Tyler Hendrickson, The562.org
Students organizing the Poly Green Schools Campaign want all the district’s campuses to run on 100% clean, renewable energy. Mar 26 9:25 am
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At Lowell Elementary, in a well-off neighborhood just a short walk from Marine Stadium, the majority of students are preparing for their return to campus.
At the end of this month, about 74% of Lowell’s 534 pupils will once again learn face-to-face with their teachers and peers now that their parents opted to enroll them in the Long Beach Unified School District’s “hybrid” learning option, which splits the school day between on-campus classes and at-home learning.
Lowell is the LBUSD elementary school with the highest percentage of students signed up to return to class an option many parents have lobbied for as failing grades spiked during the pandemic, a phenomenon that statewide research shows has been especially prevalent in poorer communities.
Hollywood homes abound in Long Beach, a city frequently visited and employed by film companies who find it handy for its acting ability to portray any town of any size in the U.S. convincingly, as well as its proximity to Southern California movie studios.
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Long Beach’s waterfront properties can pull off a perfect portrayal of such places as Miami and other Floridian waterfront cities, and its Country Club section of Los Cerritos can play virtually Anytown, USA (as long as cinematographers can keep palm trees from photobombing the scenes), where middle class families inexplicably live in homes that, at least in Long Beach, sell for well over a million dollars.
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“Any loss of life due to violence is unacceptable, but the murder of a 14-year-old should be an outrage to our entire community,” said LBPD Police Chief Robert Luna.
Touch was described as a nice, quiet kid who was athletically gifted and bright.
Touch was found on the 1400 block of St. Louis Avenue on Dec. 16 with gunshot wounds in his upper body. He died at the scene.
Police now believe a dispute between the victim and four suspects escalated into a physical assault, which then led to the shooting, officials said.
They executed three search warrants at addresses in the Poly High and Washington neighborhoods and arrested four men on suspicion of murder: 19-year-old Jose Martinez, 18-year-old Jacob Valentin, 25-year-old Junior Parra and 23-year-old Ricardo Parra. They are all being held on a $2 million bail.
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He ran track at Nelson Academy middle school where he helped break a school record for the 4×1 relay. One year, he even made coach Earl McCullouch Jr.’s All City Championship team. This year, he was part of a magnet program at Poly High School.
“He was a nice, quiet kid,” said McCullouch, who coached Touch in seventh and eighth grade. “Bright young kid with no problems no issues.”
But this week, McCullouch and others in Touch’s life were shocked to learn the boy was killed in a shooting that police suspect was gang-related. Touch was 14 years old.