The Brief

A veteran legislator who taught elementary school for 16 years introduced comprehensive early-literacy legislation Wednesday that would impose requirements on reading instruction and add urgency to the state’s patchwork of reading reforms.

Evidence-based practices, collectively known as “the science of reading,” would become the mandated approach to reading instruction for TK-5, if Assembly Bill 2222, authored by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, becomes law.

The bill would shift the state’s decade-old policy of encouraging districts to incorporate fundamental reading skills in the early grades, including phonics, to demanding that they do so. This would depart from the state policy of giving school districts discretion to choose curriculums and teaching methods that meet state academic standards.

By 2028, all TK to fifth-grade teachers, literacy coaches and specialists would be required to take a 30-hour-minium course in reading instruction from an approved list.

School districts and charter schools purchasing textbooks would select from approved materials endorsed by the State Board of Education in a new round of textbook adoption.

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing would receive money to add several experts for accreditation of teacher preparation programs in the science of reading. The bill would strengthen accountability for those programs that have not taught effective reading strategies, as required under recent state law.

Rubio and the advocacy nonprofits EdVoice, Decoding Dyslexia CA, and Families in Schools, the bill’s co-sponsors, argue that another generation of California children cannot wait for districts teaching ineffective techniques using inadequate materials to come around.

“California is facing a literacy crisis,” the first sentence of the bill states. “There are far too many children who are not reading on grade level by the end of third grade and who will not complete elementary school with the literacy skills and language development they need to be successful academically in middle school and high school.”

Only 43% of California third graders met the academic standards in the state’s standardized test in 2023. Only 27.2% of Black students, 32% of Hispanic students, and 35% of low-income children were proficient, compared with 57.5% of white, 69% of Asian and 66% of non-low-income students.

“There’s always this delicate balance between local control versus let’s move forward collectively,” said Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice and former candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. “But when we have an issue that the vast majority of lower-income kids, who are disproportionately Black and Latino, are not reading at grade level, it requires urgency to do what we know works as fast as possible.”

Rubio, who recalled being handed coloring books instead of reading lessons in first grade as a non-English-speaking Mexican immigrant, said that data on the effectiveness of the science of reading convinced her to author the bill. However, her own experience as a fourth-grade teacher who previously taught kindergarten and first grade reinforced it.

“When I have fourth graders that are at first- or second-grade reading, something’s wrong. I can tell you right then and there, if a kid doesn’t know phonics in the fourth grade, we screwed them up somewhere. If they’re not reading in the third grade, they may never recover,” said Rubio, who was first elected to the Assembly in 2016.

A piecemeal approach to literacy changes

The science of reading refers to research from neurology, psychology, and the cognitive and developmental sciences about how children learn to read. In the last decade, 47 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted laws to incorporate elements of the science of reading strategies. Fewer — Mississippi, Connecticut, Tennessee, and Virginia among them — have adopted and funded policies that coordinate multiple key elements: preparing and training teachers, supplying them with aligned instructional materials, testing for learning difficulties like dyslexia and engaging parents.

California is among the 47 states. Within the past three years, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature enacted discrete pieces of a state policy.

They funded $40 million to the University of California San Francisco to create a screening test for the risk of dyslexia and other learning difficulties; universal screening of K-2 students will begin in 2025-26.

They included $500 million in the last two state budgets for hiring and training of literacy coaches in the 5% of schools with the most low-income students. The Sacramento and Napa county offices of education, strong advocates of the science of reading, are overseeing the effort. They passed legislation to create a teaching credential for PK-3 that includes new literacy standards grounded in the science of reading; teacher preparation programs must introduce them starting next fall, and teachers will take a performance assessment as part of their new credential.

The Commission on Teacher Credentialing created a pre-kindergarten to grade 3 credential and passed new literacy standards grounded in the science of reading; those new standards will apply to the PK-3 credential as well as existing multiple subject, single subject, and education specialist teacher preparation programs. Teachers will take a performance assessment as part of their new credential.

