The Brief

Last week, the students of a small South Bay elementary school ate blue Takis, stamped blue handprints onto a giant tree mural and colored blue ribbons to celebrate a historic achievement.

Lucille J. Smith Elementary was nominated as a National Blue Ribbon School for closing achievement gaps on state standardized tests. The school was one of 31 in the state this year and the first in the Lawndale Elementary School District to be nominated for the award — arguably the highest honor an individual school can get from the federal government.

For more than 40 years, the federal Department of Education has presented the award at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., but in late August, the department ended the program.

The cancelation is one of many changes to U.S. education policy since President Donald Trump started his second term and eliminated a rare opportunity for a small school that serves largely low-income children of color to be recognized for excellence on a national stage.

Cristal Moore (left) has been principal at Smith Elementary for almost eight years and an educator in Lawndale for 30. The school's mascot, Charlie the Cheetah, is a more recent addition to campus.

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“We're not gonna let the administration and the current political climate [put a damper on] the great gains that this community [achieved], that the teachers and the staff, and your principal, and the parents and the kids earned with your very hard work,” Superintendent Virginia Castro said.

What it takes to become a Blue Ribbon School

In April, Principal Cristal Moore learned Smith Elementary was nominated to become a National Blue Ribbon school.

The program began in 1982 during President Ronald Reagan’s first term to recognize the nation’s top performing schools.

Specifically, Smith was highlighted for being in the top 15% of the state in its efforts to close achievement gaps.

Moore spent her spring break filling out the 25-page application. The document creates a detailed picture of the school.

• The majority of its 331 students are Latino (71%), but the school also serves one of the district’s highest concentrations of Black students (16%).  
• About a third of students are English language learners and also speak Arabic, Filipino, French, Pashto, Spanish, Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese and Amharic, a major Ethiopian language. 
• Most students qualify for free and reduced-price meals, a proxy for counting those from low-income families. 

In California and across the country, Black, Latino and low-income students, score lower than their peers on standardized tests and have yet to catch up to their pre-pandemic peers.

Statewide, California test scores for reading and math increased 1.8 percentage points last school year, but at Smith, there were double-digit increases (32.5 points in math and 27.4 points in reading and writing) schoolwide.

Moore said that no racial group, nor students from low-income families, scored more than 10 percentage points below the school’s average.

“I think a lot of times when you're involved in the day to day, you forget about really the big picture and how much you really are doing,” Moore said. “It was nice to be able to pull back and go, ‘You know, we're doing great stuff.’”

With 331 students, Smith Elementary is the smallest school in the Lawndale Elementary School District.

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Among the school’s strategies for supporting students are: small group instruction at least twice a week and meeting with students before and after school.

And there’s ongoing teacher development in the school’s “learning lab.” On the walls of the once-empty classroom, there is a card for each student with their photo, recent test scores and whether they are an English learner, have a disability or other unique need. The room is only accessible to educators.

“Historically, student data was treated as private, often eliciting anxiety or fear of judgment,” Moore wrote. “At Smith, we have worked to dismantle that mindset, reinforcing that data is a snapshot, not a final destination.”

Moore said the visualization helps educators identify struggling students and celebrate their process. A banner in the room reads: “Learning is a fiesta waiting to happen.”

The end of the Blue Ribbon program

An Alabama news outlet first reported the end of the Blue Ribbon program Aug. 29. Moore said the Department of Education confirmed the cancelation the same week she expected to learn whether the school had won.

LAist asked the department about the decision but has not received a response. A spokesperson told the education news site Chalkbeat in September that the change was “in the spirit of returning education to the states” and that local leaders were best positioned to recognize school excellence.

Yet a past winner told LAist that the award’s prestige and impact was linked to national recognition.

“It almost makes any school, including my school, feel that … now we're in the finals,” said Hing Chow, principal at Monterey Vista Elementary, which won the Blue Ribbon award in 2004 and 2020.

Like Smith, the Monterey Park elementary is a Title I school that receives additional money to support students who live in poverty.

“When we got this award, our community and staff, they were extremely proud because it really affirmed … that there were results,” Chow said. “It also gave us momentum to aspire to better results.”

The art teacher at a Lawndale middle school made hundreds of custom blue ribbons for Smith students, teachers and the community.

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Winning schools often incorporate Blue Ribbon into their marquees and marketing materials. The accolade is one of the first things Chow mentions in his message to families on the school’s website.

More than 9,000 schools have received the award since it began, but now, the national record of that achievement is gone along with the program’s website.

The Trump administration has worked to shut down the nation’s education department entirely, including firing hundreds of people who manage programs and funding for students with disabilities and using federal civil rights law and the upcoming budget to try to end supports for students of color and other groups.

‘Our kids deserve this’

Smith parent and PTA treasurer Sunny Tamrakar was one of few people who knew the school had been nominated and was one of the first at the school to find out about the cancelation.

