In the Bottleneck blog, The Times' Steve Hymon considers what might happen if Wendy Greuel leaves her 2nd District City Council seat to run for another office.

He talked to Tamar Galatzan, who won a seat on the L.A. Unified school board last year. About the District 2 seat, she said in part, "I'm flattered that my name has come up and people have been talking to me about it and it's something I'm considering."

There's more.

-- Mary MacVean

Sophy Cohen, a student at Santa Monica High School, writes:

Listening in to most dinner discussions, it soon becomes apparent that politics are usually on the table. At my house, we discuss events around the world, as well as politics in this country. If we have guests, I usually get quizzed on what my friends and I think of a certain issue being discussed by the presidential candidates. As the election grows nearer and hopes grow stronger, being informed of the current election is important, no matter what your age.

The opinion of youth has never been held more highly during a presidential election as it is now. Young people hold the answer to the world’s growing problems and to the chance to fix them. So what’s the problem? That kids are not informed enough and have grown not to care.

But at my school, the majority of kids became informed. We had a mock election last semester, with students discussing the candidates in government and economics classes. A booth was set up with paper ballots for a schoolwide vote. Meanwhile, volunteers from Rock the Vote came and registered students who were 18. The winner of our mock election was Barack Obama by far.

More and more young people are taking part, but I still believe we have a chance to do more.

As more and more 17- and 18-year-olds are targeted on the 3rd Street Promenade to register to vote, they not only need to sign up but also become informed of the crucial decisions they are voting on. My friends and I talked more about the election when both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were in the running. Now we're not as informed, which is a problem. We should read up on both Obama and John McCain.

I encourage my peers to take advantage of the opportunity before them … and make a difference in the world. If you like a candidate and want to help, sign up on the candidate's website, volunteer at a phone bank, pass out flyers at the mall on a Saturday, spread out and inform. You are needed. So take a break this summer and help, in every little way that you can.

Some education headlines from around the region:

Agriculture and education: a winning combination (California Farm Bureau Federation)

Scott reflects on his tenure (Pasadena Star-News)

Charter schools eye windfall (Daily News, Los Angeles)

Charter high reaches calmer waters (Long Beach Press-Telegram)

Jimmy Biblarz, a student at Hamilton High School, writes:

When the reports came out a week or so ago, I was as alarmed as the rest of Los Angeles: LAUSD has a 33% dropout rate, considerably higher than California's equally tragic 25% dropout rate.

I understood how horrific such as statistic was, but I was taken aback for a different reason. I don't know any high school dropouts! I couldn't believe 1 in 3 LAUSD high school students drops out, and yet I know none of them. Hamilton High School is one of the most diverse campuses in Los Angeles. More than 3,000 students attend, and I thought surely there must be hundreds of dropouts at my school alone.

After some research, I found that the majority of students who drop out of Hamilton don't come from the magnet schools (there are two on Hamilton's campus, a performing arts magnet and a humanities magnet) but from the community school. Most of the people I know are in one of the two magnets.

Something has to be done about high school dropout rates. A vicious cycle has been created in which generations of families don't graduate from high school, let alone get a college education. The cycle needs to stop, and it can only stop through a combined effort of community activism, personal responsibility, government intervention, state funding, and overall school improvement.

(Aug. 4, 2008. Correction: The drug Ranti used was not Phenoxodiol; it was another experimental drug.)

Ranti Odujinrin of Altadena will begin her senior year at Polytechnic School in the fall. She is one of 80 high school and college students selected from 600 applicants for the City of Hope’s Summer Student Academy. Ranti is working on a breast cancer treatment experiment and wrote the following about her internship:

(Above, interns visit the California Science Center)

While most of my friends took part in language immersion programs in Argentina or summer school at Columbia University, I spent the summer working as an intern at the City of Hope. I have been lucky enough to work in the molecular medicine lab under the guidance of my principal investigator, Dr. Edward Newman, and my mentor, Doris Villacorte.