At the encouragement of State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor emerita at the Stanford University School of Education, Newsom included $1 million in the current budget for a “literacy road map,” which will serve as a guide, with online resources, for districts to implement evidence-based reading strategies. Leading that effort are two respected literacy experts, Bonnie Garcia and Nancy Brynelson, whom State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond named the state’s first state literacy co-directors.

Tuck credits the steps taken by the Legislature and Newsom, “who has been an anchor on early education.” But guidelines won’t ensure that students in all districts will receive effective reading instruction —especially high-poverty schools that may be “slower to make adjustments when they’re dealing with so many challenges and so much complexity.”

Megan Potente, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA, points to her 20 years as a teacher, who, as a new teacher frustrated by the ineffectiveness of her reading training, took a course on phonics and fundamental reading skills. “You feel like you’re not good at your job, and you weren’t equipped. And that’s a terrible feeling for new teachers,” she said. “So I went back to school, and I learned what I needed.”

Years later, she became a coach, supporting teachers in districts using balanced literacy that de-emphasizes evidence-based practices. She found it difficult to apply what she knew, she said, “because the curriculum materials didn’t follow the science; the teaching methods didn’t follow the science.”

A piecemeal approach to reading reforms inevitably leads to a game of “whack-a-mole,” former Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, who is credited with implementing successful comprehensive policies in her state during the pandemic, told EdSource.

Newsom did not require nor explicitly encourage districts to use the $20-plus billion they received in federal and state Covid-relief funding on teaching training in the science of reading nor on updating reading texts and materials. Now that the state is heading into a lean budget year, a scarcity of funding, particularly for teacher training, could set back a timeline to implement the bill. Newsom’s proposed budget for 2024-25 includes no significant money for new TK-12 programs.

A spokesperson for the Newsom administration, which usually declines to discuss pending legislation, offered no further comment.

What’s in Assembly Bill 2222

AB 2222 would define evidence-based literacy instruction as “evidence-based explicit and systematic instruction in phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary and oral language development, fluency, comprehension, and writing … that adheres to the science of reading.” (Phonics are rules that relate letters in words to the sounds of spoken language. A phoneme is the smallest element of a sound within spoken language. Phonemic awareness reflects the ability to understand that words combine multiple phonemes when pronounced.)

The bill sets requirements for three principal elements of literacy instruction:

Teacher training

Starting in March 2026 and no later than June 30, 2028, all teachers in grades TK to 5 must complete an approved professional development and training program satisfactorily. The California Department of Education would appoint one or more county offices of education with expertise in the science of reading and evidence-based literacy instruction to serve as the state literacy expert lead that would select the list of eligible training programs. Districts would have to notify parents if fewer than 90% of the required teachers failed to complete the course. 

Instructional materials

The last state textbook adoption for English language arts and English language development was 2015. The bill would require the State Board of Education to complete the next adoption cycle by Jan. 1, 2026, for TK through eighth grade. The materials would have to adhere to the science of reading. School districts would not be required to replace materials they’re currently using, but they would need a waiver to buy basic instructional materials that aren’t approved. A district whose waiver is denied for existing instructional materials that they are using will be required to adopt materials from the state-approved list. For the first time, all districts would have to report which textbooks they are using to the Department of Education.

Textbooks like “Units of Study,” by noted literacy author Lucy Calkins, whose instruction relies on visual cues, including the three-cuing method of reading, would not be eligible for the approved list.

Teacher preparation

The bill would strengthen the accountability requirements of landmark Senate Bill 488, the 2022 law that requires candidates for a PK-3, elementary, or multiple subject credential to receive evidence-based reading instruction.

It would require the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to establish a probationary accreditation process for teacher prep programs that aren’t meeting the literacy instruction requirements. Faculty in those programs would have to complete professional development in the science of reading for the program to avoid a loss of accreditation.

