Category: Main

  • English-Learners Could Get Lost in the District’s Teacher Shuffle

    By Mario Koran Up against a June 30 budget deadline, Superintendent Cindy Marten made an executive decision to save money by shuffling teachers instead of hiring new ones. But now that the details are starting to shake out, it’s looking like the move will come at a cost to the district’s neediest students: English learners.…

  • State Officials Pledge to Reduce Medi-Cal Backlog

    By Kenny Goldberg California officials have laid out their plans to cut a backlog of Medi-Cal applications in a letter to the federal government. Officials say they’re concentrating on fixing computer problems that have hindered the efforts of county eligibility workers to communicate with the state’s new healthcare enrollment system. Medi-Cal applications are supposed to…

  • From Ethiopia to Gates: One Man’s Story of Survival and Fatherhood

    By Matthew Bowler Michael Million is a proud father. He raised his two kids alone. Not one, but both of his kids are Bill and Melinda Gates Scholarship winners. That means they can go to any college where they are accepted, and they won’t have to pay a dime. For most of us, having two…

  • The Bahati Mamas: Growing Freedom From the Ground Up

    A Civil War broke out in Somalia in 1991 that put the Somali Bantu, an unarmed cultural minority group, in the middle and becoming a target of devastating violence and loss. Several of the Bahati Mamas lost their children and husbands in the conflict. City Heights resident, Khadija Musame, one of the members of Bahati…

  • More Refugee Girls Are College Bound, Flipping the Cultural Script

    Refugee children participate in an after-school tutoring program at the Somali Bantu Association of America in City Heights. The Somali Bantu ethnic minority group came to the United States more recently than Somalis who traveled here in the 1990s. Because they’re still gaining their footing on U.S. soil, their children are at high risk of…