The Brief

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One windy morning in December 2024, teachers at Orange Vista High School rushed students into a line that stretched to the street. Southern California Edison had cut the power for parts of Riverside County to prevent its equipment from sparking a fire.

Lessons ended. Classrooms went dark. And anxious parents in the Inland Empire city of Perris waited impatiently to greet their children. A month later, the school lost power again, days after the Eaton and Palisades fires to the northwest destroyed entire Los Angeles County neighborhoods.

Orange Vista High was among at least five Riverside County school districts that reported closures during winter high winds in 2024 and 2025. Local school officials say the disruptions hit harder in economically disadvantaged districts, where families rely on critical services such as free meals and child care.

Since 2012, the California Public Utilities Commission has authorized investor-owned utilities such as Edison to cut power during severe weather events to lower the risk of wildfires. The commission reviews every outage. Utilities may pay penalties – as Edison did in this case – if they don’t notify ratepayers properly, or meet other standards.

Edison says shutoffs are necessary to save lives and protect communities. “Our mission really is to keep the power on when it is safe to do so,” said spokesperson Jeff Monford.

After the power shutoffs, the Val Verde Unified School District redirected $500,000 from the school facilities budget to buy battery storage units that could help Orange Vista High keep the lights on during future outages. But Garrick Owen, the district’s assistant superintendent, said the money would be better spent fixing the grid itself.

“If I had a magic wand, would I spend all the money to harden our schools against power outages, or would I spend it to harden the actual infrastructure of the power lines to not have the power outages?” he said.

As climate change drives more extreme weather and more blackouts across California, the cost of adaptation is a growing bill schools say they can't pay alone.

Low-income students lose out on services 

Because state funding to schools is based in part on student attendance, emergency events like power outages bring a financial risk. When a school closes for the day, or when attendance drops, that cuts into attendance numbers. Schools then can file a waiver request with the state Department of Education to protect their funding.

That’s what happened at public schools throughout Riverside County during the 2024-25 school year, when smoke from nearby fires and high winds created problems.

Eight school districts confirmed to CalMatters that they filed waiver requests with the state Department of Education in December 2024 and January 2025. Three districts – Nuview Union, Perris Elementary and Perris Union High – reported closures for at least one day each. Three more – Banning Unified, Beaumont Unified and Jurupa Unified – reported material decreases in attendance on high wind days. Two districts, San Jacinto Unified and Val Verde, reported both closures and low attendance days.

According to the Val Verde district, three schools there lost a total of 13 days of instruction because of the wind events. That’s more than other Riverside County schools that confirmed filing waiver requests to CalMatters. Val Verde schools also reported lower attendance in September 2024, when smoke from the Bridge, Line and Airport fires spread to the region.

After one chaotic day in December, Orange Vista High principal LaKrecia Graham said school administrators bought floodlights to help keep classes in session in case the power went out again. But when the next outage happened, so many worried parents picked up their children that the district decided to close anyway.

“It disrupts a lot of things and it puts people in a panic that I don't think is necessary,” Graham said. “And that's what's gonna keep happening.”

Chairs placed on top of desks inside an empty classroom.

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LaKrecia Graham, principal of Orange Vista High School, in Perris, on Nov. 18, 2025.

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The lack of power isn’t just an inconvenience. It can pose a safety risk for students, said Catalina Chrest, principal of Skyview Elementary School, also in Perris. Children may hurt themselves navigating dark rooms, or they can lose access to essential needs like water, heaters and air conditioning.

Schools serve as community hubs. For low-income families and students with disabilities, losing access to them means more than a missed day of learning — it means losing child supervision, free meals and critical support services.

The meal they eat at school “might be one of their most nutritious meals of the day,” Chrest said.

In the Perris Elementary School District, more than 90% of students are low-income. At Skyview Academy and Clearwater Elementary School, wind whistling through buildings made classrooms frigid. Bathrooms went completely dark. Parents told school staff that their food was spoiling at home.

The outages “impact our families greater than families in a more affluent neighborhood,” said Perris Elementary School District superintendent Bruce Bivins.