The bill would provide funding for the credentialing commission to hire experts in the science of reading to help with program accreditation. One of the dozen members of the Committee of Accreditation would have to be an expert in the science of reading.

Demonstrations against this week’s deadly ICE shooting in Minneapolis are planned this weekend across Los Angeles. The protests are being organized by the “ICE Out For Good Coalition” — a network of several groups including the ACLU and 50501.

Here are a some of the planned actions across the city:

Saturday

• Pasadena: 12 to 2 p.m. at Garfield and Colorado Blvd, across from the Paseo Mall
• Eagle Rock: 1 to 2 p.m. at Colorado Boulevard & Eagle Rock Boulevard
• City of Los Angeles: 2 to 4:30 p.m. in Pershing Square

Sunday

• West Hollywood: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 647 N. San Vicente Blvd, across from the Pacific Design Center.
• City of Los Angeles: 12 to 2 p.m. at The Home Depot on 2055 North Figueroa St.
• Beverly Hills: 2 and 4 p.m. at 9439 Santa Monica Blvd., between Beverly Drive and Canon Drive

Jennifer Cacicio didn’t set out to move across the country.

Like thousands of others who fled the L.A. fires a year ago this week, Cacicio and her family left their Altadena home thinking they would be gone a night, maybe two.

But in the year since the Eaton Fire erased their house and neighborhood overnight, home has become somewhere entirely new.

Cacicio, a television writer, and her husband and 8-year-old daughter now live nearly 3,000 miles from L.A. — in Cold Spring, a village in New York’s Hudson Valley they’d never visited until this year.

Starting over somewhere completely new, Cacicio said, felt easier than rebuilding their lives in high-cost L.A. with the foothills of Altadena casting a long shadow.

“What we had in Altadena was so wonderful that anywhere else but Altadena feels like you're settling for less,” Cacicio said.

Jennifer Cacicio poses for a photo with her husband Matt Shallenberger and their daughter, Bruna.

(

Matt Shallenberger

)

Cacicio is part of a growing fire diaspora — Altadenans scattered across the country and the world, searching for versions of the natural beauty and close-knit and artistic community they enjoyed in the San Gabriels.

Cacicio said she knows of three other Altadena families who’ve relocated to the Hudson Valley. Neighborhoods still edge up against the wilderness, but wooded slopes and river cliffs now define the landscape for them where canyons and ridgelines once did.

I also spoke with two other Altadena households who left post-fire, one for the Netherlands and the other for Asheville, North Carolina. Each family described decisions shaped by financial realities and the wrenching calculus of raising young children after a fire.

From Altadena to the Netherlands

The Sporcks left the Netherlands for L.A. over seven years ago, setting off on their American adventure.

Joep, a film composer, saw career opportunities in L.A, and his wife Sarah, was eager to try life in a new country.

Friends in Altadena introduced them to the San Gabriels, and eventually they found their own house in the west part of Altadena near the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Joep composed film scores and trailer music in a converted garage and Sarah commuted to her job as an education specialist at a school in Lincoln Heights. Three years ago, they welcomed their first child.

In the back yard, they planted fruit trees and raised chickens, and hiked along trails to favorite spots like Millard Falls.

“We loved it, and we never meant to leave,” Joep said.

This time last year, Sarah was pregnant with their second son and had just finished her first trimester when on Jan. 7 the couple saw flames shooting from the foothills.

The fire came within several blocks, but their house was ultimately spared.

In the month after the fire, Joep worked to remediate their home alongside professional crews, as Sarah looked after their toddler, whose daycare, Altadena Children’s Center, had burned down.

“With Sarah pregnant, it was really scary, even afterwards,” Joep said.

Added Sarah: “And with a toddler that wants to play outside.”

As they prepared for their second child, the fire forced questions: How long would it take for Altadena to recover and what would that look like?

“I'm sure there will be a new Altadena in a couple of years,” Joep said. “But it felt like it wasn't going to be the same ever again.”

