The Brief

Since last spring, Los Angeles community colleges have been rolling out a number of classes in Spanish — not classes to learn Spanish, but classes where Spanish speakers can learn other subjects.

The expansion of “in-language” classes is part of a national effort to better serve community college students whose first language isn’t English. This population is “a large and growing segment of the community college student population,” whose educational needs have not been widely evaluated.

And in California, the movement is also a reversal of nearly a century and a half of policy that has minimized Spanish, since the state’s constitution was ratified in 1879.

To understand the reversal at LACCD, though, one must start with a family’s move to Los Angeles.

Educated, but not in English

On a recent visit to his childhood home in South Los Angeles, 50-year-old Gabriel Buelna heard his parents talk at the dinner table about one of the biggest challenges they faced when they came to L.A. in the mid-1960s.

“I understood a little bit of English, not a lot,” his mother Lilia Buelna said. She had taken office skills classes in Mexico for four years and worked for an engineering firm in Tijuana before moving to L.A.

Her search for English classes had as much to do with navigating life in her new home, she said, as it did with continuing her education.

“[I wanted] to earn my high school diploma and from there study something else, like business,” she said.

She and her husband, Enrique Buelna, moved into the South L.A. house after they married in 1963. He’d lived there for about five years and also struggled to find classes beyond the rudimentary language skills. They said the classes they found at the local church, high school, and community college didn’t build on the education both already had.

A 1963 wedding portrait of Gabriel Buelna’s parents: Lilia and Enrique Buelna, who married in Tijuana, Mexico, where this picture was taken.

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“They didn’t teach well. I wasn’t satisfied [with the classes]. [Teachers] would tell you ‘Write dog 20 times,’” Enrique Buelna said.

In Mexico, he’d also taken office skills courses and worked in Mexico’s equivalent of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. In the United States he worked for a furniture manufacturer that was eventually bought and run by the employees, including him. He said he wishes he could have overcome the English language barrier to take business administration classes, because that would have prepared him for the kind of decisions he’d have to make at the furniture business.

“Knowing what to do if someone gave you a bogus check or how to deal with vendors. I had little knowledge of buying and selling [at that level],” Buelna said.

It ended up costing him and the other owners of the company a lot.

Enrique Buelna, 90, went to various schools to learn English, but was unsatisfied with the quality of classes, he says. In 1983, the sofa factory he owned burned down and Buelna lost everything. “I wish I would’ve known more about insurance, and the laws — but there was always that language barrier that made it hard to know what I needed for myself and my business.”

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“We forgot to buy insurance,” Enrique Buelna said. A fire, he said, destroyed most of the business.

Their son, Gabriel Buelna, hears these stories differently now than he did when he was a kid. He practices family law, holds a doctorate in political science and teaches Chicano studies classes at CSU Northridge.

“Their capacity was hindered. There was an immigrant ceiling … they come from Mexico with some level of education … they're trying to enter the business class, they're trying to do that and the language component is the biggest anchor,” he said.

But it’s the hat he’s been wearing since 2017 that he’s used to turn his parents’ experiences, and his opinions and views of the immigrant experience, into change for public higher education. That’s when Buelna was elected trustee for the L.A. Community College District board, the policymaking body for nine campuses that enroll over 200,000 students.

“The narrative has shifted from [my parents’ time], which was ‘too bad, so sad, learn English … you're in the United States’ to where now I think the question is, do we as leaders have an obligation to allow all of our citizens to hit their maximum capacity … for folks to do that in a way that works for them,” he said.

Lilia Buelna, 78, studied business and accounting in Sinaloa, Mexico, where she is from. When Buelna moved to the United States, she taught herself English by reading the dictionary and frequenting Catholic parish ministries throughout South Los Angeles. Buelna still keeps English dictionaries around the house.

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Last year, in a one-year term as board president, Buelna expanded the number of career and technical classes offered in foreign languages, the vast majority in Spanish, and called them “in-language” classes.