Utilities weigh harms and benefits

When investor-owned utilities decide to turn the power off, the California Public Utilities Commission requires that they balance the potential harms against the benefits. Utilities regulated by the CPUC also must give notice before shutoffs and offer resources to make the outage easier on residents and schools.

In Riverside County, school officials and teachers said delayed notice during the winter wind events made it difficult to prepare for the shutoffs. At Orange Vista High, Graham said the school received notice of a potential outage at a certain time, but it came earlier, so staff was unprepared.

Paula Ford, assistant superintendent of business services at Jurupa Unified School District, said “actually, we would receive a notice that the power was down maybe an hour after the power was already down.”

After the January shutoffs that darkened Riverside County schools, the CPUC fined Southern California Edison $7.8 million for violating notification requirements. Terrie Prosper, a CPUC spokesperson, says the commission is still investigating Edison’s handling of the December shutoffs.

She added the utilities commission is closely monitoring Edison’s work to reduce power shutoffs.

“We understand that PSPS events can be disruptive for schools,” she said. “However, these actions are taken out of serious wildfire concerns. California has experienced devastating wildfires in recent years that have destroyed communities, closed schools for extended periods, and placed lives at risk.”

Clearwater Elementary in Perris, on Nov. 18, 2025.

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Southern California Edison did not comment on the penalty.

Edison spokesperson Monford said that, when possible, notifications for public safety power shutoffs take place three days in advance.

“In some instances, we are unable to send advanced notifications due to emergent weather,” Monford said. “This was especially the case last winter, when we had extraordinarily new wind events.”

Monford added the utility offers assistance to help schools become more resilient to the power outages. But not all schools benefit from the help.

The utility lends power generators to schools most affected by the power outages. He added the utility hopes to expand the program to lend battery storage systems. Edison also invited some districts, including the Jurupa Unified School District and San Jacinto School District, to daily emergency coordination calls, Monford said.

Critics said the outages may end up causing more harm than the events they’re responding to.

“They put a lot of time and effort and money, which I do not begrudge at all, into the analytics of fire risk to calculate the risk of a wildfire actually starting in certain weather conditions,” said Melissa Kasnitz, legal director for the Center for Accessible Technology. “What they have not done is put any fraction of effort into evaluating the risk of what happens when you turn people's power off.”

In response, Edison directed CalMatters to tools it uses to analyze shutoff risks, and to reports the utility has filed with regulators after incidents.

Power outages bring a financial toll 

School administrators say it’s unfair for districts to carry the financial burden of a problem they didn’t create. They also have to contend with a state education system that financially punishes districts for low attendance that results from emergencies out of their control.

Districts with fewer resources like Perris Elementary School District can’t afford generators and have to prioritize other needs.

Bivins said the district looked into backup power but couldn’t afford generators or battery storage. The district is smaller – serving only elementary students – so it obtains less funding than Val Verde Unified or other unified districts. Schools serving more low-income students also tend to see lower attendance rates, he said, meaning even less money coming in.

With so many urgent needs competing for limited dollars, a generator that might only be used a few times a year doesn’t make the cut.

“That could be better security on our campuses, more modernized facilities, better access to technology, or other things they can actually utilize right now versus the preparation for the possible one day this year (the power goes out),” Bivins said.

Student teacher Mayela Covarrubias works with first-grade students.

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An emergency generator on loan from Southern California Edison at Peralta Elementary in Riverside, on Nov. 19, 2025.

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But even schools that can afford generators face hidden costs from the outages.

In nearby Jurupa Valley, Peralta Elementary School was able to keep its doors open, the lights on and the heating and cooling systems running.

The Jurupa Unified School District spent more than $364,000 on two generators – each capable of powering an elementary school – and is investing in infrastructure upgrades to make deploying them easier, Ford said.

Because Peralta Elementary is in a high fire risk area surrounded by brush, Southern California Edison also loaned the school another generator through its pilot program. So far this year, the school hasn’t needed to use it.

Still, the outages take a financial toll. Even if schools are open, some parents keep children home – costing the district attendance-based funding.

