The Brief

While high school graduation rates for Black students in California have increased and suspension rates have declined, gaps in numerous learning outcomes continue to persist.

“I think the conversations have changed, but the outcomes haven't,” said Keli Redd, an English teacher in the Antelope Valley who’s worked as an educator for nearly two decades.

Redd and other educators are now working through how to improve outcomes for Black students as the federal government under the Trump administration seeks to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“We're not ignoring anyone,” said Pamela Lovett, Long Beach Unified School District’s excellence and equity coordinator. “We are setting high benchmarks for all of our kids, but we're committed and know that not everyone needs the same thing to get to the benchmark. We are going to have different approaches to make sure that we address student needs.”

Black children make up 5% of public school students in California, with nearly a third of those living in Los Angeles County.

Educators told LAist the keys to helping students succeed, regardless of their race or ethnicity, lie in examining data on mental health, test scores and other academic outcomes. They also include building programs that incorporate student and family feedback and showing students models of success they can relate to.

The educators we spoke with were a few of the 800 people who gathered in downtown Los Angeles for a conference this month about advocating for Black students. The College Board, best known for designing the SAT and Advanced Placement (AP) courses, has organized the A Dream Deferred conference since 2005.

Raising awareness about Black youth mental health

The suicide rate for Black youths is increasing faster than for young people of other races. In 2023, 1 in 5 Black youths reported they seriously considered attempting suicide.

“I feel motivated to spread awareness about the problem, but also what to do about the problem,” said Kimani Norrington-Sands, an L.A.-based licensed clinical psychologist. “I think that we can all make a change if we're all aware of what's going on.”

Norrington-Sands worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District for 13 years and her responsibilities included staff trainings on suicide prevention.

Kimani Norrington-Sands is a licensed clinical psychologist. She said her work is also influenced by her father's death by suicide.

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Courtesy Kimani Norrington-Sands

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Norrington-Sands offered these tips for schools:

• Train all school staff, from educators to custodians, to understand how trauma influences students.
• Create a process to identify students who are struggling with mental health.
• Provide support not only to students, but their and families.

“I see wellness as a form of resistance,” Norrington-Sands said. “This is how I'm resisting all the oppression, is to raise awareness and to help people all over the country.”

Listening to students, families

In recent years, the Long Beach Unified School District has turned to students and their families for feedback on how to address academic disparities between Black students and their peers.

“What shifted in the conversation is we need to stop thinking we know,” said Lovett, the district coordinator. “Because obviously, what we know is not working if we're still getting the same results and that we need to do a better job of listening.”

The district created a program that convenes Black students from throughout the district to discuss literature based on the community’s feedback.

Pamela Lovett is the excellence and equity coordinator at the Long Beach Unified School District and says interest is growing in the Black Literary Society program.

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The district’s Black Literary Society is based on 19th century predecessors, where free Black people gathered to discuss reading, writing and current events.

“The whole focus was learning ways that they can advocate for themselves, that they can improve their conditions, that they get help, not only themselves, but also those that were enslaved,” Lovett said.

In the program’s first year, about 70 students unpacked School Clothes, a book that examines the educational experiences of Black writers, political leaders and others.

“We had a diverse range of learners,” Lovett said. “Not all of our kiddos…were A students, not all of those kiddos were in our most advanced courses.”

Students who met at lunch, afterschool and on the weekends presented their learnings at the end of the year. A smaller group visited several of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that the subjects in the book attended.

“[The students] understood that if they set goals and helped each other, that they were going to be more likely to achieve their goals,” Lovett said. “[They’re] really mirroring the students that they were studying.”

This school year, Lovett said Black Literary Societies participation has almost doubled.

Changing the narratives about Black students

Jarvis Givens said he was disoriented by the Black education narratives he was presented as a student at UC Berkeley.

“They expected me to be familiar with the experience of feeling alienated in schools, narratives about the school-to-prison pipeline, and having terrible experiences with teachers,” Givens said. “That wasn't my experience.”

Jarvis Givens grew up in Compton, attended UC Berkeley and is now a professor of education and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His work often highlights lesser-known narratives of excellence in Black education. “It's important for more than just how we think about the past,” Givens said. “It's about how we create opportunities for young people to become different versions of themselves and to have opportunities to see different versions of themselves in the present and in the future.”

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Courtesy Jarvis Givens

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Givens attended academically strong schools near his home in Compton where the majority of educators reflected the largely Black and Latino student body, including King/Drew Magnet High School in Watts.

Now as an author and professor of education and African and African American studies at Harvard University, Givens excavates lesser-known narratives of excellence in Black education.

One example from his book Fugitive Pedagogy, is Black schools that succeeded in the Jim Crow South despite the oppressive conditions.

“All of these schools that cultivated all these important leaders, like Angela Davis, Martin Luther King Jr.,” Jarvis said. “They all went to segregated schools. They were not leaders who just fell out of the sky.”

He also authored School Clothes, the book incorporated into Long Beach Unified’s Black Literary Societies.

“It's forcing [students] to think about their own experiences in the present day in more critical ways and realizing that they too are becoming something, someone,” Givens said.

Becoming a mentor, building a pathway to challenging classes

Keli Redd has been an educator in Los Angeles County for 17 years and has spent the last two teaching English at Palmdale High School.

She left the conference thinking about how her school might build a pathway to AP African American Studies, a course where students can earn college credit. (Black students are underrepresented in AP classes.)

Redd’s daughter takes the class at another high school.

Redd said she's started to hear her colleagues discuss the definition of equity more often on campus.  "Some of them start with quoting it or repeating it, or even mimicking the mantra, but that's how it starts to settle in," Redd said. "That you are literally giving students what they need, when they need, however long they need it."

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Courtesy Keli Redd

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“She comes home from this class and we spend an hour over dinner just talking about the things that come up in her class,” Redd said. Those topics have included the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, inequities in healthcare for Black women and Henrietta Lacks, whose tumor cells, taken without her permission, are a foundational part of medical research.

“Thinking on the spot, generating an idea on the spot, and then having to defend something that you have followed — I think it's a really cool way to infuse research outside of the English classroom,” Redd said.

Redd, who also serves on her school’s equity team, said that despite support from administrators, momentum has slowed; fewer of her colleagues show up for meetings and training.

“I can't tell you why when there is money behind this, when there is a whole district wide initiative — our principal is a major champion of equity,” Redd said.

Still, there have been victories in the last few years. Each member of the equity team is mentoring anywhere from two to 20 students outside the classroom. Redd meets with 15 students weekly to review their grades and connect them to resources like tutoring.

“I'm just a small part, but my voice, plus your voice, plus their voice, it adds up,” Redd said.

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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Laura Hertfeldz

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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Courtesy Steve Campos

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.