Buelna and district administrators sidestepped a state requirement that students enrolled in these classes also be enrolled in English as a second language classes. They justified the action by saying that their institution should remove barriers that exist for students to enroll in career education classes, and if English is one of those barriers, then the classes should be offered in the students’ native language.

By the numbers

Classes are mostly in Spanish, but some are taught in both English and Spanish while others are in Armenian, Russian, Mandarin and Korean, Buelna said.

The classes first rolled out on a small scale this past winter, with 313 students enrolled in 15 language classes. Enrollment grew to almost 1,500 students in 59 classes in spring. Enrollment in this fall semester’s 30 in-language classes hit a high of 1,572 students as of Sept. 6, according to Buelna.

The classes have ranged from automotive, culinary, and sewing to a variety of office skills classes, such as intro to spreadsheets.

A survey conducted by the community college district suggested the classes are tapping into an unmet need. About 75% of respondents said they speak two or more languages at home, the most common by far (74%) being Spanish. Armenian, Tagalog, Russian, Chinese languages, and French each were spoken by roughly 3% of respondents.

Nearly two thirds of respondents said they would be interested in taking classes in a language other than English. The most popular subjects chosen were education, health sciences, business and arts.

The survey also revealed resistance. Nearly 20% of respondents said they would not take such a class.

“I’m totally against the classes being taught [in] other than English except foreign languages. We should be united using a language,” one respondent answered.

What an in-language class is like

There are two groups of people waiting to be admitted to the Mexican consulate next to L.A.’s MacArthur Park. The first group is there to process passports and other government documents. The second, much smaller group by an unmarked door, is waiting to be let into Vocational Education 320: Overview of Health Sectors & In Home Support Services, a class offered by East Los Angeles College in conjunction with the consulate.

“Yesterday we talked about the different nursing careers,” class instructor Adrianne Villalvazo said, in Spanish, to 16 people in one of the consulate’s meeting rooms as class begins.

Villalvazo finished medical school a few years ago, she said, and plans to practice family medicine. During the three-hour class, she shows students a video in Spanish that explains a phlebotomist’s training to draw blood, shows a chart listing the average pay for health careers, and listens as one of the students stands in front of the class with hand-drawn illustrations and explains the work of a physical therapist.

Dulce Guzman presented that last one. She moved to L.A. from Mexico City 15 years ago. “I like learning in general,” she said. “I also want to learn about the elderly because I notice that they’re among the most neglected in our communities.”

“I knew I had one year to get policies done,” Gabriel Buelna said, regarding his re-election for the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees in 2022. “With that one year, I took advantage.”

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Since arriving in L.A. she’s worked in restaurants and cleaning hotel rooms. She currently works as a caregiver, she said, for county-provided in-home support services. Her dream is to open a child care business and to earn her caregiving certification.

“My calling right now in my heart, the universe is telling me right now, to take care of older people, I think I’m good,” said Antonio Mungia, who moved to L.A. from central Mexico 23 years ago. He’s worked in restaurants and had an office job after taking an office skills course. His most recent job was taking care of a terminally ill woman who died while he was taking this class.

He hopes to learn how to take blood pressure, administer oxygen, and the ins and outs of adult diapers. He chose this class because it’s given in Spanish.

“There is nothing like learning in your own language, the language you were born with, the language that you speak,” he said.

Sacramento may scale L.A. offerings

By state law, English is to be the language of instruction in California community colleges; students who take classes in languages other than English (except those to learn a foreign language) must also enroll in English as a second language classes.

But that English-only policy was born out of xenophobic times in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

“Many California community colleges are technically Hispanic-Serving Institutions,” which means they enroll a certain percentage of Hispanic students, said Federick Ngo, a higher education policy expert at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“Those institutions are kind of grappling with their identity and their mission in light of who they're actually enrolling, and so it does make sense that if you have a large Spanish-speaking population, that you would want to perhaps expand course offerings [in Spanish],” he said.

Other experts say that creating a learning space in a student’s native language increases the opportunities for learning success which in turn nurtures excitement about learning and understanding.