“Because we stayed open … we're actually impacted more heavily than schools that close,” Ford said.

To obtain a waiver from the state to protect funding from an emergency, schools have to submit paperwork signed by the school board and county superintendent explaining what happened, and certify they have a plan to keep students learning during the disruption. But the process is uncertain: Schools don't know how much funding they'll keep until the state reviews the waiver request and runs its own numbers. Ford said that more leniency on the conditions necessary to qualify for a waiver could help schools during emergency events.

Bivins, the Perris Elementary Unified superintendent, said the state should fund schools based on enrollment, not attendance, so that emergencies don’t threaten budgets.

Michelle Hatfield, a spokesperson for the state Department of Education, said any changes to rules for how schools handle planned outages – and any proposals to fund schools by enrollment rather than by attendance – would require legislation.

Even districts investing in backup power say they can't fully close the gap on their own.

At Orange Vista High School, newly installed battery storage units will help keep the lights on during the next planned outage. It’s all the Val Verde Unified District could do, said Owen, the assistant superintendent.

But the battery storage systems don’t really solve the broader problem. If a blackout happens at multiple schools over multiple days, “we don't have a plan for that,” he said.

Equipping every school in the district with generators would probably cost millions. "It's one of those numbers I don't need to know, because there's not gonna be that funding," Owen said.

Natasha Uzcátegui-Liggett contributed reporting.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

A new law will require local agencies to publicly disclose audio recordings and written records of 911 calls originating from privately run immigration detention facilities. The bill was prompted by CalMatters reporting on alleged sexual assaults at the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 423, called the Detention Facility Transparency Act, on Tuesday. It was one of 21 immigration-related bills in a package his office announced the same day.

The law will require local agencies to turn over recordings and written records of 911 calls from privately run detention facilities, if a member of the public requests them. It includes an exception if an active investigation is underway and requires redacting the names of affected individuals.

“Well, it goes without saying, these past two years, Donald Trump has brought fear and has brought anxiety, disruption and stress to our immigrant communities,” Newsom said in a recorded video statement on his website.

“So, today, I sign a number of bills to strengthen transparency and to strengthen accountability and oversight over federal immigration enforcement and civil detention in our state,” the governor said.

State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach, introduced SB 423 as state investigations and courts found serious gaps in essential medical care within the facilities. She said the aim was to stop private operators, and the agencies that work alongside them, from keeping what happens behind detention walls from the public's view.

In February, L.A. Taco reported that detainees inside Otay Mesa were throwing lotion bottles wrapped with notes about conditions inside over the wall of the facility to organizers standing outside.

“For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh," an Otay Mesa detainee wrote, the news outlet reported. "We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.”

Gonzalez, who is chair of the Legislative Latino Caucus, said no person “should have to resort to throwing notes over the walls of a detention facility to have their needs met and their voices heard.”

Earlier this year, CalMatters sought information, including 911 audio records and other reports, about alleged serious incidents at detention facilities through a California Public Records Act request. While a San Diego County sheriff’s spokesperson said the agency was not investigating those cases, he said he was unable to turn over additional records because they were part of “a law enforcement investigation.”

“When journalists and reporters attempted to obtain records about reported incidents at these facilities through the Public Records Act, they faced severe pushback from law enforcement, citing vague investigatory records exemptions, despite there being no active investigation,” said Gonzalez.

Immigrant Defense Advocates and the First Amendment Coalition co-sponsored the bill.

“The governor has sent a powerful message: No more secrecy. SB 423 makes clear that 911 calls and related records about events in detention must be released upon request. This will shed more light on a notoriously opaque system, leading to stronger oversight and accountability,” Ginny LaRoe, Advocacy Director, First Amendment Coalition, said in a written statement.

Gonzalez’s bill was one of several detention oversight bills Newsom signed Tuesday. Others impose a new 25% tax on private detention facilities, expand health, safety and oversight requirements for the centers, and add to the state attorney general’s oversight role.

The new laws take effect Jan. 1.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Six Flags Magic Mountain is retiring its famous X2 roller coaster amid lawsuits alleging serious brain injury caused by the ride.