“I'm not gonna lie, I was pissed. Really just furious,” Tamrakar said. “For me personally, it was just unnecessary, painful and disheartening.”

He contacted the district’s superintendent, emailed and called local and national elected officials and members of the media, including LAist.

“Let's fight for this,” Tamrakar remembered telling them. “Our kids deserve this. [The principal] deserves this. The staff deserves this. The parents deserve this. The kids deserve this.”

Smith parent and PTA treasurer Sunny Tamrakar (left) and his family. Tamrakar is the PTA treasurer and helped organize the school's Blue Ribbon celebration. “In the larger world of things that are happening, changes, good things, bad things — mostly bad things — this is an easy win,” Tamrakar said of the recognition. “This is an easy thing that makes a difference.”

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Tamrakar spearheaded the planning of a local celebration. Smith’s PTA agreed to spend about $1,000 on food, decorations and matching blue ribbon shirts with the school’s cheetah mascot for staff, which a local vendor agreed to provide at cost.

(After planning began, the California Department of Education announced it would also recognize the 2025 National Blue Ribbon Schools.)

School board members and members of the Lawndale City Council were there to congratulate the school in person, and local politicians sent honorary certificates too.

More than a hundred people gathered in the school’s courtyard, including families.

“It gives me a sense of pride knowing that my daughter goes here,” parent Monique Landrum said of the award. She’d already shared the news on a work call earlier in the day.

Landrum considered other schools before enrolling her daughter in transitional kindergarten at Smith last year.

“From the principal to the teachers to the staff, everyone here is amazing,” Landrum said. “They actually care about the children and their success. And I feel so secure and relieved that my daughter's here.”

Jada, who's in kindergarten, said she's learned her ABCs and numbers at Smith and likes to do art. "As a parent, I feel like I'm doing a good job having her in a school that is prioritizing her education and just her overall wellbeing," said her mom, Monique.

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Parents who spoke to LAist said relationships with the people working at the school were what made it special.

Melissa Villaluz’s son Kingston attended Smith; she remembered Principal Moore’s check-in calls during the pandemic.

“It's been such a journey, and I wouldn't have had it any other way,” Villaluz said.

Tania Larios’ daughters started attending the school last fall. Larios, who is currently unhoused, said the school helped provide food, clothes and gifts at Christmas. Throughout the year, the school’s social worker has helped her connect to resources, like the food bank.

“They've made my hard times a little bit easier,” Larios said. “So I'm very grateful, very grateful for them.”

Larios also joined the school’s PTA.

“I want to be part of the community,” she said. “I wanna be involved in my daughter's everything. My parents were not like that, but if I'm here for them.”

Smith parent Tania Larios and her daughters. Valerie (left) is in fourth grade and can rattle off everything she’s learned this year from division and multiplication to idioms. Her favorite part of Smith is the school’s big playground and the friends she’s made.

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Jessica Schilling has been a special education teacher for nearly three decades with the last six years at Smith.

“I was thrilled because I see the work that my colleagues and I put in every day,” Schilling said. “I have seen such growth in students every single year I've been here.”

At Smith, students with disabilities attend classes alongside their peers and also get additional support tailored to their needs.

“None of the teachers are in the mindset of like, these are your kids,” Schilling said. “Those are their kids.”

But Schilling said the celebration was also bittersweet.

“It's disappointing to hear that what's happening at the federal level is not supportive of what we're doing here,” Schilling said in response to the national award’s cancelation. “That said, to me, the honor remains. … I see that what we're doing here is valuable and important.”

How Smith Elementary is moving forward

After the celebration ended, a kindergartner named Jada walked into Principal Moore’s office to give her a package of Oreos from her stash of celebration snacks and promised to bring more for her teachers tomorrow.

“You're so generous,” Moore told Jada, giving her a hug. “Thank you, sweetie.”

Moore said this kind of interaction is common at Smith, where every student is greeted by name in the morning.

“When you can show kids that you see them, you know them and you care about them, you are increasing the likelihood of them wanting to be at school,” Moore said. “You are instilling in them a sense of confidence, self-worth, and I think that has a lingering impact.”

Moore also acknowledged that there still is more work needed to support all Smith students. For example, the largest test score disparities remain between English language learners, students with disabilities and their peers.

One of her next priorities is to double the amount of small group instruction for English and math.

“We know that progress is sometimes slow, but it requires consistency,” Moore said. “We're gonna celebrate. I'm gonna try to frame a lot of these [awards], but we're just gonna keep doing what we are doing because I think this is evidence that we're doing great things.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced several significant rule changes for the 99th Oscars, including AI protections for actors and writers as well as expanded eligibility for international films.

In a statement to NPR, the Academy on Saturday said the changes are in response to listening to the global filmmaking community and addressing barriers to entry in its eligibility process.

