The Brief

If someone were to tell you: “Close your eyes. Picture a scientist.” Who would you envision?

Maybe you’d picture Albert Einstein and his unruly hair. Or maybe your mind would go to Marie Curie and her stern gaze. Researchers have found that students persistently picture older white men in lab coats, usually with glasses.

For years, the K-12 education team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked to get students to see themselves.

The team made hundreds of lesson plans around major space events. They facilitated workshops for teachers, created a high school internship, took meteor rocks to local campuses, and much, much more.

All of these activities were meant to foster the next generation of STEM professionals.

But during the latest round of layoffs at JPL last November, the tiny team was among the 325 let go. And though some parts of the educational program remain, educators across the country mourn what was lost.

For teachers, by teachers 

Three of the K-12 education team’s four members are former classroom teachers. That experience helped them know what to do — and what not to do — to make their materials useful. 

Brandon Rodriguez, who’d taught high school chemistry and physics, said it was all about “respecting the limitations” teachers often have to navigate, including tiny budgets and being strapped for time. As a result, he and his colleagues made it a point to keep it simple and “keep it cheap” when they designed projects and lessons for JPL’s education website. And to align those materials with California’s math and science standards.

“We wanted to make sure that teachers didn't have to figure out how to get our stuff in,” said Ota Lutz, former manager for STEM elementary and secondary education, and a former math teacher.

The education team served as a pipeline, taking the missions, discoveries, and engineering innovations that happened at JPL and turning them into resources for teachers.

“There were these things that were popping up in the news, and kids were hearing about them. But they were happening so fast that teachers wouldn't necessarily have time to become an expert in the topic and develop lessons that would go along with that,” said Lyle Tavernier, former educational technology specialist.

“It was sort of, like, ‘OK, this is something kids are going to be excited about. How can we get this into teachers’ hands?’” he said.

Tavernier is especially proud of a JPL resource inspired by a meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, which challenges students to calculate the force of the explosion.

The team’s efforts proved fruitful. The JPL education website “drove about 30% of [the research center’s] annual web traffic, to the tune of about a little over two million visits annually,” Lutz said.

The resources she and her colleagues created have been used by educators worldwide.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, NASA landed the Perseverance Rover on Mars, in search for signs of ancient microbial life. The K-12 team created the Mission to Mars Student Challenge, a seven-week unit that teaches students how to design, build, launch, and land missions of their own — “using materials you have around the house,” Lutz said. When her team opened up registration for accompanying webinars, more than a million people signed up.

“We had participation around the U.S., all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand,” she added. “We didn't expect that. It just exploded in a wonderful way.”

'Design an alien' 

One of the K-12 team’s biggest fans lives in the state of Michigan: Anne Tapp Jaksa is a professor at Saginaw Valley State University, where she’s training the next generation of educators.

Among other things, Tapp Jaksa appreciates that the JPL resources often weave in other subjects, such as social science and English.

“The materials [the K-12 team] created are just exemplary,” she told LAist. Many of the activities Tapp Jaksa models for her students were created by Lutz and her colleagues.

When Tapp Jaksa had the opportunity to go on sabbatical, she spent a semester at JPL. Under the K-12 team’s guidance, she created learning materials of her own, including “Design an Alien,” inspired by Jupiter's icy moon, Europa. The lesson is rooted in observations by NASA spacecraft, which found that the moon has features that are interesting to scientists who are exploring the possibility of life beyond Earth.

Tapp Jaksa’s lesson, designed for grades 2-8, teaches students about the elements that are required to sustain life. It instructs teachers to “Have students imagine what an alien plant or animal would look like to survive in the environment . . . Would an alien animal need to have feet, fins, or a radiation shield? Would an alien plant have a large trunk or huge leaves?” That lesson includes illustrated dice to turn it into a game.

An onramp for students into the sciences

Tavernier and his colleagues also wanted to push students to have a broader notion of who could become a scientist. 

For the little ones, “I wanted to show students examples of a broad and diverse group of people who are in those types of roles, to show that anybody can be a scientist or an engineer, but, also, to share with them that these are everyday people,” he said.

Tavernier loved when kids asked difficult questions.

“There's this idea that if you work at NASA, you know everything and you're a genius. And the reality is that everybody is there because they are passionate about what they do,” he said. “And so, I loved it when kids asked me questions and I didn't know the answer, because then I could say: ‘Well, I don't know the answer. Maybe you can look it up.’ Or, if nobody knew the answer, ‘Maybe you can become a scientist or an engineer and help us answer that question someday.’"