More community colleges may be on their way to creating such spaces.

California Assembly Bill 1096, authored by Assemblyman Mike Fong, is making its way through the legislative process. If approved, it would suspend the English as a second language requirement in community colleges.

LACCD Trustee Gabriel Buelna wants to see in-language instruction expanded to math, biology, literature, and other classes in order “to meet that need [to learn], and for language rights to be seen as equal and not second or third class,” he said.

The number of people in the U.S. who speak a language other than English has been rising. LACCD’s in-language classes are set to help adult learners enter work places where the ability to speak multiple languages is an asset.

“It seems to me to be a very student-centered approach, responsive to [LACCD’s] local labor markets and communities,” said Nikki Edgecombe, a research scholar at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College in New York.

Edgecombe added that LACCD is further along in this effort than other institutions of which she’s aware. The next step, she said, is to measure whether students taking these classes reached their job and education goals and, if so, what will expansion of these classes mean for the surrounding areas.

“How can we affirm the linguistic diversity of our communities and leverage that linguistic diversity to support healthy communities, to have more workers with some post-secondary training that can then work in support and serve those communities better?” she said.

“Una persona que sabe dos idiomas vale más,” said 90-year-old Enrique Buelna as he talked about making sure his kids spoke English and Spanish. The phrase translates to, “A person who knows two languages is worth more.”

The key word is worth. His son Gabriel believes Spanish speakers have been seeking the return of self-worth that nearly a century and a half of public policies have taken away from them.

As water agencies across California grapple with the increasingly extreme effects of climate change, they’re also facing another problem: the incoming “silver tsunami.”

That’s the phrase coined by the industry to illustrate the fact that much of the workforce — largely baby boomers — that keeps our water flowing and safe are getting ready to retire.

Nationwide, about a third of the nation’s water workforce is eligible for retirement within the next decade, “the majority being workers with trade jobs in mission critical positions,” the Environmental Protection Agency wrote in a 2024 report.

Climate resilience needs a workforce

To deal with how pollution in our atmosphere is driving longer, hotter droughts, as well as increasingly intense rain when it does come, water agencies across Southern California are working to boost aging infrastructure and invest in more diverse water supplies, such as recycled water.

The lack of people to staff those changes is a problem for pretty much every water agency, urban and rural.

L.A. is the second-largest city in the nation and is spending billions on water recycling and stormwater capture, for example, but it has been struggling to fill needed positions at its four wastewater treatment plants.

The city of L.A. plans to clean all wastewater that flows to the Hyperion plant.

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The city plans to treat nearly all of the Hyperion wastewater facility’s water to drinkable standards in the coming decades. To support that massive expansion, Hi-Sang Kim, the operations director at Hyperion, told LAist in 2022 the facility will need to boost its workforce by at least 30%.

For less urban water agencies, the challenge is even greater. The Eastern Municipal Water District serves close to 1 million people (and growing), as well as agricultural customers in western Riverside County and northern San Diego County.

They estimate as much as half of their workforce could retire within five years.

“Not only are we investing in new infrastructure, but we have aging infrastructure, so we are in dire need of technical skill sets to operate, maintain everything from treatment plants to pipelines, to pump stations,” said Joe Mouawad, the water district's general manager.

Jobs in the water industry — potable water and wastewater treatment operators, engineers, managers, skilled maintenance, public relations and more — are well paid and secure, Mouawad said, but it’s hard to fill the needed positions.

“We are finding it more challenging to backfill retirees,” he said. “It's not so much a lack of interest — I think it's a lack of awareness.”

Building a pipeline for water jobs

Those job gaps are why Eastern Municipal has become a leader in building the water workforce pipeline. For decades, the water district partnered with local schools to provide education about water conservation and what they do. But over the last decade, as the retirement forecast grew more dire, the agency has shifted to prioritize skills-based programming and partnerships with local high schools.

Local high school students tour Eastern Municipal Water District facilities in Perris.

