows students to use digital resources when the library is not available.

MBMS used the $1 million donated in 2010 to establish the “Chevron Futures Institute for the Advancement of Young Women in Science, Mathematics, and Technology.” This all-girls science course has an emphasis on creative problem solving and teamwork and includes the study of robotics, genetic engineering and alternative energy. Currently, the ratio of men to women in the field of engineering is nine to one, but programs like STEM encourage girls to get interested in science at a young age, therefore promoting diversity. This could not have been achieved without the donations from Chevron.

An example of the impact made at Mira Costa by these STEM programs sponsored by Chevron at MBMS can be seen in the founding of Girls Advancing Leadership in STEM (GALS) Club on the Costa campus. The club was founded by sophomore Allison Doami, who participated in the STEM program when in middle school. Her experience with STEM highlighted for her the importance of female leadership in science and engineering, demonstrating the long-term effects these STEM programs can have on MBUSD students.

Chevron has also been a sponsor of the Manhattan Wine Auction for 15 years, which supports the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation and has raised millions of dollars since its start in 1994. Chevron has also donated money to MBEF separately. These funds, in turn, are essential to MBUSD to maintain the resources and caliber of education at Mira Costa. This money could be used to pay the salaries of educators, guidance counselors, and other roles in the school system as needed. In addition, Chevron is researching new initiatives to help “green” the school with modern technologies such as solar panels.

Those against accepting the Chevron grants claim that some of the company’s past environmental and political actions have been questionable. However, the money donated by Chevron plays a crucial role in the education of MBUSD students, and these opinions should not interfere with students’ abilities to receive a premier education.

Although Chevron has opposed the idea of placing a severance tax on oil, which would effectively raise more money for public schools, the individual grants they provide to districts like MBUSD show their commitment to supporting education. Additionally, the grants given by Chevron for STEM programs make a positive impact in the district’s overall funding decisions by providing classes and paying for science teachers.

Without funding from Chevron, our district would lack a math and science lab, as well as a STEM class that inspires students to branch out and form related clubs. With the current budget cuts, it makes sense to receive these grants, because of their ability to supply programs that make MBUSD a top 20 district in California.

By Shaylyn Austin
News Editor

At the Wednesday Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees Workshop, MBUSD Superintendent Dr. Michael Matthews and Deputy Superintendent Dr. Rick Bagley recommended revisions to the 2013-14 budget that reduces the cuts to certificated teaching positions from 24.6 to 11.2.

The Board previously approved the reduction of 24.6 full-time equivalent certificated positions from the budget at its March 6 Board meeting. This resulted in the distribution of 30 pink slips throughout the district.

“We are committed to looking for ways to bring back as many teachers as possible,” Matthews said.

To maintain its initial plan of $2 million in expenditure cuts for the 2013-14 school year, the Board is looking at alternative means of reductions. This includes a projected $880,000 in cuts to Books and Supplies and $435,000 to Services.

“None of these things are easy, and we basically rely on the administrators to tell us what they think will have the least impact on students,” MBUSD Board President Ida Vanderpoorte said.

The Board is also projecting an additional $500,000 in revenue for next year from the city through the renegotiation of lease agreements. MBUSD and the Manhattan Beach City Council are meeting on April 22 to further discuss this agreement.

“Our district is looking at making some serious cuts,” Costa teacher Barry Smith said. “I would like to see our district look outside the box for additional funding.”

The Manhattan Beach Education Foundation has not yet voted on its grants for this year.

“We will take this proposal back to see what we can bring to the table,” MBEF President Nina Patel said.

The Board plans to discuss the 2013-14 budget at each Board meeting leading up to the official revisions in May.

“I think we were being aggressive with some of the cuts we were making,” Vanderpoorte said. “I would like the opportunity to go through some of these things with the department heads.”

By Daniela Coe-McNamara
And Delaney Hawkes
Staff Writers

In response to the recent cut of 1.5 full-time equivalent staff members from the Manhattan Beach Unified School District’s French program, sophomores Aaron Chelliah, Jacob Hands, Jamie Kelleher and Sarah Kennedy spoke out on March 20 at the Board of Trustees meeting.

The cuts include a loss of four French classes at Costa, leaving the program with five total classes next year. French class sizes could potentially grow from 28 to 42 students per class if enrollment continues at its current pace.

“We can only hope that the district recognizes the validity of our argument and take our request seriously or else French students’ understanding and enjoyment of the language will dramatically decrease for years to come,” Kelleher said.

The district is also contemplating expanding Mandarin Chinese, which began at Manhattan Beach Middle School in 2011.

This addition may require further consolidation in the French program.

“Adding in another language and paying for the salaries of its teachers will add expenses even if the district lays off French teachers,” Mira Costa Vice Principal Ian Drummond said. “We will have to see what happens in the future.”

Chelliah and his peers hoped that their speeches would influence the Board’s decisions regarding French cuts.

“We didn’t feel heard at the meeting,” Cheliah said. “The Board paid more attention to the teachers who spoke. However, the students would be the ones greatly impacted by the loss of French teachers.”

Currently, 67 incoming freshmen from MBMS have enrolled in French for the 2013-14 school year.

“Depending on how many students enroll in French for next year, the student-teacher ratio may increase, leading to larger classes and fewer teachers,” Costa Vice Principal Jaime Mancilla said.

Costa French teacher Lauri Gonalons also expressed her opinions about the French program cuts earlier on March 6 at the Board meeting.

“Instead of focusing their energy on teaching, teachers are forced to apply for other jobs,” Gonalons said. “A school is as only as good as its teachers, and it’s the students who suffer.”