Following a lesson created by JPL's K-12 team, students at Carpenter Community Charter School used pinhole cameras to safely watch a solar eclipse.

(

Courtesy Lauren Manning

)

For older students, the team created a high school internship. Lutz and her manager saw it as an important opportunity, especially as budget cuts threatened such opportunities at NASA.

Lutz looked into which school districts had been allotted state and federal workforce development grants. She reached out to those within a 50-mile radius of JPL’s campus in La Cañada Flintridge.

“There are smart kids at every school,” she said, “and we wanted to work with students who may not might not have otherwise found their way to JPL.”

Over the last decade, Lutz and her team brought in summer interns from Glendale, El Monte, El Segundo, Pasadena, and Santa Ana.

“They just let us loose on this government facility!” said Pedro, a student from Santa Ana Unified School District who interned last summer.

“It’s always a blast going into the cafeteria and meeting with mentors, and then their colleagues, and getting to see, like, their life experience,” he added.

“There’s so much to look at here,” said Regina, also a student at Santa Unified. “There was never a dull day in this internship . . . You could just go into [a] building and be, like, ‘Hey! I’m an intern. Do you have time to talk?’”

For a teenager “to walk into a professional organization and work eight hours a day and be part of a team and be treated as a peer is a real shift from being in a classroom,” Lutz said.

When high school students first arrive, she added, “they're excited, but they're nervous. They're afraid they won't do well, or they're not sure what they've gotten into.” But by the eighth week, “they're walking around like they own the place. They are giving presentations to rooms full of scientists and engineers, fielding questions like professionals.”

JPL was scheduled to have another batch of high school students from Santa Ana in 2025. That will no longer be the case. (Santa Ana Unified declined to comment.)

When Lutz found out she was being let go, she immediately reached out to the district, before she lost access to her JPL email.

A source of professional development

Lauren Manning is a fourth grade teacher and the coach of the robotics team at Carpenter Community Charter School in Studio City.

She routinely takes students on field trips to JPL and makes wide use of the resources Lutz, Rodriguez, Tavernier, and web producer Kim Orr created.

One of Manning’s favorite lessons involves teaching students how to build a proper spacecraft lander — an essential skill when “touch[ing] down on the Moon, Mars, or another world of your choosing.”

Lauren Manning attended numerous professional development sessions hosted by JPL's K-12 team.

(

Courtesy Lauren Manning

)

“You have two marshmallows inside of a cup that represent astronauts,” Manning said. “And so, you have to drop [your lander] from a meter above the ground. And the astronauts can't fall out or get hurt.”

Manning loves lessons like these because, for students, “having something that they can touch, that they can see with their own eyes, makes learning that much more fun. And they can understand the concepts so much better when you're doing these activities, instead of just teaching from a textbook.”

Above all, Manning appreciated the K-12 team’s Saturday morning professional development sessions.

“First of all, it's cool being at JPL,” she said. “You're around like-minded people who are interested in bringing science into the classroom. And then we went right into the activities, where they weren't just talking about the activities, but we actually got to do [them] together.”

Rodriguez said those sessions were a way to share ideas in a way that also helped JPL. “We learned together, we found creative ways to make impactful content, to deliver it to students, and to promote science education.”

Thanks to Lutz and her team, Manning became certified to borrow meteor rocks and moon samples from JPL. She also noted that “Ota and Brandon were the first people [who] taught me about robots and coding at a professional development, and now I coach a robotics team that competes in tournaments.”

“That could have never been possible without them opening up my eyes to something new,” Manning said. “They've completely changed my trajectory as an educator.”

Students in Manning's class used paper cups, cardboard, and other everyday materials to design their own landers.

(

Courtesy Lauren Manning

)

In an email statement, Matthew Segal, JPL’s news chief, said that while the research center “cannot currently support teacher trainings,” the education website “will continue to feature updated resources.” Segal noted that it features “200 lesson plans, more than 50 student projects, and almost five dozen ‘Teachable Moments’ directly related to space topics.”

Manning said she’s nervous about where she’ll get that assistance in the future. “And I'm just really, really sad to not have their partnership and work with them anymore,” she added.

Lutz and her colleagues are proud of that effort.

“I think we had the opportunity to make a difference, and we did,” she said. “And I'm sorry we won't be doing that anymore.”

K-12 reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this story.

Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."

Every year in Santa Ana, Luis Cantabrana turns the front of his home into an elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe that draws hundreds of visitors.

