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Sandy Banks• E-mail
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Recent Columns:
I suppose a woman could take some comfort from the predicament of the governor of South Carolina, who vanished last week for a secret tryst in Argentina with his lover.
By the time you read this, either the ink will be drying on California's last-ditch budget deal or the state will be poised to issue IOUs.
Nataline Viray-Fung spent weeks last winter admiring the unconventional artistic displays that kept popping up on the sidewalk along her route to USC -- the geometric sculpture of paper cups, the totem poles of bent hubcaps, the stack of child-sized pink chairs adorned with deflated soccer balls.
The e-mails arrived in March, within an hour of one another -- one from New York City, the other from Austin, Texas.
It had the hallmarks of a typical graduation ceremony -- awards, speeches and hordes of excited families.
It didn't exactly jibe with the Broadway version, but this week's musical production of "Little Orphan Annie" produced by Patrick Henry Middle School's drama class was entertaining enough for this critic's thumbs-up.
Jane Silverstein didn't know Kenza Kadmiry and hadn't heard about the high school senior's tragedy. Neither did most of the two dozen other parents at the Cleveland High magnet school's monthly meeting.
California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass earned her political stripes on the streets as a grass-roots activist for more than a decade. Her Community Coalition helped change the landscape of South Los Angeles by shutting down seedy low-rent motels and converting liquor stores to grocery markets.
Rookie candidate Emanuel Pleitez was written off early in his unsuccessful race for the 32nd Congressional District seat.
One thing I've learned in 30 years of covering education is that every dispute, demand or decree rests on one claim: We must do this for the children.