The Brief

As the new school year begins, parents, researchers, advocates, and educators are still trying to untangle the academic, mental, and social-emotional consequences of the pandemic.

There is no one answer to the question: Are the kids OK?

Academics with a bird’s-eye view point to numerous statistics that show kids aren’t demonstrating the same academic skills as years prior.

“We're still playing catch up,” said Joseph Bishop, who leads the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. “We're still trying to understand what students need. We're even trying to find students.”

Individual families are focused on the gains their students made in the last few years and their return to library storytimes and mask-free summer activities.

“It's feeling strange, but also normal,” said Brenda Miller, a parent of three kids in Highland Park. “Should we get used to this or should we not get used to this?”

Bridgette Donald-Blue has been in the classroom for more than 30 years and works at Coliseum Street Elementary School near Leimert Park.

“The kids are a part of society, so, are we OK as a society? The kids are just a reflection of that,” Donald-Blue said. “I feel like they're OK and like the rest of us, we're going to get better. We're going to progress and get better, and move forward.”

LAist asked these and other experts to help us understand where students are today: Are they learning? Have families found the help they need? Are students present? Are they engaged?

What we know about academic recovery 

When Brenda Miller’s youngest daughter started kindergarten in 2021, tests showed she was behind on reading skills, such as correctly identifying the sounds letters and words make.

Miller thinks it’s in part because her daughter missed out on in-person activities such as the library storytimes her older children were able to attend at her age.

“She just kind of got cut off from other kids in a major way,” Miller said.

In fact, most California kids are not reading on grade level.

Less than half of students — 47% — met or exceeded the standards for English/language arts in the first set of California standardized tests given statewide since the start of the pandemic. That’s 4 percentage points lower than in 2019.

The loss of proficiency in math was even larger. Just one-third of students met or exceeded the state's expectations in math — the lowest-ever score since the state started using the test in 2015.

For some parents, the connection between how much their students learned and the pandemic is clear.

“Truthfully, her academic level decreased because it wasn’t the same to be in school at home as it is in person,” said Mirzan Velasquez.

Her daughter, Elizabeth Gomez, is an incoming 7th grader at an East L.A. charter school.

“There's so much stress now,” Elizabeth said, adding that math was particularly challenging last year and she struggled with learning how to subtract and divide decimals.

“We couldn't learn anything like really good when we were in the pandemic and now they're like teaching us way too fast,” she said.

California’s test scores also show American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, Latino, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students trailed their Asian and white peers.

“‘Normal’ in education was actually profoundly inequitable,” said Mayra Lara, director of Southern California partnerships and engagement at The Education Trust-West. “What we really saw through the pandemic is the inequities really were deepened.”

Celebrate where students have shown progress

California students were on par with the rest of the country in declining math scores, but did not fall as far behind in reading according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.

Los Angeles Unified was one of few districts to show an increase in eighth-grade reading skills.

“There is a need for assessment. It lets us know what it is we need to do, how hard we need to work, what we need to work on,” said Los Angeles teacher Donald-Blue. “It's also extremely important to understand that students are working hard and have the students understand we are wildly excited about how hard you've worked.”

“We are here every day to celebrate those small successes and help them build upon what they've learned,” said Los Angeles teacher Bridgette Donald-Blue.

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As a school interventionist, Donald-Blue helps students who’ve fallen behind in math develop a toolkit to answer questions.

At the end of last year, one student shared that she was most proud “that she knows how to answer questions now.”

“That was huge,” said Donald-Blue, a 2023 California Teacher of the Year. “It's not always about getting the correct answer each and every time, but if she has a strategy and a knowledge of how to answer, then that means she will persevere.”

Miller, in Highland Park, said her daughter’s teachers kept them updated on her progress and sent home lists of words to practice sounding out together.

Miller said a surprising incentive was her older siblings’ deck-building Harry Potter game. Improving her literacy skills meant she could read the cards and play with the big kids.

“Finding ways for her that don't feel like a chore, but that make it fun and meeting her where she is, is important,” Miller said. And by the time she finished first grade, she’d caught up to her peers.

Understand where your child is now

But most students who fell behind during the pandemic have not caught up yet. The strategies to help students recover vary from district to district and often rely on federal funding that runs out next fall.