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In 2013, they launched the Youth Ecology Corps program, for young adults between 18 and 24. Many who went through the program and paid internships are now full-time employees, said Calen Daniels, a spokesperson for the agency, who himself went through the program.

In recent years, the water agency has focused on younger potential future employees through a variety of Career and Technical Education programs at local high schools, including in automotive tech, engineering, agriculture, construction and information systems, said Erin Guerrero, Eastern Municipal’s public affairs manager overseeing its education programs.

“We're starting earlier and getting these kids real world experience,” Guerrero said.

Michelle Serrano teaches a two-year pre-apprenticeship Environmental Water Resources program at West Valley High School in Hemet. Students leave the program equipped to take the state-level certification exam for a job as a water treatment operator or water distribution operator once they turn 18.

Clayton Gordon, GIS mapping administrator at EMWD, talks to West Valley High students in the GIS Engineering certification summer program.

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Already more than 200 students have gone through the program since it launched last year. While local community colleges have similar Career and Technical Education programs, this is the first program of its kind targeting high schoolers in the region. Eastern Municipal hopes to expand to other area schools as well.

“Once the kids get out of the program, they're set if this is the direction they want to go,” Serrano said. “We have these students set for a job or a career for the rest of their life.”

She said the program is a gamechanger for students who don’t see themselves going to college or who are unsure of their future career path.

“We really are pushing hard for college, and that's a good push,” Serrano said. “However, we have kids who don't see themselves going to college.  It's opening up an amazing path for students who otherwise may not see a job direction.”

They’re not only finding a stable career path, she said, but fulfilling roles necessary to our society, Mouawad said.

“It's working for us,” he said, “and we want to see this serve as a model for the rest of the industry.”

It takes an icon to know an icon. If you haven’t seen the new Harry Styles video, check it out and you’ll recognize downtown’s Westin Bonaventure in a starring role. The hotel has been in plenty of movies — including True Lies — and now it’s the stage for Styles’ music video for his new single, “Aperture.” Fiona Ng takes you behind the scenes.

Speaking of cool movie settings, Kristen Stewart bought the abandoned Highland Theatre and plans to restore it to its original grandeur. Good news for film lovers.

On tap in the music space this week, Licorice Pizza recommendations include new wave goddess Dale Bozzio and her Missing Persons at the Whisky, rock goddess Melissa Etheridge at the Canyon Club in Agoura or Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera in conversation onstage at the Roxy — all on Wednesday. Thursday, experimental hip-hop group Clipping is at the Observatory, Atmosphere is at the Novo, UK singer-songwriter Erin LeCount plays the Roxy and Long Beach Dub All Stars & Bedouin Soundclash hit the stage at the Wayfarer. Plus, Aloe Blacc kicks off the first of four nights at the Blue Note.

Elsewhere on LAist, you can find out about the push to make local beaches into a national park, read up on Sinners producer Sev Ohanian’s rise in Hollywood and find the best spots for a fun Galentine’s Day.

Events

Game Night

Tuesday, February 10, 7:30 p.m.
Cheerio Collective
5917 N. Figueroa Street, Highland Park 
COST: $25; MORE INFO

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Channel family game night with new friends over drinks in Highland Park at this classic board game night with Cat Darling Agency and Asian American Collective. Play Connect Four, Jenga and Uno while meeting some folks and enjoying a free drink!

Concert reading of Dogfight

Through Sunday, February 15
The Morgan-Wixson Theatre 
2627 Pico Plvd., Santa Monica 
COST: $23; MORE INFO 

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Before there was The Greatest Showman, there was Dogfight. Benji Pasek and Justin Paul’s musical about a group of young Marines in San Francisco on the eve of the war in Vietnam is presented in a concert reading at Santa Monica’s Morgan-Wixson Theatre. Dogfight “explores themes of love, loss, and coming of age.”