The Southern California theme park said Tuesday that it is permanently shuttering the ride after nearly 20 years. Six Flags recently settled a wrongful-death lawsuit from the family of a 22-year-old man who died after riding the coaster in 2022, and three more lawsuits alleging traumatic brain injuries were filed last week.

“While X2 consistently passed a multitude of safety tests, we have decided to close the ride because we believe it’s the right thing to do,” park President Brian Oerding said in an online announcement. “Ride safety is a cornerstone of our business, and when we see guest confidence affected, we take it seriously.”

The ride has been closed since the evening of July 12, after two women who rode the coaster less than a week apart both needed to be rushed to the hospital after they exited.

One of them, 25-year-old Naomi Greer-Wilkinson, collapsed shortly after the ride ended and was found to have massive brain bleeding inside the skull that required emergency brain surgery. She remains in a vegetative state in the hospital, unable to speak or move and dependent on a ventilator. Her family filed a lawsuit against Six Flags on her behalf.

Her attorneys said more than 100 people claimed they suffered brain injuries from the roller coaster in the past two years, and more lawsuits would be filed in the coming weeks.

According to the Six Flags Magic Mountain website, the X2 roller coaster reaches a top speed of 76 mph (122 kph) and has a total length of 3,610 feet (1,100 meters). The seats rotate 360 degrees “so your body will be flipping around the entire time,” and the ride features two “raven turns” — half loops that turn into sheer drops midway.

It debuted at the park in 2002 under the name X as the world’s first “fourth-dimension” roller coaster and reopened in 2008 as X2 with new trains and special effects. The uniqueness of the ride drew thrill-seekers from around the world and garnered a fervent fanbase.

The park settled a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Christopher Hawley, a 22-year-old who died the day after he rode X2. He was taken to the hospital after the ride with severe brain bleeding. The medical examiner’s office said his death was from blunt head trauma. The case was settled at the end of August, a few days before the trial was scheduled to start.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the administration to resume, for now, deportations of migrants to countries that are not identified in their removal orders, handing President Donald Trump another victory in his aggressive immigration agenda.

The court also said it would take up the case for full oral argument in December.

The court's brief order granting the petition did not outline a reason for staying a lower-court order that blocked the third-country deportations. It noted the court's three liberal justices objected to staying the order.

Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices the third-country deportation policy amounted to "an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens" in court papers earlier this month. The administration said it has used the policy to deport tens of thousands of noncitizens to Mexico and countries in Africa and Latin America after the migrants' home countries refused to accept them.

"While certain aliens may benefit from stalling their removal, the Nation does not," Sauer wrote in an emergency application Sept. 24.

The action by the high court marks the third time the justices have rejected efforts by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston to pause the deportations, which the judge said violate due process rights and fail to give detainees meaningful notice to raise arguments that they have credible fears of torture or abuse in the countries where they could be sent.

The National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which is representing migrants facing deportation, said in court papers that their clients are facing significant harms.

"The record shows that class members removed without meaningful notice or an opportunity to present country-specific protection claims have faced prolonged and arbitrary detention, beatings and sexual assault, disappearance, and chain refoulement to countries from which the United States had already granted them protection," wrote lawyer Trina Realmuto. "These harms cannot be undone."

The Department of Homeland Security said Murphy's rulings have created a logistical nightmare, including canceled flights, potential diplomatic clashes, and a lag in removing people convicted of assault and drug crimes.

The administration argued that if a country has assured Secretary of State Marco Rubio that it will not engage in persecution or torture, that should be enough to deport a noncitizen to a country that's not their own.

The Supreme Court's conservative supermajority has recognized the president has substantial authority over the border. Last summer, in a 6-to-3 decision, the court ruled President Trump has sweeping power to end the temporary protected status program for people who can't return to their home countries because of wars and natural disasters.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The bell had already rung on a recent morning at Newport Beach’s Ensign Intermediate School. But two of the school’s students hadn’t made it to class. Instead, they were sitting on a sidewalk across from campus, detained by a police officer for parking their e-bikes on the street.