Along the front of the house, the multi-colored altar is filled with lights, flowers and a stained-glass tapestry behind a sculpture of the Lady of Guadalupe. Cantabrana’s roof also is lit up with the green, white and red lights that spell out “Virgen de Guadalupe” and a cross.

Visitors are welcomed with music and the smell of roses as they celebrate the saint, but this year’s gathering comes after a dark year for immigrant communities.

Luis Cantabrana stands in front of the stunning altar he built in front of his home in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Every year, his display draws hundreds of visitors.

(

Destiny Torres

/

LAist

)

Why do they celebrate? 

In 1513, the Virgin Mary appeared before St. Juan Diego between Dec. 9 and Dec. 12, asking him to build a church in her honor. Her image — a brown-skinned woman wearing a green veil with her hands together in prayer and an angel at her feet — miraculously appeared on his cloak.

To celebrate in Santa Ana, worshippers gathered late-night Wednesday and in the very early hours Dec. 12 to pray the rosary, sing hymns and celebrate the saint.

Cantabrana has hosted worshippers at his home for 27 years — 17 in Santa Ana.

The altar started out small, he said, and over the years, he added a fabric background, more lights and flowers (lots and lots of flowers).

“It started with me making a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe that while I had life and a home to build an altar, that I would do it,” Cantabrana said. “Everything you see in photos and videos is pretty, but when you come and see it live, it's more than pretty. It's beautiful.”

The Santa Ana home's elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe draws hundreds of visitors each year.

(

Destiny Torres

/

LAist

)

Gathering in a time of turmoil 

Many also look to the Lady of Guadalupe for protection, especially at a time when federal enforcement has rattled immigrant communities.

“People don’t want to go to work, they don’t want to take their kids to school, but the love we have for our Virgen de Guadalupe,” Cantabrana said. “We see that la Virgen de Guadalupe has a lot of power, and so we know immigration [enforcement] won’t come here.”

Margarita Lopez of Garden Grove has been visiting the altar for three years with her husband. She’s been celebrating the Virgencita since she was a young girl. Honoring the saint is as important now as ever, she said.

“We ask, and she performs miracles,” Lopez said.

Claudia Tapia, a lifelong Santa Ana resident, said the Virgin Mary represents strength.

“Right now, with everything going on, a lot of our families [have] turned and prayed to the Virgen for strength during these times,” Tapia said. “She's a very strong symbol of Mexican culture, of unity, of faith and of resilience.”

See it for yourself

The shrine will stay up into the new year on the corner of Broadway and Camile Street.

California’s unemployment agency kept paying cellphone bills for 4 1/2 years without checking whether its workers actually were using the devices.

That’s how it racked up $4.6 million in fees for mobile devices its workers were not using, according to a new state audit detailing wasteful spending at several government agencies.

The Employment Development Department’s excessive cellphone bills date to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it shifted call center employees to remote work and faced pressure to release benefits to millions of suddenly unemployed Californians.

It acquired 7,224 cellphones and wireless hotspots by December 2020. State auditors analyzed 54 months of invoices since then and found half the devices were unused for at least two years, 25% were unused for three years and 99 of them were never used at all.

The investigation, which auditors opened after receiving a tip, identified 6,285 devices that were unused for at least four consecutive months, and said the department spent $4.6 million on monthly service fees for them.

From the beginning, the department had about 2,000 more cellphones than call center employees, according to the audit. The gap widened over time after the pandemic ended and the department’s staffing returned to its normal headcount.

As of April, the audit said the department had 1,787 unemployment call center employees, but was paying monthly service fees for 5,097 mobile devices.

“Although obtaining the mobile devices during COVID-19 may have been a good idea to serve the public, continuing to pay the monthly service fees for so many unused devices, especially post-COVID-19, was wasteful,” the audit said.

Department officials told auditors they were unaware of the spending, but auditors pointed to regular invoices from Verizon that showed which phones were not being used.

“We would have expected EDD management to have reconsidered the need to pay the monthly service fees for so many devices that had no voice, message, or data usage,” the audit said.

The unemployment department began acting on the auditors’ findings in April, when it canceled service plans for 2,825 devices. It has since implemented a policy to terminate service plans for devices that go unused for 90 days.

The California state auditor highlighted the mobile devices in its regular report on “improper activities by state agencies and employees.” The audit also showed that the California Air Resources Board overpaid an employee who was on extended leave as he prepared to retire by $171,000.

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