OXY LIVE! with Robin Coste Lewis in conversation with Alexandra Grant

Tuesday, February 10, 7 p.m. 
Thorne Hall 
Thorne Road, Occidental College 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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National Book Award winner and former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles Robin Coste Lewis visits Occidental College for poetry and conversation with Oxy Live's host, celebrated visual artist and cultural collaborator Alexandra Grant (you may recognize her from excellent grantLove series… and her red carpet photos with beau Keanu Reeves). A book signing hosted by beloved Pasadena bookstore Octavia’s Bookshelf will follow, and attendees will have the opportunity to have their books signed by the author.

Dance at the Odyssey

Through Sunday, February 15
2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A.
COST: $28; MORE INFO 

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Next weekend is the last weekend of Odyssey Theatre’s six-week-long Dance at the Odyssey festival, which features two world premieres: Silent Fiction from Intrepid Dance Project in Odyssey 2, and One World from choreographer Hannah Millar and her Imprints company in Odyssey 3.

Author Lindsay Jill Roth with Dr. Laura Berman

Thursday, February 12, 6 p.m. 
Zibby’s Bookstore
1113 Montana Ave., Santa Monica 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and author Lindsay Jill Roth has the questions that will make your new (or long-term!) relationship last. Her new book, Romances & Practicalities, lays out 250 questions you should ask each other to make your love a time- and challenge-tested success — alongside Roth’s own long-distance love story and interviews with couples of all stripes. She’s in conversation with love, sex and relationship therapist Dr. Laura Berman at Zibby’s in Santa Monica.

An evening in conversation with Silversun Pickups’ Brian Aubert & Producer and Musician Butch Vig

Wednesday, February 11, 7 p.m. 
Sid the Cat 
1022 El Centro Street, South Pasadena
COST: $32.75; MORE INFO

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Hometown heroes Silversun Pickups are back with a new album and tour — catch them this week for free at Amoeba’s in-store show on Monday. Then dive deep at this conversation at the new Sid the Cat venue between singer Brian Aubert and producer and musician Butch Vg about the making of their new album, Tenterhooks. Plus, Lyndsey Parker of Licorice Pizza (friend of Best Things to Do) will moderate the chat.

Stronger Together: Nurturing Mind, Body, and Spirit

Monday, February 9, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
St. Monica Catholic Community Grand Pavilion 
725 California Ave., Santa Monica
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Recovery is an ongoing process, and the medical and spiritual communities of L.A. are reminding you they're here to help. Providence Saint John’s Health Center and St. Monica Catholic Community are marking the anniversary of the Palisades and Eaton fires with an evening of community, commemoration and healing.

The logic behind electric vehicles benefiting public health has long been solid: More EVs means fewer internal combustion engines on the road and a reduction in harmful tailpipe emissions. But now researchers have confirmed, to the greatest extent yet, that this is indeed what’s actually happening on the ground. What’s more, they found that even relatively small upticks in EV adoption can have a measurably positive impact on a community.

Whereas previous work has largely been based on modeling, a study published in January in the journal Lancet Planetary Health used satellites to measure actual emissions. The study, conducted between 2019 and 2023, focused on California, which has among the highest rates of EV use in the country, and nitrogen dioxide, one of the gases released during combustion, including when fossil fuels are burned. Exposure to the pollutant can contribute to heart and lung issues or even premature death. Across nearly 1,700 ZIP codes, the analysis showed that for every increase of 200 electric vehicles, nitrogen dioxide emissions decreased by 1.1%.

“A pretty small addition of cars at the ZIP code level led to a decline in air pollution,” said Sandrah Eckel, a public health professor at USC’s Keck School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “It’s remarkable.”

The group had tried to establish this link using Environmental Protection Agency air monitors before, but because there are only about 100 of them in California, the results weren’t statistically significant. The data also were from 2013 through 2019, when there were fewer electric vehicles on the road. Although the satellite instrument they ultimately used only detected nitrogen dioxide, it did allow researchers to gather data for virtually the entire state, and this time the findings were clear.

“It’s making a real difference in our neighborhoods,” said Eckel, who said a methodology like theirs could be used anywhere in the world. The advent of such powerful satellites allows scientists to look at other sources of emissions, such as factories or homes too. “It’s a revolutionary approach.”

