The Brief

Huntington Beach said Tuesday it is adding three drones to its police force, joining an increasing number of U.S. cities using remote “eyes in the sky” to respond to crimes and other emergencies.

“ These drones can save a lot of time, save a lot of lives, and really become a force multiplier in service to the people,” said Mayor Pat Burns, a retired Long Beach Police officer who spoke at a news conference and demo to roll out the new law enforcement hardware.

What can the drones do?

City leaders say the drones can respond to an emergency faster and more efficiently than officers and vehicles on the ground. Officers can send out a drone in response to an emergency call, then monitor the drone’s footage from a dispatch center, assess the situation, and brief their colleagues on the ground.

Detective Taylor Davoren, a drone pilot, said the machines will help catch and convict criminals.

“In most cases, suspects or vehicle descriptions are critical, but if it takes an officer 5 minutes to arrive, those details might be gone,” Davoren said. “With drones, we can often be there in under 2 minutes. And we can start recording immediately.”

The use of drones as first responders, known as DFR programs, has become increasingly popular across the U.S. The city of Chula Vista in San Diego County launched the first DFR program in 2018. Dozens of cities have followed suit, including Hawthorne, Santa Monica, Irvine, Redondo Beach, Beverly Hills and Burbank, according to the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Los Angeles also recently launched a pilot program to use drones to respond to routine emergency calls.

What about privacy concerns?

Privacy and accountability concerns have followed the expansion of law enforcement drone programs. A recent investigation by Wired magazine into Chula Vista’s drone program found that residents in poor communities are much more likely to be captured in drone footage than in wealthier parts of the city.

Huntington Beach Police Lieutenant Chris Nesmith said Tuesday that the drones will only record footage when responding to an emergency call.

“ The citizens don't need to worry about officers spying in their backyards or surveilling them,” he said. “This isn't a Big Brother program.”

Who will have access to the video?

He told LAist that video evidence would be uploaded to the city’s contracted database, evidence.com. Nesmith said the evidence could be shared with other law enforcement agencies to prosecute crimes. The Huntington Beach City Council declared the city a “non-sanctuary city” earlier this year. But Nesmith said the police department follows state law that restricts sharing information about minor crimes with federal immigration authorities.

Stop us if you've heard this one before...but it's going to feel a lot like summer this week as temperatures soar into the mid 80s.

At the beaches, we're looking at high temperatures in the mid 70s. Meanwhile, downtown L.A. will see temperatures from the mid 70s up to 80 degrees.

Similarly, the valleys and Inland Empire will be toasty, with highs from 75 to 82 degrees. Coachella Valley will be the warmest, with highs reaching up to 89 degrees.

If you're planning for a hike, bring plenty of water — the Santa Monica Mountains will get into the low 80s.

In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers set out a plan to create the largest universal preschool program in the country for 4-year-olds, through a massive ramp-up of an elementary grade known as transitional kindergarten, or TK.

At a news conference, Newsom called it “a commitment that all 4-year-olds will get high quality instructional education,” and said that the investment could close learning gaps. “People aren’t left behind, as often as they start behind,” he added.

The state set a deadline that every district offer transitional kindergarten to all eligible 4-year-olds by fall 2025, and in the intervening years, schools have enrolled more than 175,000 children in TK. They’ve also had to hire new teachers and modify classrooms so that kids have enough space and quick access to smaller-sized bathrooms.

LAist spoke to more than a half dozen early childhood researchers who say a key piece has been missing in the state’s implementation: California itself hasn’t evaluated the program as it's expanded, nor does it have plans to going forward. This, despite studies showing how critical the early years are for a child’s learning, and research from another state’s public preschool program that found students tested lower on state assessments and had more behavioral problems compared to those who weren’t in that program..

“ It is a huge mistake to not evaluate the implementation of TK and whether or not the classrooms are providing developmentally appropriate practice,” said Jade Jenkins, associate professor of education at the University of California, Irvine.

The criticism comes as California has invested $1.2 billion to expand TK, and is paying about $3.9 billion this year to administer the new grade level.

“ We need to know whether this investment is actually lifting kids. We know it's a huge economic windfall for parents, and that's a great boost for families. But is it lifting kids without government research?” said Bruce Fuller, a professor emeritus of education and public policy at UC Berkeley.

A spokesperson for the California Department of Education said money for research has not been allocated in the state budget, and the department would “welcome a legislative appropriation” to “study the impacts of TK on students and families.”

“At this time, the Legislature and Governor have not appropriated funding for the CDE to conduct evaluations,” the agency said.

It’s not the first time the agency has brought up the need for a study — especially as the program was rolling out statewide. A state official told LAist in 2022 that they recommend an implementation study, but they opted not to suggest how it should be funded.