Once-vague thoughts moved to the foreground. In the Netherlands, they would have more family support and a stronger social safety net, like lower-cost childcare.

And Joep had reached a point in his career that he could work remotely.

This past summer, after their baby was born, a listing landed in Joep’s inbox for a three-story brick villa in the southern part of the Netherlands where Joep is from — hilly just like Altadena. The couple made an offer for the house in Epen without seeing it in person.

The Sporcks have moved back to the Netherlands, to the village of Epen in the southern part of the country.

(

Gerlach Delissen

)

“We made some lists like pros and cons of staying or leaving, and it was just we couldn't deny it anymore,” Joep said.

They put their house on the market — and after some price cuts — sold it to another Altadena family that had lost their home in the fire.

In November, the Sporcks moved to their Epen home, where they are still unpacking — and grieving.

“I’m really sad to be leaving America and Los Angeles,” Joep said. “It feels a little bit like giving up this dream.”

But he said the ties to the area are strong. Their children are dual-citizens. Joep will return to L.A. regularly for work.

“Part of us is now like American, Altadenan forever, I guess,” Joep said.

It's something, he said, that will always set them apart from their friends and family in the Netherlands.

From Eaton Canyon to the Blue Ridge Mountains

Altadena wasn’t their first stop in Southern California. There was Sherman Oaks and Highland Park.

But for Carson Dougherty and Chris Gower, their Altadena cottage rental within walking distance of Eaton Canyon was the first place that felt like home in L.A.

Pushing their daughters in strollers to Altadena Beverage and Market and Prime Pizza, they would stop to speak with neighbors along the way.

“I would walk around and just be like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe we live here,'" Carson said. “I've just never loved a place more or felt more welcome.”

Carson, a spiritual coach, had moved from New York to L.A. about nine years ago when she was an actor, accompanied by Chris who works in tech sales.

Carson is originally from northern Virginia, while Chris grew up in Surrey, England. The call of family always beckoned, but the allure of life in Altadena kept it at bay.

Carson Dougherty and her family moved to Asheville, North Carolina.

(

Courtesy Carson Dougherty

)

They had months earlier re-upped their lease for another two years, when the Eaton Fire happened.

The next day, they returned to find their rental standing — but coated in soot.

With no clear remediation plan being offered by the landlord and worried about their children’s health, the couple broke their lease and forfeited their full deposit.

As they planned their next move, Carson and Chris began rethinking what it meant to raise a family in California — from pre-school to housing.

“Life here is very hard,” Carson said. “We're obsessed with it, but it's not easy.”

Carson flew with the girls out to Virginia, and stayed with her parents. When Chris rejoined them, they discussed where they could live.

Using A.I., they researched cities within 500 miles of Carson’s parents that met their criteria for schools and property taxes. Starting with more than 50 places, Carson winnowed down the list by watching online walking tours of cities and asking for advice on social media.

Asheville, North Carolina — where she had once attended a wedding — kept coming up.

“But we were like, ‘We're not going to move to a place that just had a hurricane,” Carson said, recalling the devastation of Hurricane Helene in 2024.

After taking road trips to Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey and feeling nothing was clicking, the couple traveled to Asheville. They were drawn to the Blue Ridge Mountains that ring the city and the artistic community that reminded them of Altadena’s.

“I was like, ‘OK, this is it,’” Carson said. “I don't know. It was just a feeling.”

Two months into living in their current spot in Asheville, they’re still adjusting.

“I can see this was the right move for us,” Carson said. “But it doesn't feel like home yet.”

“It still feels like a consolation prize,” Chris said. “Whereas Altadena was the one that we were like ‘Holy crap, we found it.'"

Giving her daughter home

In Cold Spring, New York, Jennifer Cacicio is also going through a range of emotions.

“I love Altadena so much, and there's so much grief in letting go of it,” she said.

She mourns her street of identical mid-century homes designed by the architect Gregory Ain. When neighborhood kids visited each other, they knew the exact layout of each others’ homes.