The Academy added that its rules and eligibility standards have always evolved alongside technologies such as sound, color, and CGI, and that AI is no different. Awards rules and guidelines are reviewed and refined each year.

A blow for Tilly Norwood 

Among the most noteworthy changes, the Academy now explicitly states that only roles, "demonstrably performed by humans with their consent" are eligible for Acting awards. In other words, AI creations like the much-hyped Tilly Norwood cannot hope to win a Best Actress Oscar anytime soon.

Particle6, the production company behind Norwood, did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment on Saturday about its creations' ban from consideration. In March, Norwood commented, "Can't wait to go to the Oscars!" in an Instagram post announcing its newly released music video.

The Academy also requires screenplays to be "human-authored" and said it reserved the right to investigate the use of generative AI in any submission.

Meanwhile, qualifying flesh-and-blood human actors can now be nominated for multiple performances in the same category if those performances get enough votes to land in the top five. So, someone like Anne Hathaway, who has five major movies scheduled for release in 2026, could now theoretically sweep the nominations – though that outcome seems extremely unlikely.

"If an actor has an extremely prolific year, might we even see someone swallow up three of the five nominations?," wrote Deadline's awards columnist and chief film critic Pete Hammond about the changes. "Probably won't happen, but it's now possible."

Under previous rules, an actor could only receive one nomination per category. If they had two high-ranking performances in Best Actor, for example, only the one with the most votes would move forward.

International films prioritizes filmmakers over countries

While international films can still be the official selection of their countries, now they can qualify by winning the top prize at a major international festival such as the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the Golden Lion at Venice, or the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

Historically, countries "owned" the nomination, and only one film per country was allowed. The new rules allow multiple films from the same country to compete if they are critically acclaimed, and it shifts the honor from a geopolitical entity to the filmmakers themselves.

Largely positive response

The changes have prompted a largely positive reaction from the film community on social media, such as on the popular The Shade Room entertainment and celebrity-focused Instagram feed, where commenters widely praised the "human-only" move to protect creative jobs.

The Academy's Awards Committee oversees the rules in tandem with branch executive committees, the International Feature Film Executive Committee and the Scientific and Technical Awards Executive Committee.

The rules are scheduled to go into effect next year, covering films released in 2026.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Los Angeles changes fast, and oftentimes that means some of the architectural relics of our shared past get swept up and paved over in all the "progress." (RIP Garden of Allah.)

But there are still places where you can find ruins that tell a tale, like a long-forgotten speakeasy reputedly for old Hollywood near La Crescenta.

The ruins are still there 

On a recent afternoon, author and local historian Mike Lawler led me just beyond the boundary of Crescenta Valley Park. Joggers like me might have seen an old, towering stone arch shrouded by bushes there — and wondered what lies beyond.

Turns out there was once a place called the Verdugo Lodge back there and Lawler has spent years excavating its history.

A car speeds away from the lodge onto New York Avenue. The stone archway that still stands can be seen in the background.

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“It was a very high-end speakeasy for a time,” Lawler, who also helps run the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley, said. “An amazing thing. And all the ruins are still here, just like this arch.”

Lawler said we don’t know exactly when the lodge was built, but we do have some of the picture starting in the late 1920s. The place was set up kind of like a timeshare where people bought 10 x 10 foot ‘tent lots’ that gave them access to on-site amenities. There was a golf course, stables, trout stream, a swimming pool — and a lodge with gambling and alcohol.

“The Crescenta Valley in the teens and '20s was a hotbed of moonshine, prostitution, all that stuff," Lawler said. "It was a quiet little community. But in all these canyons up here, stuff was going on. Illegal stuff!”

We don’t have a full guest list, but Lawler said it’s likely at least a few Hollywood types had gone up to the lodge to circumvent Prohibition era laws.

In some ways, it was kind of like the original glamping. Lawler said patrons probably weren’t doing much sleeping, though.

“They might have been unconscious!” he said with a chuckle.

Lawler led me to a road that swooped around a meadow. We passed by a massive swimming pool nestled into the hillside.

Once known as the “Crystal Pool,” it’s now empty and fenced off, with pitch black locker rooms below.

The exterior of the locker rooms for the old Crystal Pool.

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We continued our journey up the hill and eventually arrived at a cascading stone stairway.

And at the top, the big show: overgrown with orange monkey flowers and goliath agaves lies the foundation of the old Verdugo Lodge, with lofty stone fireplaces the only guardians keeping the surrounding oak trees at bay.

Lawler takes out a floorplan that one of the former owners drew up for him.

“This is what it was laid out like on the inside. So a dancehall, and band stand on that side... And then upstairs was the gambling,” Lawler said.

Lawler had in hand a copy of a Los Angeles Times article from 1933 he found. The headline reads: “Revelers Flee in Lodge Raid.”