Mary Johnson, who researches environmental health at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was not involved in the study, said she’s not aware of a similar study of this size, or one that uses satellite data so extensively. “Their analysis seems sound,” she said, noting that the authors controlled for variables such as the COVID-19 pandemic and shifts toward working from home.

The results, Johnson added, “totally make sense” and align with other research in this area.

When London implemented congestion pricing in 2003, for example, it reduced traffic and emissions and increased life expectancy. That is the direction this latest research could go too.

“They didn’t take the next step and look at health data,” she said, “which I think would be interesting.”

Daniel Horton, who leads Northwestern University’s climate change research group, also sees value in this latest work.

“The results help to confirm the sort of predictions that numerical air quality modelers have been making for the past decade,” he said, adding that it could also lay the foundation for similar research. “This proof of concept paper is a great start and augurs good things to come.”

Eckel hopes that, eventually, advances in satellite technology will allow for more widespread detection of other types of emissions too, such as fine particulate matter. That could even help account for some of the potential downsides of EVs, which are heavier and could therefore kick up more tire or brake dust than their gasoline counterparts. On the whole, though, she believes the picture overwhelmingly illustrates how driving an electric car is better not just for the planet but for people.

Research like this, she says, underscores the importance of continued EV adoption, the sales of which have slumped recently, and the need to do so equitably. Although lower-income neighborhoods have historically borne the brunt of pollution from highways and traffic, they can’t always afford the relatively high cost of EVs. Eckel hopes that research like this can help guide policymakers.

“There are concerns that some of the communities that really stand to benefit the most from reductions in air pollution are also some of the communities that are really at risk of being left behind in the transition,” she said.

Previous research has shown that EVs could alleviate harms such as asthma in children, and detailed data like this latest study can help highlight both where more work needs to be done and what’s working.

“It’s really exciting that we were able to show that there were these measurable improvements in the air that we’re all breathing,” she said.

Another arguably hopeful finding was that the median increase in electric vehicle usage during the study was 272 per ZIP code.

That, Eckel says, means there is plenty of opportunity to make our air even cleaner.

Victor Villa brought his taco cart to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime performance.

Los Angeles residents likely know the name — Villa's Tacos is an award-winning taco business based in Highland Park. Villa began in his grandmother's front yard and now has brick-and-mortar locations in Highland Park, off Figueroa Avenue, and at Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles.

The restaurant has won L.A. Taco's Taco Madness championship three times (2021, 2022 and 2024) and earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand award for three consecutive years for its signature quesotacos.

A celebration of Latino culture

The entire performance was a celebration of Latin American culture's prominence in the United States, with Bad Bunny taking a moment to recognize Spanish-speaking countries worldwide.

Villa appeared during the opening number, "Tití me preguntó" from Bad Bunny's 2022 album "Un verano sin ti." In the sequence, Bad Bunny visits a piragüero cart — piraguas are iconic Puerto Rican shaved ice treats shaped like pyramids — before the camera pans to Villa and his cart, where Bad Bunny hands him the frozen treat. The moment bridges two beloved Latin American street food traditions: Puerto Rico's piraguas and L.A.'s taco culture.

'An absolute honor'

After the performance aired, Villa took to Instagram to express his thanks and call it a historic moment, He traced his journey from selling his first taco more than eight years ago to the Super Bowl stage.

"I want to give a huge thank you to @badbunnypr for hand selecting me & allowing me to represent my people, my culture, my family & my business," Villa wrote on Instagram.

'A product of immigrants'

As a first-generation Mexican American, he dedicated the moment to the immigrants who made it possible, emphasizing that Villa's Tacos is a product of immigration and that he is honored to represent his culture and all taqueros and Latinos everywhere. The post closed with shoutouts to Puerto Rico, Mexico, and all Latinos.

In August last year, Villa appeared on a Food Friday segment on LAist 89.3's AirTalk, bringing his freshly cooked tacos for host Josie Huang.