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A lawsuit filed by the city of Costa Mesa claiming a $32-million theater planned for Estancia High School did not undergo proper environmental review will move forward, despite attempts by Newport-Mesa Unified officials to have the case thrown out.
In a Jan. 15 legal complaint, Costa Mesa City Atty. Kimberly Hall Barlow said school board members supported building a 46,000-square-foot performing arts complex with a 350-seat theater, black box theater and lobby at the Costa Mesa campus in October 2019.
More than one year later, with plans already submitted to the State Architect’s office, trustees determined in a Dec. 9, 2020 meeting the two-year construction project would be exempt from review under the California Environmental Quality Act a move the city has challenged.
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Let’s celebrate our teachers’ accomplishments including our students being back in class! As a Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustee and current board president, I would like to share thoughts from my perspective. This has been a challenging time for everyone and I can assure you that our seven trustees have heard from a broad section of students, teachers, staff, parents and administrators on every topic relating to schools.
Much of our board’s responsibility over the past year has been working through guidelines and safety protocols handed down by the state with the ultimate goal to reopen our schools to in-person learning. Many people in our community and even nationally have watched news or read reports of the educational system gone awry by public school teachers’ unions expressing their demands of not returning to campus due to safety and other concerns. By listening to the rhetoric surrounding these stories, one can assume our local educational system
Good morning and welcome to the TimesOC newsletter.
It’s Friday, April 30. I’m Ben Brazil, bringing you the latest roundup of Orange County news and events.
Orange County went viral this week after Supervisor Don Wagner asked O.C. Health Care Agency
Director Clayton Chau whether tracking devices are injected along with COVID-19 vaccines.
A short clip of the exchange caught the attention of thousands on Twitter. The Washington Post and Daily Beast published articles on it. The coverage and social media attention wasn’t positive for Wagner, who disputed how the public and media perceived and portrayed the issue.
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Parents and students frustrated that Huntington Beach City School District’s two middle schools are not going back to full-time in-person instruction, held a protest outside of the district office on Wednesday morning.
The district’s six elementary schools returned to full-time instruction in the last week, joining other area school districts, including Newport Mesa and Ocean View.
But more than 2,000 combined students at Ethel Dwyer and Isaac L. Sowers middle schools remain in an A.M./P.M. hybrid model. The students are on campus for 140 scheduled minutes every weekday except Wednesday, when they’re on campus for 96 minutes.