In my most recent experiment, I was given a flask of breast cancer cells to grow and maintain at a count of 100,000 cells in each well before adding a drug. The objective was to add different concentrations of PxD (Phenoxodiol), a drug used to kill cancer cells, to test which was the most effective. Over the course of a week I drugged, harvested, and counted breast cancer cells, noting whether the cells grew or died. I graphed the cell growth of each concentration and presented the information to Dr. Newman. As expected in science, the results do not always come out as we hope or expect, and my experiment was no exception. So today, I will start over, re-drugging, re-harvesting and re-counting, although this time I’ll have another week of experience under my belt.

A Washington, D.C., organization is calling on school districts to get hot dogs, pepperoni and other processed meats out of school cafeterias. Physicians for Responsible Medicine and its affiliate the Cancer Project ran broadcast ads last week in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities to make its point.

Among the districts that the group says get an F for serving too much processed meat is Los Angeles Unified. Of the LAUSD menus it studied, it said, 60% of elementary school breakfasts and 80% of middle and high school breakfasts contained processed meats.

Last year, the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund offered 10 recommendations for cancer prevention that included avoiding processed meats.

The book "Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches With Teach for America" tracks the lives of four first-year teachers at Locke High School in Watts.

Donna Foote spent a year with these young teachers, describing the highs and lows of life in the troubled urban school. Foote, a former Newsweek correspondent, said in an interview that she came to believe the most important element in improving schools is recruiting and retaining qualified teachers.

"I don't actually think it's just money," she said recently. "It's more a human resource.... We really have to think about how we are going to attract, select and train quality teachers."

-- Beth Shuster 

Antero Garcia, an English teacher at Manual Arts High School, writes:

Recently, I was reviewing the objectives of one of my class writing assignments. I then let students work independently on their assignments and walked around the class to make sure students were busy writing. I suspected one student wasn’t on task and asked him if he knew how to construct the thesis statement for his essay. His answer surprised me:

“I don’t know sir, your job is to teach me.”

I momentarily disregarded the student’s catty tone and responded: “No, actually my job is to make sure you learn.”

The problem with the label that educators have cornered themselves into is that it doesn’t provide a clear picture of what a teacher does. New teachers, student teachers and still developing teachers can teach until they are blue in the face and –- if they aren’t engaging their students –- not actually have a class of young people learning anything.

As a result, much of the beginning of the year, my classroom interaction with students is such that I try to make it clear to my students that we are a community of learners, committed toward common thematic and academic objectives. As such, I am aiding these students in their quest toward literacy and content proficiency.

Perhaps instead of framing the job as a “teacher” a new phrase would be more appropriate. I’m happy to hear your proposals. For now, I think I’ll try out “Learning Practitioner.”
 

Algebra is a huge hurdle for many students, but for 150 kids from L.A.Unified middle schools in San Fernando and Pacoima, it became the key to programming robots in a summer program that ended Thursday with a Robotics Olympics at San Fernando High School.

(Middle school students taking part in a Robotics Olympics. In the top photo, Phaizon Wood, vice president of programs for Project GRAD, surveys student work. At bottom left, Giovanna Roma from Maclay Middle School in Pacoima makes an adjustment.)

Based on the results from last year’s pilot program, more than 85% of students who took part in the institute passed algebra in ninth grade with a grade of C or better, the organizers said.

According to former L.A. Unified Supt. Roy Romer, failure in algebra “triggers dropouts more than any single subject.”

To address this, the non-profit organization Project GRAD Los Angeles, in collaboration with universities and businesses, hosted a Middle School Summer Institute throughout July. The students were selected primarily because they were at risk of not enrolling in algebra next month.

Lloyd Miller, lead singer and bassist of the Deedle Deedle Dees, a popular East Coast-based educational rock band, will appear next week at L.A. public libraries for four free concerts.

The band encourages kids to read about historical figures such as Cesar Chavez, Satchel Paige and Amelia Earhart. Miller will perform solo at four branches, beginning with the Vernon Branch, 4504 S. Central Ave., at 1:30 p.m. on Monday. Later the same day, he will be at the John Muir Branch, 1005 W. 64th St., at 4 p.m.

On Tuesday, he plays at the Cypress Park Branch, 1150 Cypress Ave., at 2 p.m., and at 4 p.m. at the Lincoln Heights Branch, 2530 Workman St.

The concerts will include songs from the group’s two upcoming albums, one a new collection of American history songs, and the other a compilation of songs about animals and other living things.

-- Mary MacVean