Jennifer estimates of the 28 houses in the neighborhood, about three-quarters are gone.

After struggling with the cost of renting or buying in L.A., she and her husband — a landscape photographer — began thinking about moving East, where she’s from.

During their daughter’s spring break, the family flew out for an expedition.

“We tried to frame it with my daughter, like, ‘You know what this terrible thing happened, and we're going to try to turn it into a family adventure and live closer to cousins and explore a new part of the world,'" Jennifer said.

Jennifer Cacicio's 8-year-old daughter surveys her new environs in Cold Spring, N.Y.

They looked at towns within an hour or so of New York City, located in the suburbs of New York and Connecticut. In New York’s Hudson Valley, they visited an open house for a school that their daughter instantly took a shine to.

“We were like, ‘Great, let's just build it around that — like one thing felt right,’” Cacicio said.

Another sign came when Jennifer, who was the showrunner for this year’s Paramount+ drama Happy Face, got an offer to work on a show based in New York.

“It kind of felt like the universe confirming the decision in a way,” Jennifer said.

In September, they moved into their new home in Cold Spring. Cacicio puts aside her sadness when she thinks about her daughter.

After an event as traumatic as a fire, she wants her childhood to feel stable again. Altadena will recover over the next decade, Cacicio said, but later than she would hope for her daughter.

Being in a new place has brought unknowns, but also a sense of excitement.

"That was kind of what it came down to," Cacicio said. "It didn't feel like settling. It just felt different."

Los Angeles lost a piece of history when the Hollywood Center Motel burned down earlier this week.

The vacant property on Sunset Boulevard had a reputation as a sleazy, dilapidated inn, but the Hollywood Center Motel actually had multiple previous lives.

The building, one of the oldest in the neighborhood, was from a time before urbanization. It was also nominated for historic protection, in part because of its first era as a house.

A symbol of early Hollywood

Before the fire, the Hollywood Center Motel had seven buildings, a kidney-shaped pool, and a mid-century modern breeze block wall with a neon sign.

But the motel property actually started out as a three-story, Shingle-style home built in 1905, which is an American take on Victorian design known for broad gables.

That was built when Hollywood was an independent city, before it joined the city of L.A. Brian Curran, who co-chairs Hollywood Heritage’s preservation committee, says that during this period, Hollywood was known as a place for retirees to settle down.

“ [It was] marketed as a dry town,” he said. “So it was like, come in, retire among the orange groves and just enjoy life in sunny California.”

The Hollywood Center Motel in 1985.

(

Ed Ruscha

/

Courtesy Hollywood Heritage

)

Hollywood was also changing from agricultural to real estate haven. If you were very well off, you’d live in a lavish Hollywood Hills estate, like Wattles Mansion. If you were more moderate, you’d live in the flat areas to the south, in upper-middle class homes just like the Shingle home.

Changing with the times

The home was first owned by William and Sarah Avery, according to Hollywood Heritage’s nomination petition, who called the home “El Nido” (the nest). They didn’t live there long, but the couple’s luncheon made it into the local paper.

The home changed hands multiple times. When Edmund Schultz, a retired drugstore owner, and his family bought the property in 1921, they decided to turn it into an old English bungalow court with over a dozen units around the main home. This was part of a shift in Hollywood to create low-scale apartments as people flocked to Southern California, according to city records.

“It physically evolved with the evolution of Hollywood,” Curran said, “but also tells a story about the economic and cultural evolution of Hollywood.”

The motel conversion didn’t happen until the mid-1950s, when a different owner enclosed the front porch and divided rooms. It was put up for auction as a 23-unit motel, with a full apartment and family-style spaces.

The Hollywood Center Motel opened shortly after in 1956. As TV’s popularity grew, it quickly became a backdrop for crime dramas. It’s been a filming location for Perry Mason, The Rockford Files, T.J. Hooker and L.A. Confidential. As the decades passed, its run-down appearance worked even better for those who wanted a seedy setting.