The situation at Ensign has gotten messy since the school district, Newport-Mesa Unified, voted to ban e-bikes from middle and elementary school campuses, citing safety concerns. Many students kept riding their e-bikes to school anyway, parking them in swarms in the surrounding neighborhood.

The neighbors did not like this. Shouting matches ensued between students and homeowners. At least one student returned from class to find her tires deflated.

The city responded to the tension by putting up “No e-bike parking” signs on several streets.

The city of Newport Beach prohibited e-bikes on some streets around Ensign Intermediate School after neighbors complained.

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“I wouldn't want it in my neighborhood either, like, I get it,” said Corey Gulbranson, who got a $100 parking ticket on behalf of his daughter, one of the Ensign students detained for allegedly illegally parking her e-bike. “But at the end of the day, we're just trying to get our kids to school on a legal mode of transportation.”

Crucial teen commuting tools? Or dangerous devices?

E-bikes and significantly more powerful e-motorcycles have become very popular in many Orange County suburbs, where the streets are wide, public transit is spotty, and distances are longer than some are willing to pedal on a regular bike. For teens and tweens, e-bikes provide a taste of independence. They also relieve parents of some of their driving duties. Plus, e-bikes can replace polluting cars.

But their popularity has brought an alarming increase in serious injuries, especially among young riders.

At Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, e-bike crashes are now sending more kids to the ER than any other cause, according to Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the hospital’s trauma medical director. More than 70% of those patients had some level of head injury, from minor concussions to devastating brain damage, he said, often because they were not wearing a helmet.

But even Takeuchi recognizes the nearly irresistible draw of e-bikes.

“If you ride one, you realize how easy it is to go everywhere with it,” he said.  “I am not by any means surprised at how popular this is, especially amongst kids.”

‘Bicycle-shaped devices’

Not all e-bikes are equally fast, or equally dangerous. California uses a three-tier system, developed by the bike industry, to classify e-bikes depending on:

• engine power
• max speed
• whether the bike has pedals 
• whether a cyclist has to use those pedals before the engine kicks in 

California law prohibits children under age 16 from riding Class 3 e-bikes with engines capable of reaching 28 miles per hour. In reality, though, many kids are riding e-vehicles that go faster — in some cases, much faster.

“There are lots of what I will call 'bicycle-shaped devices' being ridden,” said Asha Weinstein Agrawal, a research associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University. “Some of them are legal e-bikes. Some of them are not.”

Agrawal recently co-authored a 210-page report on e-bike safety. It includes data collected from middle and high schools in Marin and San Mateo counties, which showed that only 12% of students’ e-bikes fit into the legal classification system. The other 88% were more powerful than legally allowed under California law.

A Newport Beach Police officer tickets a middle schooler for parking her e-bike on the street across from Ensign Middle School on Sept. 4, 2026.

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Any bicycle-shaped device that goes faster than 30 miles per hour is technically an e-motorcycle, which requires a special driver’s license and, if ridden on public roads, insurance and registration.

Agrawal said it’s hard for parents, and even police officers, to figure out what’s legal and what’s not.

“Nobody understands this,” she said. “It’s very hard to enforce.”

The crackdown

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has taken some unusual approaches to addressing the e-bike dilemma. To date, he has pressed criminal charges — including for child endangerment — against four parents after their children were involved in collisions, all of them on e-motorcycles, not e-bikes.

One of those parents, a woman from Aliso Viejo, was charged with three felonies, including involuntary manslaughter, after her 14-year-old son allegedly struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest on an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 miles per hour.

People with e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motos move through the long line at the Orange County District Attorney's buyback event at Angel Stadium, Sept. 13, 2026.

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The DA’s office said it has also sent letters to retailers reminding them of a ban on selling products used to modify e-bikes to go faster than legally allowed.

Spitzer recently tried another novel approach: buybacks. On a recent Sunday, hundreds of people brought their e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motos to an event at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, hoping to turn them in for up to a thousand dollars in gift cards. The county event was paid for with $100,000 in asset forfeiture funds.

