Schools

Police have cleared R.D. White Elementary School after it was evacuated Monday morning when someone called in a bomb threat, Glendale Unified officials said. The anonymous call was received at 8:29 a.m., Glendale Unified officials said, prompting an evacuation of nearly 900 students to the nearby Whole Foods, where parents were allowed to pick up their children. By midday, most students had been picked up. The remaining students were transferred to the YWCA on Lexington Drive.

A 26-year-old convicted felon who caused a school lockdown and brief police chase after he simulated pointing a weapon in front of Glenoaks Elementary School pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges that he assaulted officers at the scene. Kyle McCleary was charged with a felony count of battery and injuring a Glendale police sergeant, another felony count of battery with serious bodily injury on the sergeant and one felony count of resisting a second police officer in connection with the Dec. 21 incident outside of the school in the 2000 block of East Glenoaks Boulevard, according to a Los Angeles County Superior Court criminal complaint.

Having been put on notice by Los Angeles County education officials, Glendale Unified faces some “tough choices” in the months to come as it confronts a yawning budget deficit, Supt. Dick Sheehan warned recently. Speaking to the board of education at a recent meeting, Sheehan said the Glendale Unified's expenditures are exceeding income by $15 million each year, putting the district on pace to fall short by $36.4 million for the 2015-16 school year. That means officials will “have to make some tough choices going forward,” he said.

A man was arrested Friday after he allegedly simulated a weapon at passing cars outside Glenoaks Elementary School and then tried unsuccessfully to enter the campus, police said. The man, whose name wasn't immediately available, was arrested on Glenoaks Boulevard at the Glendale (2) Freeway underpass after leading police on a foot pursuit while shedding layers of clothing, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. No weapons were found, he added. A school official confirmed the man's child was enrolled at the campus.

[This post has been updated, please see below for changes.] Police detained the father of student at Glenoaks Elementary School in Glendale Friday after he attempted to walk onto campus and was confronted by staffers, officials said. Few details were available about the man, who tried to walk on to the campus in the 2000 block of East Glenoaks Boulevard at about noon before being met by school staff, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. As police responded to the school, the man had already gotten into his vehicle when officers arrived and detained him, Lorenz said.

When I was in elementary school we used to practice two emergency drills: one for fire which was an evacuation, and another for a nuclear bomb, commonly known as a duck and cover. During the Cold War, the Red Scare, a Soviet Union attack, was on everyone's mind. Then the 1971 Sylmar earthquake happened and all the schools began practicing earthquake drills. After the shootings at Columbine in 1999, soon lockdown drills were added to the emergency drill repertoire. I have experienced two real lockdowns.

Glendale Unified plans to request an extension of the three-year federal grant that officials say has bolstered the success of its three magnet elementary schools over the past three years. In late 2010, Glendale schools won a grant worth more than $7.4 million to convert Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Keppel elementary schools into magnet campuses, each with different emphases. Officials plan to request an extension to use any money left over at the end of this year to continue to support the magnet schools.

Following the shooting deaths of 20 students Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Glendale and Burbank school officials reevaluated their lockdown procedures and welcomed extra police patrols as a precaution. In Glendale, Supt. Dick Sheehan said district administrators visited school sites and Glendale police would bolster patrols. A letter would also be going out informing parents of the district's actions, he said. “Their child's safety is our priority,” Sheehan said.

You don't need to travel to Washington, D.C., to find a fiscal cliff to throw yourself off. Just take a turn down to Glendale Unified headquarters, where failure by the White House to reach some sort of deficit reduction deal will translate into a loss of $1.4 million in federal funding for local students. That is on top of a yawning structural deficit that district officials are trying to beat back like burlap-sack-wielding farmers fighting a prairie fire. “We are still basically $15 million upside down with the structural deficit where our expenditures are exceeding our revenues by $15 million annually,” Supt.

Crescenta Valley High School came in second place to James Monroe High School during the final round of the Los Angeles County mock trial competition held among 84 high schools. The defeat came after Crescenta Valley High took on the role of the prosecution during a three-hour mock trial Wednesday night at a downtown Los Angeles courthouse. The case: proving who was driving a car that hit a bicyclist. Monroe High is a magnet school in North Hills that specializes in law and government and has garnered media attention before for twice competing in mock trial finals in the past four years.