"There's this kind of fantasy that people have like, ‘Oh, well, we'll just do better instruction during the school day. We'll accelerate kids' learning,'" said Morgan Polikoff, an associate professor at USC’s Rossier School of Education. "If we knew how to do that, we would have done it already."

Instead, researchers and policymakers point to frequent, one-on-one tutoring as an effective way to help students catch up. Los Angeles Unified has tried — and struggled— to implement such a program.

Another option is to extend the school year. Los Angeles Unified administration and the teachers union squabbled over the addition of four optional days of school to last year’s calendar. Each of the next two school years in the district will include three voluntary instructional days.

“We must recognize that the amount of additional schooling required to catch students up cannot be compressed into a one-shot intervention or single school year,” wrote researchers from NWEA, a nonprofit that creates standardized tests, in a recent policy brief about pandemic recovery.

NWEA estimated it will take the average student more than four months of additional schooling in reading and math to catch up to pre-pandemic levels.

Eric Nuñez and his daughter Emilia check out the backpacks at a resource fair at the East L.A. Civic Center. Families could also get food and information about educational and mental health programs.

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At the start of school last year, public schools reported half of their students were at grade level, but not all families are getting the message, Polikoff said. A survey of families in California and nationwide this summer found only a quarter of families say their child was identified as needing help or support in school.

“If parents just don't think that kids are really struggling, they're just not likely to opt in,” Polikoff said.

Seek help in and outside of school

The parents that seemed the most comfortable about how their kids were doing in school told LAist they sought out additional resources.

L.A. mom Gabriela Heredia enrolled her daughter in a summer program ahead of her freshman year of high school. Her son, who is a special education student, goes to a socialization program at a community-based organization.

At a recent backpack giveaway at the East L.A. Civic Center, she got information about community mental health resources and youth services, and her kids looked through free comic books.

“I really keep them busy,” Heredia said. “I look for programs aside from the school.”

Gabriel Gomez, Elizabeth’s dad, said parents are key partners in their kids’ schooling.

“I educate her to pay attention in school,” Gomez said. “I educate her to do homework, to read, to do everything that the teacher is telling her to do.”

Gomez also encourages his daughter to ask questions in class.

“If you see the teacher gets mad, you say, ‘I'm just trying to learn,'’’ Gomez said.

Get students to school 

Data shows that in the three years since the start of the pandemic, fewer students consistently attend school.

Several parents LAist talked to said non-COVID illnesses caused their children to miss so much school they received letters about truancy in the mail last year.

About 30% of California students in grades K-8 were chronically absent during the 2021-2022 school year— triple the rate of students who missed at least 10% of school before the pandemic.

The rates of American Indian, Alaska Native, Black, Latinx, and Pacific Islander students who missed more than 10% of school were even higher.

“Chronic absence is usually a symptom of a lot of things,” UCLA’s Bishop said. “It's not usually because students don't want to come to school. It's that they're struggling.”

For instance:

• Transportation to — and from — school is one barrier. California schools are not required to bus students and until last year hadn’t increased transportation funding levels in more than four decades. 
• A lack of access to health care and meaningful relationships with school staff also contributed to rising absenteeism before the pandemic.
• Some students also say they’re not going to school out of concern for their safety.

In 2021, 9% of high school students told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention they didn’t go to school because they felt unsafe at or going to and from class. American Indian, Black, and Latinx students were most likely to skip school, citing safety concerns. 

Bishop said fears of gun violence play a role, but that students also equate safety to their ability to be heard and ask questions like “Do I feel like my peers and my teachers will listen to me?”

Students who miss a lot of school can fall behind and are more likely to drop out. Students in California school districts with larger increases in chronic absenteeism scored worse on the state’s standardized English/language arts and math tests, according to a recent analysis from the Public Policy Institute of California.

Families can also be penalized for multiple unexcused absences. Students can lose access to extracurricular activities and parents can be fined.

“Punitive responses are unlikely to improve attendance when absences occur for reasons beyond the control of the student and their family,” wrote researchers at Policy Analysis for California Education, a consortium of research universities.