“The police that raided it were here at 3 o'clock in the morning. And there were still 500 people here. And they said it was the classiest joint they had ever raided... Anyway, people were diving out of windows and everything,” Lawler explained.

In a ruin like this, covered with moss and overgrowth, the imagination can run wild, too.

The archway that still stands outside of what's now known as Mountain Oaks.

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Lawler pointed out a questionable door jam below the old dancefloor that’s been cemented over.

“That is a door. So what is behind there? So there’s a room in there that got walled in for some reason,” he said.

What we do know is that, sometime after the raid, the tawdry Verdugo Lodge and the surrounding land were purchased and then renamed Mountain Oaks by the Kadletzes — an entrepreneurial family who had run everything from a Turkish bath to a mini golf course. Over the next few decades, the family would rent the place out to local groups for recreational retreats.

The future of Mountain Oaks 

After they sold it in the ‘60s, Lawler said Mountain Oaks faced a “nightmare” of development threats. Over the years, some of the subdivided "tent lots" had been combined and sold off, Lawler said. A dozen private homes now stand on these pieces of land, next to the ruins of the Verdugo Lodge.

A map showing the Mountain Oaks public property acquired by The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA).

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Last year, with help from the City of Glendale, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant among other funding sources, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) put up $6.1 million to acquire 33-acres of the land — not including the private lots where the homes stand — so the public can continue to roam the meadow and ruins.

Paul Edelman, MRCA's director of natural resources and planning, said his group will continue to manage the land, doing things like brush clearance, trash pickup and sign maintenance. And he said there are no current plans to remove the ruins or make any major changes to the property.

“If somebody comes up with a grand idea where they can find some funding for us to do something to enhance it, we’re always open to it,” Edelman said.

The purchase was good news for local preservationist Joanna Linkchorst.

“I grew up directly up the hill. But I always saw the sign that said ‘private property’ and didn’t really think about it until several years ago when I finally asked Mike. And he said, ‘Oh yeah, we got a resort speakeasy down the street,’” Linkchorst said standing among the oaks and overgrowth.

Linkchorst, who founded the group Friends of Rockhaven to preserve another nearby historic site, said it’s been amazing to see all of the decaying structures that were still hiding out at Mountain Oaks.

“There’s almost like these little ghosts in your head as you imagine what it was like when there was a beautiful wood floor and there was a second floor that people came jumping out of,” Linkchorst said.

Now, let’s check in to the Overlook Hotel.

That’s the fictional place Stanley Kubrick brought to life in his 1980 film The Shining, loosely based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name.

A local architect who hails from South Pasadena meticulously crafted a 3D model of the iconic space so Shining fans everywhere never have to check out.

‘I just couldn’t stop’ 

At his day job, architect Anthony Chieh mainly works on residential and boutique commercial spaces. But over the course of five months, he spent his nights meticulously recreating a virtual replica of the Overlook Hotel from the film that first scared him when he was 12.

Of course he started with the deeply haunted Room 237. That’s where Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, has a terrifying encounter with a ghostly woman.

Chieh's 3D rendering of Room 237

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“But once I started, I just couldn’t stop,” Chieh told LAist.

“I ended up modeling the Colorado Lounge, and then after that I was thinking maybe I should make the lobby and then arriving to the Gold Room, and then Grady’s bathroom.”

“It’s like a rabbit hole,” he said.

Users who download Chieh’s free 3D model can fly through all of those spaces, immersed in atmospheric sounds and music from the film.

“It’s interesting to dive into these kind of fictional environments and try to make sense of it,” Chieh said. “And the hope is people will get a different perspective once they’re in there.”

Kubrick’s take on the Overlook was famously inspired by real hotels like the Timberline Lodge in Oregon and the Ahwahnee in Yosemite. But the interiors you see in the film were created on sound stages in England.

“Real architecture, physical buildings, are built for people to live. And for movies, these are more meant to express the emotional aspect of things. It’s a psychological construct,” Chieh said.

In a recently published video essay on YouTube, Chieh dives deep into those psychological constructs and how, as he puts it, “Kubrick designed the Overlook Hotel not as a backdrop, but as the film's true villain.”

How spaces scare 

Chieh said during the monthslong process he was reminded of the power of architecture and design in the real world too – whether it’s an uncomfortably repetitive carpet design or a claustrophobic hallway.

“A physical construct can affect your emotion,” Chieh said.

“You can use it in a way to make people feel comfortable and you can also use it in a way to create fear.”

Chieh's 3D rendering of the Torrance's apartment in 'The Shining'

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What’s next for this architect moonlighting as a 3D modeler?

Chieh says he’s thinking about giving the spaceship from “2001: A Space Odyssey" the virtual treatment next. Or maybe turning to a local non-fictional space, like the Stahl House.

That is, of course, if he can ever escape the Overlook.