Education (News)

By Chris Treadway

DEVELOPERS, PLANNERS, city officials and community members have tried for years to devise a cohesive and appealing plan for the area along San Pablo Avenue at the Del Norte BART station in El Cerrito. Now, 10 students from Kennedy High School in Richmond have come up with their own ideas for the area as the culmination of their summer internship in a program sponsored by the West Contra Costa Transportation Advisory Committee.

By Brittany Owens

A blog that I monitor called “Only In San Francisco” feeds me photos and musings from the obscure corners of the city. Among the entries is usually some quip about homelessness.

The pictures that appear on my screen often call for consideration. Most of the time they are pictures of the homeless sleeping behind cars or sidewalks. Rarely do they show the human side of these people.

The fact that we are even able to say homeless and add the suffix, -ness, to make it a condition, startles me. Is homelessness a condition and can it be cured? Have we become that immune to what is dark, decrepit and sad, like the graffiti that is scattered across the city?

By Tram Nguyen

California is one of the top three states with the most segregated schools for Black and Latino students. Tram Nguyen is a freelance writer and former executive editor of Colorlines.

GROWING UP IN BOYLE HEIGHTS, a working class neighborhood of East Los Angeles, Nancy Meza figured out early on that the school system wasn’t working for many of her friends and family. Both her older brothers went from being honors students in middle school to dropping out in high school. One brother, who was put in woodshop two years in a row, eventually started ditching and never came back.

Richmond group teaches construction skills for employment

By Nicholas Kusnetz 

By Roger Phillips