The James Logan Courier

By Laurel Brodzinsky, Courier Staff Writer

Some Logan students who are learning English as a second language are taking the California English Learner Test, or CELDT this month to have their fluency in their adopted language assessed.

CELDT covers listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and generally takes just over two hours.

By Krislyn Perez, Courier Staff Writer

The James Logan Health Center hosted an open house last week celebrating 15 years of service on the James Logan campus. The Health Center has been serving the youth and community since it opened in 1994. It provides a variety of health care services to students, including pap smears, sports physicals, vision tests, hearing tests and much more for its patients. Patients of the Health Center receive these services for free.

By Alyssa Pimentel, Courier School News Editor

Since the beginning of the school year, it's been apparent that the sizes classes at James Logan have dramatically increased. Last year's standard class size of thirty-five students in non-freshman classes, already an increase from the year before, went up to the forties in many cases, while some classes had dramatically fewer students. With that many students in the large classes, it was difficult for teachers to maintain the same level of quality in their teaching. To even out the differences and thus reduce the size of the largest classes, Logan administrators added new classes to the academic schedule Monday, and stocked them with students from crowded classrooms.

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer

UNION CITY - The New Haven Unified School District has initiated the process for naming the new Performing Arts Center at James Logan High School, and the entire New Haven community is invited to submit suggestions.

Construction is expected to be completed in January on the Performing Arts Center, a $28 million facility promised to New Haven voters as part of Measure A, a $120 million bond passed in 2003. The centerpiece is a 599-seat theater, and the facility also includes support facilities and an educational wing to house music and drama classrooms. The Center could be open for school events as soon as February. A formal grand opening, being coordinated by the New Haven Schools Foundation, is planned for May.

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer

About 70 people attended a special meeting of the Board of Education on Tuesday night to discuss safety at James Logan High School.

The Board received a report from Chief Academic Officer Wendy Gudalewicz on the decline in the number of suspensions and expulsions during the past five years. Although the trend is encouraging, there is concern because of the disproportionate numbers of Latino and African-American students who are being suspended and/or expelled.

By Phil Mercer
VOA News

A huge cloud of red dust driven by gale-force winds is choking Australia's biggest city, Sydney. Residents have described scenes from a Hollywood disaster movie after waking to an eerie dawn.

The suffocating haze has shrouded some of Sydney's most recognizable landmarks.

The Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera House were almost lost in a monstrous cloud of dust that has been whipped up by thunderstorms in drought-hit areas of the New South Wales outback.

By Laurel Brodzinsky, Courier Staff Writer

Over the past few months, a giant blue structure has arisen from what once was flat parking on the corner of Alvarado-Niles and H Street. This building is to be James Logan’s new Performing Arts Center, and house new band rooms, a choir room, a drama room, practice rooms, a 599-seat theater with lowered orchestra pit, and upgraded performance technology such as lighting, video and sound recording, etc.).

In comparison, the Little Theater has around 300 seats, and the football stadium 4,050.

In the theater section of the new Performing Arts Center, there is a heating/cooling element under every other seat, and there is soundproofing throughout the building. On top of the Performing Arts Center are solar panels- part of Logan’s “going green”.

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer

Teachers at James Logan High School have been invited to begin a “re-imagining” process designed to give birth to a “school within a school” to open as a pilot program next fall.

“Logan has many strengths – its relatively high API score, award-winning forensics and band programs, diverse students and families, and committed teachers, administrators and staff,” said Joe Feldman, Director of Secondary Leadership for the New Haven Unified School District. “However, academic success is not enjoyed for significant percentages of the student population, particularly among African-Americans and Latinos.”

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer

The Board of Education of the New Haven Unified School District will hold a special meeting Tuesday night to discuss student safety at James Logan High School.

The meeting will include a review of safety procedures and a discussion about the culture and climate of the campus. Attendees will be given the opportunity to meet in small groups that will include at least one Board member, a District administrator and a Logan administrator.

The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at the Educational Services Center, 34200 Alvarado-Niles Road, Union City.

By Alyssa Pimentel, Courier News Editor

Language Arts teacher Ross Minor of room 531 is now selling homemade shanghai-pork lumpia for the Breast Cancer Awareness Run or Walk Event Fundraiser. The “Keep Abreast Walk” is a five to ten mile run or walk that is sponsored by a number of companies, and small community service groups including Elpida, the group responsible for this fundraiser.

Elpida, through Minor, is selling a bag of fifty shanghai-pork lumpia for $15 and a bag of a hundred pieces for $25. Anyone can order lumpia through Minor’s email, rminor@nhusd.k12.ca.us, or through elpidaladies@yahoo.com. He said that students can place their order either during third period and fifth period lunch as well but it’s preferable to contact him through email. Those ordering would have to pay when they place their order and leave their contact information. From there, the lumpia will be made in one to two days.