“You could launch a very high quality study at a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of the total funding for that program, and that would help people figure out what we are actually offering our families and how to improve it — and that seems really important,” said Alix Gallagher,  director of education policy and outcomes for the research organization Policy Analysis for California Education. “As a taxpayer, I don't find it acceptable that billions of dollars are being spent with no attention to how our systems can learn to use that in ways that are most beneficial for kids."

TK experiences can look different school to school

The state sets standards for TK classrooms, which can have a max of 24 kids and need a 10:1 student to adult ratio. Teachers must be credentialed with early childhood educational experience or units. And while the state has guidelines on what students should learn in TK, it has no mandated curriculum — meaning programs can vary widely from being play-based to more academic.

Lyse Messmer, a parent of a TK child in northeast L.A., has seen even variation between two schools her son has attended in the same area. His first program relied more on screen time and worksheets; Messmer transferred him to another program with more outdoor play. And the teacher at the former school had not previously taught TK, she said, which made for a harder transition into school.

But she said the overall experience has been beneficial for her child, and a welcome financial relief. “I think the benefits of him getting used to a bigger classroom and like a bigger elementary school and navigating all that stuff for him has been really positive,” she said.

Adding a new grade is a massive endeavor for districts. As in Messmer’s case, it can be especially hard to find teachers with experience teaching kids this age, said Austin Land, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Equity and Excellence in Early Childhood.

“ You can't require that every kid that wants a TK spot gets a TK spot and then also require this workforce to exist that has all this preexisting training,” Land said.

Land, who has been studying TK before the expansion, said he would like to know basic characteristics of TK classrooms today.

“Do you have a sixth grade teacher that got reassigned leading your classroom or is it somebody who's been working with little kids for a while?” Land said. “ Is the teacher having a one-on-one interaction with a child or a one-on-two interaction with some children? Or are they spending most of their time up at the front?”

Lack of data on quality

Without data, it’s hard to know what children are learning, said Allison Friedman-Krauss, an associate research professor at the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

“We want to make sure we're investing in quality for kids. And one way to know that we're doing it is to be able to monitor it… we want to make sure that the state can sort of have a pulse on what's going on in the classroom,” she said.

Transitional kindergarten classrooms can vary school to school, with some more play-based and others more academic.

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Mariana Dale

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LAist

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The institute scores public preschool programs across the country on a number of benchmarks of quality. According to the institute’s tracking, about two-thirds of public preschool programs in the country have a classroom observation system in place, she said. California’s TK program does not.

Researchers said it’s especially important to know what these youngest students are doing because early experiences can affect their learning later on.

“At the very least, we want to make sure it's not doing harm,” Jenkins said.

Tennessee: A cautionary tale

Researchers point to a study of Tennessee’s public preschool system as an example of where good intentions were not enough to benefit kids. The state has similar standards to what California put in place: max class sizes, low ratios, specialized teachers.

Dale Farran, a professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University, found in her research that children who attended the pre-K program ended up faring worse academically and behaviorally than their peers who didn’t attend. Farran said standards don’t guarantee quality, much less equity between students from different social, economic and racial backgrounds.

“Those structural elements  are the easiest things for states to make rules about, but are they having the kind of interactions in the classrooms that will be positive for children? That’s much harder to put into place,” she said.

Farran has said that one possible reason for this was the overly academic nature of the program and structured settings: kids sitting at desks and listening to a teacher up front, when kids this age need to move around and play.

Katie Flynn, a mom of a TK student in Pasadena, said while she’s had an overall positive experience with her son in TK this year, it still feels more like elementary school than preschool.

At the beginning of the year, her son wouldn’t drink his water all day, or avoided going to the bathroom until he got home, because teachers didn’t remind or prompt him like they did in private preschool.

“ I know it's also his responsibility, right? Like he needs to listen to his body. So it's a mutual, collaborative enterprise, but it just shows how limited this age group is in ensuring that that happens,” she said.

What can the state do?

The California Department of Education said absent funding from the state Legislature for the department to evaluate the program, it convenes a regular group of early childhood researchers in the state to share their work into TK. But researchers LAist talked to from that group said that approach can only go so far.

Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, said he wasn’t familiar with the Tennessee study, but funding for evaluation is something he will look into.

“We definitely need to make sure that we're again evaluating our most effective programs so that we can focus on best practices to continue to support those statewide,” he said.

When LAist asked how the state will assess the current program, Muratsuchi and a State Board of Education spokesperson pointed to one large-scale study of TK done by the American Institutes for Research, in 2017. (The governor’s office also directed LAist to the state board.)