Gabriela Heredia, right, said aside from a few people wearing masks, her son and daughter's parent orientation and open houses felt "pretty normal and the same like before."

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Gabriel Gomez, left, said he he saw a drastic change in his daughter's education during the pandemic, but that he's hopeful the future will be better. "[A] parent has to get involved and say, 'What are you doing? Are you doing your homework? Are you reading? Are you doing all the things that the teacher is telling you?" Gomez said.

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Researchers have also found several low-cost strategies to engage parents in the effort to get students to school.

A Harvard study found students missed fewer days when their families received several letters a year about the importance of attending school.

Other approaches are more high-touch. During the pandemic, some educators visited students at home and continuing that work could help bring kids back to school.

“That kind of wall-less classroom or school became a reality in a lot of places,” Bishop said. “It's really hard to keep up that practice, but I think it is ... still very powerful.”

Sort through a lot of emotions

It’s a little trickier to pick one metric that represents students’ mental health and its impact on how they learn.

“If I had a magic wand, the thing that I would want to know is how many school days are missed because of a mental health issue,” said Lishaun Francis, senior director of behavioral health at advocacy group Children Now. “We're not really able to easily understand that connection.”

But here’s what we do know:

Young people were experiencing increased feelings of sadness and hopelessness, and attempting suicide even before the pandemic started.

The percentage of students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness increased 40% between 2009 and 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC has surveyed high school students about their mental health since 1991. The most recent survey, and the first since the start of the pandemic, was completed in 2021. It found:

• 42% of students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the last year. 
• Female, LGBTQ+, Latinx and Hispanic high schoolers were among the most likely to feel so sad or hopeless they stopped participating in their usual activities. 
• 22% of students seriously considered suicide. 

LGBTQ+ students often reported the highest percentages of mental distress.

• 69% reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. 
• 37% made a suicide plan, more than twice the percentage of their peers overall. 

Nicole Stelter, who oversees behavioral health care at Blue Shield of California, said part of the increase may be due to better awareness of mental health during the pandemic.

“A lot of people recognize that we were going through this real, very collective stressor,” Stelter said. “It opened up that door for more dialogue.”

The health plan recently surveyed youth 14-25 nationwide this summer; nearly 9 in 10 respondents regularly felt stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, unmotivated, lonely, or panicked.

Students' feelings are also changing how they show up at school each day.

“We have eighth graders who are running through the halls, pushing and shoving at the same rate you would expect to see from fifth or sixth graders,” said Terrence, a middle school administrator in Westchester who called into LAist 89.3's public affairs show AirTalk earlier this week.

Donald-Blue taught fourth grade at Coliseum St. Elementary during the first year of in-person school.

“There were a lot of tears,” Donald-Blue said. Many children asked her to sit next to them so they could complete their work.

Donald-Blue tailored her lessons to the moment. For example, by changing journal prompts to focus more on feelings.

“We need to have them at grade level,” Donald-Blue said. “But we also need them to be whole emotionally.”

Pasadena mom Anne Marie Molina has noticed since the pandemic her two youngest children, who are 8 and 10, often pepper her with questions. For example, whether their car will flip over in an accident, and, after a lice scare at their school, whether bugs will eat their scalps.

“It seems like it's all stemming from the same place of anxiety and fear of unknown danger,” Molina said.

She tries to reassure them with facts and is honest about what she doesn’t know, but “it feels so heavy every time they talk about all these disastrous possibilities.”

Blue Shield’s survey also found that more than three-quarters of youth say they’ve talked to someone about their mental and emotional health in the last year. Stelter said it’s a positive sign if kids are willing to talk to their parents, or another trusted adult, about what’s bothering them.

“You cannot take care of yourself in a vacuum,” Stelter said.

Find ways to grow confidence

The caveat is that it’s often challenging for families to access mental health services.

“California's problem has always been that they're not widespread and readily available for every child,” Francis said. For example, more than two-thirds of California adolescents who said they experienced a major depressive episode did not receive treatment, according to a study from the California Health Care Foundation.

Molina said she waited almost a year for her son, who has autism, to be connected with a therapist who is helping him improve his social skills.

