Many school districts across the state have long required high school coaching staffs to be educated about the dangers of concussions and brain injuries, but this August Governor Jerry Brown signed a law that requires all high school coaches to complete concussion awareness training every two years.
The community of Boyle Heights has been selected for a federal grant that could lead to $1 million or more to improve education in the area by focusing intensely on children’s needs from the time they are born until they graduate from high school. The idea, tried most famously in New York City’s Harlem Children’s Zone, is to give kids all the support they need – inside and outside of school – to succeed academically.
The neighborhood kids who spend afternoons playing in Santa Ana’s Chepa’s Park may have heard tales of Josephina “Chepa” Andrade. The woman known as “La Reina de la Logan” united a generation of activists in a fight against city hall and helped to create the park that now bears her name. But they probably aren’t aware that her legacy is living on at the other side of the park’s handball court. One of Chepa’s four daughters recently moved with her extended family into a new, four-bedroom home after winning a city lottery to buy the house at below market rates.
In the music industry it’s all about who you know. And contrary to popular belief, not every kid in Orange County has Mickey Mouse on speed dial. An Anaheim program bridges that gap by helping at-risk kids learn music production skills.
Boyle Heights has weathered its share of threats over the years, from proposed prisons and hazardous waste plants to criminal gangs. Now residents of the historic East LA neighborhood are feeling the pressure of city-backed development that is displacing low-income housing. Community groups are using a lull in construction caused by the down economy to organize so that residents have a voice when the city pushes again to gentrify the community.