That AIR study found that kids who went to TK when it first started in California had stronger literacy and math skills when entering kindergarten compared to similar-age peers who didn’t go to TK at the beginning of the year. (Those differences mostly faded by the end of the year).

Land, the UC Berkeley researcher, and Gallagher, of PACE, said the AIR study was done nearly a decade ago, and on a TK program that looks different from TK today.

That's because when TK started in 2012, they said, it was intended for kids who were nearly 5 years old, but had just missed the cutoff for kindergarten. Today, kids as young as 3 are entering TK in California.

LAist also reached out to Karen Manship, principal researcher of the AIR study. She said they’re still investigating topics related to transitional kindergarten, “but we do not have any funding or current plans to evaluate the program overall now that it is fully rolled out.”

The state education board spokesperson also cited research by economist Rucker Johnson, who looked at TK between 2013 and 2019, which found low-income children had greater reading and math gains by third grade than students who did not attend TK.

“These points tell us that an early start has proven to be beneficial for California students,” said a spokesperson for the board, which sets state policy.

LAist reached out to Johnson, who said that while his study of TK in the early years is promising, it’s “not a sufficient condition.”

“For improvements to be sustained, meaning even if they were good in the past, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to be monitoring the success as they're expanded and expanded that scale to universal,” he said.

Kevin McCarty, Sacramento’s mayor and a former state assemblymember who championed the legislation to expand TK, told LAist funding is a challenge — given other budget priorities — but that he welcomes evaluation.

“We want to make sure that it's effective, that it works, and if there are any issues that we need to address and improve going forward,” he said.

In the meantime, he said the program has given many parents a huge economic relief — and parents have a choice on whether to send their kids.

“This is free, this is — California paid for free universal pre-K,” he added, “which is a big deal because, we reminded people, paying for private preschool costs more than sending a kid to UCLA.”

Alysa Liu’s comeback at this year’s Olympics — and her stunning gold medal win — has rocked the world of figure skating, making headlines due to her joy while performing and her commitment to mental health on and off the ice.

Though she primarily trained in Oakland, Liu, who’s also a psychology student at UCLA, has used a facility in Lakewood as one of her home bases away from home. The 20-year-old started training there as she came back from retirement and prepared to take the gold medal (not that that was necessarily her goal, to hear her tell it).

It’s part of a long history for the Rinks-Lakewood ICE, which has also hosted many champions and Olympians over the years, including Mariah Bell, Nathan Chen, Ashley Wagner and Adam Rippon, and counts prominent figure skaters among their staff.

“ We're not unfamiliar with Olympic ties,” said Braden Overett, the skating manager at Lakewood ICE, though he also clarified, “that does not in any way diminish the fun and the coolness [of Liu’s win].”

Lakewood ICE’s place in this year’s Olympics

Working with her coaches remotely, Liu started to drill down on perfecting her skating while also attending classes at UCLA. And though she moved on to her home base at Oakland Ice Center as the Olympic training started to ramp up, the staff who worked with her at Lakewood ICE kept cheering her on.

Overett said that he loves highlighting the Olympic connections at the rink, which may not be obvious to everyone who skates there.

“It's always fun just to connect the dots, right?” Overett said. “It's like going to a restaurant and then you find out later it's your favorite actor's restaurant.”

Ashleigh Ellis runs the nonprofit Unity Ice Academy, which focuses on increasing access to figure skating for kids of all backgrounds at Lakewood ICE.

“ That's just very much how the skating world is. It's very small, you never know who you're going to run into at any time,” Ellis said. “ Could you imagine just being on the ice with a national champion and Olympic skater of any sort? It's just so inspiring for the kids to see that and be within the vicinity of that.”

And Liu wasn’t the only 2026 Olympic figure skater who's used the facility. Li Yu-Hsiang, the Taiwanese national champion who represented Chinese Taipei in Milan this year, also trains in Lakewood.

The rink’s coaches

The small world of skating means that even novice skaters can take classes from world-class skaters: 1976 Olympic silver medalist Dianne de Leeuw teaches there, as do national medalists (and future Olympic contenders) Starr Andrews and Josephine Lee.

 "To get to see them and to get to share ice with them just has a layer of magic that you can't replace and you can't get anywhere else,” Overett said. “ You see the turnover of generations, and it brings in a huge element of history.”

What Liu’s win means for the skating world

Ellis is already using Liu’s example to stress the importance of mental health to the kids and families she works with, like one parent who was worrying about her child taking two weeks off skating due to pneumonia.

“I was like, ‘Alysa Liu took two plus years off and she just won the Olympic gold. Do not worry about it this two weeks,’” she said.