He also recently started swim lessons with an instructor familiar with autism. Molina said the weight of the water comforts him and after only a month-and-a half he’s now confident in the deep end of the pool. Though he often avoids certain foods, her son's now curious about seafood.

“The fact that he's building up his self-esteem to try different things that he's uncomfortable with? He's really shooting for the stars,” Molina said. “It does make me extremely proud.”

Illustration by Assistant Engagement Producer Adriana Pera.

Federal immigration agents detained at least two people late Friday outside Adventist White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights, where protesters had gathered after reports of immigration enforcement activity, according to rapid response groups. Protesters remained at the hospital into the early hours of Saturday, where immigration agents maintained a large presence.

It appears the incident began after people witnessed someone being detained and taken into the hospital, according to Raquel Roman, executive director of Proyecto Pastoral and member of the Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network.   That spurred a crowd of protesters to rally against ICE agents, who then detained two protesters who are U.S. citizens, Roman said.

ICE activity was also reported near Mariachi Plaza at 5:50 a.m. Saturday, according to witnesses, and outside the East LA Sheriff’s Station, where agents have been seen detaining people in the L.A. County-designated ICE-Free zone. 

Arrests captured on social video

Video posted on social media appears to show one person being detained outside the hospital. In the video, at least three officers in tactical vests are seen detaining someone at the intersection of Boyle and Pennsylvania Avenues around 11:30 p.m.

A group of about six more officers in tactical vests and masks can be seen walking around the area as another, whose vest says “Police ICE,” yells at the person recording to “back up” and “do not impede with the arrest.”

“You’re arresting U.S. citizens,” the person recording says. “18 USC 111, they’re interfering,” the officer replies, referring to Title 18, Section 111 of the U.S. Code: Assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees. 

In the video, a bystander who says the person being arrested is his brother can be seen speaking to the officer. 

“Your brother assaulted a federal agent. He’s being arrested for assaulting a federal agent; he’s coming with us,” the officer tells them. 

Boyle Heights Beat reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for more information about the incident but has not yet received a response.

LAPD response

The Los Angeles Police Department was first called to the scene at 11:59 p.m. to respond to a “large group causing a disturbance,” according to LAPD Officer Norma Eisenman. LAPD responded again at 2:24 a.m. as crowds continued to gather outside of the hospital. 

“Officers responded to maintain public safety and keep the peace. At no point did LAPD officers assist federal immigration authorities with enforcement activities or detain any individuals in connection with immigration enforcement,” Eisenman said. 

Video posted on social media by Izzy Ramirez shows a line of agents blocking the emergency loading dock around 2:30 a.m. as a crowd continues to shout at the agents and make noise.

“It was horrible for the local community. The ICE presence was a lot more than I’ve seen it visibly before,” said Roman. 

What the hospital said

Japhet De Oliveira, corporate communications executive at Adventist Health, shared the following statement:

“Federal agents brought a person in their custody to our emergency department, and we cared for that patient with dignity and privacy, as we do for every patient. When agents formed a line across our ambulance entrance, which we did not request nor authorize, we diverted ambulances to nearby hospitals for about two hours to ensure every patient received timely care. White Memorial does not participate in immigration enforcement. We know last night frightened our neighbors. No matter what happens outside our doors, everyone who comes inside is our patient, and our focus will only be on that patient, and it will not change.”

Doctors at Adventist White Memorial last year reported that ICE agents were violating the privacy rights of detained patients and prohibiting contact with patients’ family members. While the hospital released guidelines to protect patients and support staff,  doctors and advocates have said they fall short.

What's next

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights, said she was “deeply troubled” by the reports overnight and demanded answers from hospital leadership. She said:

The Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network said it plans to lead a protest against ICE outside White Memorial at 2 p.m. Saturday.

This is a developing story and will be updated. 

The post ICE detains two U.S. citizens protesting outside White Memorial Hospital, rapid response groups say appeared first on LA Local.

People may have been getting high off cannabis earlier than previously thought — at least 2,800 years ago, a new study suggests.

Archaeologists who led a dig at a monumental tomb in Siberia said they turned up evidence of the earliest known use of cannabis for psychoactive purposes.

The findings point to cannabis consumption at least 300 years earlier than previously known use in neighboring China.