By Judy L. Thomas
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The phone calls came in the middle of the night. Three women, each receiving an eerie message from the man on the line:
He was in their house and watching them.

And according to caller ID, the calls were coming from their home phones.

The terrified women found out later that the caller was not in their homes, but playing a frightening prank on them.

By Lynn Thompson
The Seattle Times (MCT)

EDMONDS, Wash. — As a child in Armenia, Henry Gasparian witnessed firsthand the horrors of Nazi Germany. Two uncles were killed, his father wounded and a brother starved to death during the German invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union. So when Gasparian, 70, saw a poster of President Obama with a Hitler mustache near the entrance to the Edmonds Farmers Market Sept. 5, he concedes his reaction was "personal and emotional."

He tried to grab the fliers being passed out by supporters of Lyndon LaRouche, a perennial presidential candidate who has likened Obama's health-care proposals to the Nazi extermination of Jews and other "undesirables."

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer

The Board of Education on Tuesday night received a report outlining options for the creation of a Community Day School to serve expelled students currently attending Quest Academy or the Hayward Community School or enrolled in New Haven’s special education program.

At least three previous attempts to create a Community Day School have not been successful, and staff recommended that the District suspend pursuit of a Community Day School to focus on reducing the number of suspensions and expulsions, develop action plans for behavioral and academic interventions and monitor expelled students. The Board asked staff to bring an action item on the recommendation at the Oct. 6 meeting, and staff also will prepare the action plans for interventions and monitoring of expulsions.

By Alexa Rocero, Courier Staff Writer

Among the many changes that accompanied the opening of this 2009-10 school year was the new textbook distribution system. As if the long line of students waiting outside of the new book room across from the 300’s building was not indication enough, everyone is definitely beginning to feel that things are much different from last year.

Unlike last year, when the responsibility of distributing books to students belonged to the teachers, textbook distribution now is in the hands of the bookroom staff, comprised of teacher’s assistants as well as Geneva Tate, the official bookroom technician.

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer

Scores measuring student performance improved by more than 30 points at both Kitayama and Emanuele elementary schools, and gains by Hispanic students in the New Haven Unified School District more than doubled those of the District as a whole, according to Academic Performance Index (API) results released today by the California Department of Education.

More information is available on the California Department of Education website.

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer

The New Haven Unified School District has come to the assistance of a new Fremont private school that found itself desperate for classroom space at the start of the 2009-2010 school year.

Mission Hills Middle School opened last week in four classrooms on the campus of the former Barnard-White Middle School on Whipple Road. The school, which serves approximately 25 students, was left without a location in late August, after officials determined that the facility it had planned to lease was too close to a chemical plant.

By Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

WASHINGTON — The nation's unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent in August, the highest rate in more than 26 years, even as the pace of job losses slowed sharply last month, the government reported Friday.

Employers shed 216,000 jobs in August, a significant slowdown from the revised 276,000 jobs lost in July. Taken along with a key manufacturing index showing growth for the first time in 18 months, Friday's job numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are one more indication that the U.S. economy appears to have hit bottom and is on a slow upward climb.

By Michael Matza
The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)

PHILADELPHIA — The U.S. State Department is looking for ways to better protect the 30,000 teenagers who come to America annually as foreign exchange students.

In a notice Wednesday in the Federal Register, the department asked the public to contribute ideas on how it could better vet, select and monitor the thousands of host families that participate in the half-century-old federal program.

The goal: to prevent a repeat of a scandal this past spring in Scranton, Pa., where as many as a dozen foreign students were found to be either malnourished or living in deplorable conditions, including one home littered with dog feces and another later condemned by the city.

Courier Staff Report

The first day of school for about 4,000 Logan students and their teachers got underway with few problems, according to reports.

"So far, so good," said Campus Security Technician Molly Rudnick. It's been "much smoother than last year."

After last year's difficult school opening, this year's debut has "been going well, better than last year," said Rhonda Neagle, Logan's Vice Principal of Operations. For an example, she said about "3,950 students have already had their ID pictures taken," she said. Last year, only around 3,700 had gotten pictures.

"This year's opening was easier to me," said junior Asma Malakzay.

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer

The Ball Foundation, which has adopted a handful of districts across the country to support the development of high-performing schools, has made New Haven Unified its first Northern California partner.

“The Ball Foundation’s goal is to help children learn at high levels, regardless of race, national origin, socioeconomic status, native language or culture, and the Foundation believes that the key to accomplishing that goal is supporting instruction in literacy,” New Haven Superintendent Kari McVeigh said. “We share both that goal and that philosophy, and we’re thrilled to join a very select group of districts where the Foundation has agreed to work.”

Visit the Ball Foundation's website.