A still of the motel in the TV cop drama "T.J. Hooker." The episode, titled "Sweet Sixteen...and Dead," aired in February 1983.

(

Screenshot via Tubi

)

The damaged neon sign in 2024.

(

Darya Sannikova

/

Pexels

)

The music industry also got a piece of it. In the 70s, musician Neil Young stayed there because he wanted to sleep in the “sleaziest motel” on Sunset Boulevard.

This was the Hollywood Center Motel’s life for decades — a little bit of stardom while it slowly deteriorated. In 2015, the breeze block was damaged in a car crash and not repaired, according to the nomination petition. The motel stopped operating three years later.

What the fire means for historic status

Only a handful of buildings in Hollywood have this kind of history, which is why Curran says they began fighting for it to be protected once it became vacant last year.

The site was eligible for local and state historic status. The city of L.A.’s Cultural Heritage Commission had just voted a few weeks ago to consider that.

But they couldn’t stay ahead of issues. The home was vandalized. A small blaze broke out on the second floor in September. Another fire damaged one of the bungalows the following month.

The home was demolished in the process of stopping the flames.

(

Courtesy Hollywood Heritage

)

Curran says losing the home in this last fire— the most significant element of the complex — makes the nomination process more challenging, but they’re still pushing for it. He wants protections for the neon sign and breeze block wall. Moving forward, Curran says Hollywood Heritage  will be talking with policymakers about preventing other important sites from the same fate.

“ We know from experience that when you don’t use a building, when there aren’t people inside, they are vulnerable and then they burn,” Curran said. “ We need to do something because this continues to happen.”

Sorry, folks. The bluefin tuna that's worth the price of a decent Hollywood Hills home is now sold out in L.A.

What, you say?

It all started with an age-old tradition

Every Jan. 5, the world's largest wholesale seafood market in Tokyo holds a special auction to ring in the new year.

This week, a 535-pound bluefin tuna was sold at Toyosu Fish Market for a record-setting 510.3 million yen — or around $3.2 million in U.S. dollars. That's about $6,000 a pound.

The winning bidder was Kiyoshi Kimura — the country's titular "Tuna King" who operates the Sushi Zanmai chain of restaurants in Japan that’s known for its quality but affordable sushi.

So what does it have to do with L.A.

After the auction, about 30 pounds of that hunk of a tuna was flown to the chain's only stateside outpost at Chapman Plaza in Koreatown.

"One of the staff from headquarters brought it by plane," said Tiger Nakawake, the general manager of Sushi Zanmai LA. He added that the fish was kept fresh with temperature control packaging and ice.

Nakawake said that the L.A. location always gets their bluefin from its Tokyo mothership. The other fish they get from companies in Japan and locally.

For him, there's a lot of pride that this New Year symbol of good fortune and tradition has come to this neck of the woods.

"All the staff were super happy, because we're the only restaurant in the United States who has 'World Record Blue Fin Tuna,'” Nakawake said in an email.

The giant bluefin that's worth $3.2 million.

(

Courtesy Tiger Nakawake

)

What makes bluefin special is its "sweetness and acidity" that is both "refined and perfectly balanced," he added.

But the 535-pound giant is next league.

"Truly the most elegant and delicious tuna I have ever tasted in the last 50 years," he said.

While supply lasts

Nakawake estimated their share yielded about 1,000 sushi slices, which the restaurant started serving Thursday. In keeping with the chain's mission to offer good sushi without breaking the bank, Zanmai L.A. is keeping prices low — from $4 to $7 a piece, depending on the cut.

"This tuna is a New Year gift and appreciation to all the people in L.A. from Tuna King," Nakawake said.

The limit was one piece per person. Late last night, Nakawake updated LAist to say that the fish was, "unfortunately, all sold out."

But not to worry, this isn't the Tuna King's first rodeo at going big at the annual new year's auction. According to the BBC, Kimura also submitted historic winning bids in 2012, 2013, and 2019.

So yes, there's always next year.