Ancient drug use has long intrigued scholars. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about inhabitants of Central Asia smoking cannabis around 440 B.C., and recent archaeologists have found the seeds in tombs across its highlands.

The team from Germany, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland said analysis of hair in the royal tomb where cannabis seeds turned up sheds new light on the plant’s role in ancient societies.

“It’s extremely rare that we have both preserved plant parts and human soft tissue with the active compounds in it in the same context,” said co-author Gino Caspari, an archaeologist at the University of Bern.

It’s not clear whether the cannabis was consumed through inhalation or ingestion, he said.

The dig took place starting in 2017 at a large burial mound at the Tunnug 1 site in the Uyuk Valley of southern Siberia, home to one of the earliest monumental tombs showing material culture of the Scythians — ancient nomads who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine.

The team, deployed “essentially out in the middle of nowhere,” lived in tents for months and faced a spring-to-autumn season that variously featured swamps, snowstorms, frosts and swarms of mosquitoes. Herds of horses ran freely across the grassy steppe.

Larger artifacts on the site include weapons in the burials, horse gear and animal-style motifs. But the team “struck gold” as it also found tiny black spots that turned out to be cannabis seeds along with preserved human hair, Caspari said.

“It’s only so often as an archaeologist that you do get to drug test a person that’s been dead for almost 3,000 years,” he said.

Radiocarbon dating on some of the more than 1,000 seeds helped establish the time of origin, and “they are not there by accident” but deposited within the tomb, suggesting that the plant material had significance in the community, he said.

Results were published Thursday in the journal Science.

Not all independent experts were convinced.

The hair analysis “is scientifically weak” and there’s not enough evidence to tell whether cannabis was used, wrote Volker Auwaerter, head of the forensic toxicology section at the University Medical Center in Freiburg, Germany, in an email.

“For a central part of the study, the article falls far short of what would have been possible,” Auwaerter said. “This matters because the hair data carry the abstract’s main claims (cannabis consumption and use for its psychoactive properties).”

Today, scholars don’t consider ancient accounts trustworthy without corroborating evidence. Because the cannabis plant has other uses — seeds are pressed for oil and fibers used for cloth — their presence alone doesn’t confirm drug use.

Auwaerter, who was not part of the study, said the data didn’t distinguish consumption from external exposure — in other words, the hair could have picked up traces of weed simply by being buried together with it. He said a lab test involving forensic toxicology expertise would have been advisable and easy to arrange.

But Elisa Guerra Doce of the University of Valladolid in Spain, who has written about use of consciousness-altering substances in European prehistory, said toxicological hair analysis was not new in archaeology and has been used to identify consumption of psychoactive substances. She was not involved in the study.

In an email, she credited the authors for showing, through their methodology, that “cannabis was not merely deposited as a funerary offering but was actually consumed by individuals associated with the burial rite.”

A California appeals court has found that “ER” and “The Pitt” have enough similarity that a lawsuit brought by the widow and estate of “ER” creator Michael Crichton alleging “The Pitt” is an unauthorized reboot can move forward.

A three-judge panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled unanimously on Wednesday that the trial court judge was correct to reject a motion to throw out the case from “The Pitt” production company Warner Bros. Television, which also produced “ER.” But the judges dismissed Noah Wyle — the star of both shows and a producer on “The Pitt” — as a defendant along with two other producers who worked on both series.

The lawsuit is a clash between the makers of multiple Emmy-winning TV series that were each among the most important and acclaimed shows of their eras.

Crichton, the author of “Jurassic Park” and many other novels that became hit movies and TV shows, wrote the pilot script for “ER,” the NBC show about a Chicago emergency room that redefined the medical drama genre and drew tens of millions of weekly viewers in its run from 1994 to 2009.

The lawsuit brought by Sherri Crichton was filed two years ago, before a single episode of “The Pitt” had aired. The HBO Max series that shows a real-time day in the life of a Pittsburgh emergency department has since become perhaps the most lauded series in television, winning two Emmys for best drama for its first two seasons and two best actor Emmys for Wyle.