One man near the front of the line said he had arrived at 1 a.m. By the time the event started at 10 a.m., sheriff’s deputies were turning people away.

“Holy smokes,” Spitzer said from behind a podium mounted in the parking lot. “Look at the participation. … And you can see why, because we have a serious problem here in Orange County and across the nation with individuals who have e-bikes and e-motorcycles.”

Spitzer spoke about the dangers, but also the attractiveness of a high-powered personal vehicle, especially for teen boys.

 “We're not gonna change our internal DNA about who we are as young people and the fact we wanna go places, and we wanna experiment, and quite frankly, we like fast things,” he said. “ But the fact of the matter is when you have a machine, and you don't understand its capabilities, you can find yourself in harm's way very quickly before you can control that mechanism.”

Orange County District Attorney is testing out a range of strategies to crack down on illegal e-bikes and e-motos, including a buyback event at Angel Stadium on Sept. 13, 2026.

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Are unsafe riders ‘ruining it for other people’?

Paul Dumont drove to the buyback event all the way from Chatsworth in hopes of exchanging five e-bikes he had bought for his kids and grandkids.

“They got injured on them when we first got them, so they've been sitting in storage,” he said of the bikes.

Dumont said he wished he had bought less powerful e-bikes. “But I bought them the best ones,” he said. “I thought they'd be better.”

Denise Mills and her 17-year-old son Nathanael came from Torrance to turn in three e-motorcycles that he had been riding to and from his high school last year. He stopped after the school told him it was illegal. A new state law defining e-motorcycles took effect in January.

A student at Ensign Middle School runs to campus after parking his e-bike at a nearby park, Sept. 4, 2026.

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“That was very unfortunate because it's his primary source of transportation,” Mills said. “Now it's his dad and I.”

Nathanael said he had logged several thousand miles without an accident.

“ Partially it's, like, people ruining it for other people,” he said of efforts to tighten the rules for young riders.

Local leaders grapple with the flood of e-bikes

Cities and school districts are testing a variety of approaches to decrease e-bike crashes and injuries, from prohibiting riding on sidewalks to outright bans for young riders. The Brea City Council has even discussed using police drones to follow unsafe youth riders home in order to inform their parents.

In a more typical approach, the Huntington Beach City School District requires all student e-bike commuters to pass a safety course in order to get a permit to park their bike on campus. Newport-Mesa has a similar program for high schoolers.

Marin County limits youth under age 16 to riding Class 1 “pedal-assist” e-bikes, which have motors that kick in only while pedaling, and shut off once the bike reaches 20 miles per hour. The ban on more powerful e-bikes for young riders is part of a pilot program approved by the state legislature that sunsets in 2029.

At the federal level, O.C. Congressman Dave Min, D-Irvine, co-authored a bill earlier this year, the Safe SPEEDS Act, that would develop nationwide safety standards for e-bikes, including minimum age recommendations.

A dilemma for parents

Parents of student e-bike commuters have said they do not oppose regulating the vehicles, and they want authorities to crack down on dangerous and illegal riding. But an outright ban goes too far, they’ve said.

“ I know there are kids that are a little wild,” said Kellie Newcombe, whose 13-year-old daughter is still riding her pedal-assist bike from their home in Costa Mesa to Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach.

“That is not my child. That is not her friends. They are so ridiculously safe and by the book,” she said. “It's just super frustrating that they would say every kid cannot ride an e-bike.”

A spokesperson for Newport-Mesa Unified told LAist in an email that the school district’s new e-bike restrictions have gone smoothly and are helping to reinforce safety. But that is not how Gulbranson and Newcombe see it.

“We've had my daughter intimidated by multiple neighbors now,” Gulbranson said. “This whole guise of doing it under safety is totally misguided.”

Newcombe said she worries about her daughter’s safety more now that an increasing number of parents are driving their kids to school.

“They're in a rush because the traffic is insane,” she said. Plus, her daughter now has to cross a busy street to get to campus.

Newcombe said she wishes the school district would work with local leaders and police to enforce e-bike rules and to create safer paths to school for responsible riders.