Educators

Gary Moskowitz Ruben Beltran, Mexico's consul general, congratulated Glendale educators Wednesday for seizing an opportunity to better educate their Spanish-speaking students. Beltran recently teamed up with the Los Angeles County Office of Education to give 27,000 textbooks from the Mexican government to elementary and middle schools in more than 40 school districts in the county, including Glendale Unified. Beltran and county officials joined Glendale educators Wednesday for a formal presentation of the books in the Edison Pacific Library at Edison Elementary School.

Amber Willard The Glendale Unified School District Board of Education will meet at 3:30 p.m. today at district headquarters, 223 N. Jackson St. For more information, call 241-3111. The board will consider: Approving contracts for the first phase of a modernization project at Roosevelt Middle School that includes improving roofing and replacing heating and air conditioning systems. The project will cost about $5 million. Funding has been incorporated in the district's Measure K program.

While I agree with George McCullough's main point ("Students need rules not excessive freedom," Sept. 29) that parents should not delegate responsibility to the schools, I fail to understand the correlation he implied between student appearance and education. Does wearing a T-shirt, having facial or long hair really constitute playing games and not learning? In high school, I wore T-shirts had hair of various lengths, styles and colors, yet I graduated at the top of my class for males in a class of several hundred.

David Silva Crescenta Valley High School is a great school with fine students and teachers, and it has a ribbon to prove it. The Ramsdell Avenue facility gave the community something to truly boast about when on May 22 it was named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. How prestigious is the honor? Of the thousands of schools across the nation, only 198 this year were annointed Blue Ribbon schools. Crescenta Valley is the first high school and only the third public chool in Glendale to receive the designation.

Hospital receives grant to expand lab Verdugo Hills Hospital has received a $50,000 grant from the Del E. Webb Foundation to relocate and expand its gastrointestinal lab. The Del E. Webb Foundation, is an Arizona-based organization that promotes and operates educational, medical-services and medical-research facilities. The lab's renovation is expected to be complete this summer. It will help reduce testing time and enhance patient services. The new lab will have two additional treatment rooms, doubling the amount of procedures in can perform each year.

Gary Moskowitz Fourteen teachers from Armenia came to Glendale this week to ask local students about something many of the children don't think about often -- their freedom. Half the group of Armenian educators visited Glendale High School, the other half Hoover High School, to observe students for three days and ask them and administrators how democracy and freedom plays out in their daily lives. Glendale High senior Anna Arutyunyan and other Armenian-American students fluent in the Eastern Armenian dialect spoke Wednesday to visiting teachers about how student government works, and translated for other students.

DOWNTOWN — The Glendale Unified School District Board of Education weighed its options Tuesday for addressing a deficit that is projected to grow to $25.3 million by mid-2012 if no preventive measures are taken. The latest deficit estimate came during a report on the effect of state budget cuts to education and illustrated the depth of activity that will be required to keep the district from going broke, Chief Business and Financial Officer Eva Rae Lueck told the board. And that was just for next fiscal year.

Regarding the Jan. 9 story, “Judge restrains the Minx,” by Veronica Rocha, in which it stated “when police arrived, they stopped short of entering after some members of the large crowd allegedly threatened the relatively small group of officers” — was this incident in Lebanon or in Afghanistan, perhaps Iran? No, it was in Glendale. I am flabbergasted. These officers tried to help a man stabbed inside the Minx Restaurant and Lounge at a party that got out of control in the middle of Glendale.

Darleene Barrientos School board candidates Maria Rochart and Nayiri Nahabedian lead fundraising efforts in the race, according to the latest campaign finance statements filed with the city. Rochart, executive director of New Horizons Family Center, raised more than $47,000 between Feb. 20 and March 19, bringing her year-to-date total to $58,681. When her campaign manager handed her the budget, which called for raising $60,000 within two months, Rochart said she was skeptical.

Gary Moskowitz Glendale Community College students and faculty, outraged over proposed budget cuts that could devastate the school's curriculum, turned the campus Thursday into a mass graveyard. Students placed 52 "graves" in the college's Plaza Vaquero to represent the 52 classes that have been cut from the spring semester. Approximately 105 classes were initially cut from the college's 2002-03 course offerings. Students and educators took turns blasting Gov. Gray Davis and state officials for the proposed cuts, which could lead to $6 million less in the college's general fund.