Along with more technical legal issues, the judges had to decide whether the shows had at least the minimal similarity that would give the lawsuit enough merit to move forward. Their decision applies only to this early legal challenge and they did not rule on whether the plaintiffs had proved the “The Pitt” is derivative of “ER.”

The court agreed with the plaintiff that “both shows provide commentaries on the healthcare system; they focus specifically on the emergency room and the difficult conditions under which the medical staff operates. Both shows take place, with little exception, in the emergency room, as opposed to other medical shows which track patients as they move out of the emergency room, or indeed never enter it.”

The opinion also said that both feature “very fast pacing, and reactions to multiple overlapping crises. The fast-paced dialogue is (to a layperson) frequently incomprehensible shorthand and jargon, lending an air of immediacy and accuracy.”

Warner Bros. Television said in a statement that “WBTV continues to maintain that ‘The Pitt’ is an entirely original series and that the claims against it are without merit. Nothing in the Court of Appeal’s decision establishes otherwise, and WBTV looks forward to defending its position as the case proceeds.”

The defendants argued in legal filings that the shows have “generic similarities” that would exist in “any dramatic story” that features “overworked doctors and staff.”

The panel also unanimously dismissed as defendants Wyle, John Wells, who created “The Pitt” and worked on “ER,” and R. Scott Gemmill, a “Pitt” executive producer who also worked on both shows. The judges found there was no evidence the three men knew the provisions of the Crichton contract that the lawsuit alleges they interfered with.

Sherri Crichton’s lawsuit alleges “The Pitt” is a rebranded version of an unauthorized “ER” reboot that she had rejected.

Her husband had secured a coveted “frozen rights” provision in his contract for the series, prohibiting Warner Bros. from proceeding with any sequels, remakes, spinoffs or other productions derived from “ER” without Crichton’s consent, or his estate’s consent after his death from cancer in 2008.

After the production company could not reach an agreement with Sherri Crichton over a proposed “ER” reboot, the TV studio proceeded to develop and produce a series based on the same premise without permission, the lawsuit alleges.

Micki Boden wanted a wedding cake that checked off a couple of big boxes — personalized and tasty. Instead of a traditional tiered cake, the San Fernando Valley native went with a favorite from her school days.

“My favorite cake of all time is the coffee cake that I ate through my entire K-12 education going to LAUSD public school,” Boden said.

Boden attended elementary school in Studio City and middle school in Sherman Oaks before graduating from a Reseda high school.

Boden and her husband, Matt Stollman, met in 2016 while working on the reality television show Big Brother and eventually started dating. The two got engaged in 2025.

With the groom’s family traveling from the East Coast for their wedding in October, the couple wanted to provide a uniquely L.A. experience.

Micki Boden and Matt Stollman cut into their LAUSD coffee cake wedding cake.

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“We wanted something that was gonna be fun, that was gonna be memorable for people,” Boden said.

They held their wedding at the Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys, surrounded by San Fernando Valley memorabilia, and got a California favorite — an In-N-Out truck — to serve guests.

The search for a cake that fit 

But when it came to the wedding cake, the couple struggled to find something suitable. Neither Boden nor Stollman liked frosting, and traditional wedding cakes didn’t excite them.

“We explored the more traditional tiered cake setup, and it just wasn’t meshing well,” Boden said.

Boden kept returning to the coffee cake she ate throughout her years in public school. Los Angeles Unified School District had published its official recipe online, but she wasn’t confident she could bake it herself. So she reached out to the district to ask for help.

The Stollman's wedding cake, decorated by the chef at Mulholland Middle School in Lake Balboa, sits in a pastry box.

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How LAUSD made it happen 

Thomas Cohen, a public relations representative at the district, and Manish Singh, the director of food services, arranged for a chef at Mulholland Middle School in Lake Balboa to prepare the wedding cake. The chef also shaped part of the cake into a heart just for the couple.

Singh said the district doesn’t take cake orders from the public — but made this exception.

“We were doing it just to make one of our Angelenos, an ex-LAUSD student, make her special day even more special,” Singh said.

For the bride, it was the icing on her big day.

“I think it’s all just part of being an L.A. student,” she said. “The fact that we have these amazing memories from childhood, I think it’s just so meaningful for a lot of people.”