The Brief

On Friday, Sept. 15, Atwater Avenue Elementary school parents and students learned that three teachers could have to leave the school more than a month into the academic year.

The shuffling was a result of “Norm Day,” a longstanding student tallying practice that’s rankled parents and educators for decades.

“I'm a huge supporter and proponent of my kids going to public school, but frankly policies like Norm Day make the public school system in L.A. feel a bit unstable,” said Daniel Addelson, who has two children at the Atwater Village school.

If a school has fewer students enrolled than previously expected, teachers can be displaced and classes are re-arranged.

“Norm Day strikes fear in the heart of administrators,” said LAUSD Board Member Scott Schmerelson, a former middle school principal at L.A. schools for more than a decade. He now represents the West San Fernando Valley and North Hollywood.

LAUSD has yet to provide the district-wide totals from this year’s Norm Day count, though the results have reshaped some schools over the last few months.

But as Atwater Avenue Elementary School families learned, the initial consequences of the Norm Day count are not always final. The district can retain teachers even when their enrollment falls below expected levels.

What is Norm Day?

The way schools count students is deceptively complicated and has tangible consequences.

California funds schools based on how many students, on average, show up in the classroom each day. This calculation is called average daily enrollment.

“The school has to have a seat for every child who's enrolled whether they're paid for it or not,” said USC education professor Lawrence Picus. “It seems that we have a responsibility to ensure they have enough money to do that.”

Every year, the Los Angeles Unified School District estimates how many students will show up at its more than a thousand schools when the academic year starts in August. Those estimates are the basis for how many administrators, educators, and other staff each school employs.

California’s education code, the teacher’s union contract, and district policy influence class size and as a result, how many educators are hired. There are financial penalties for schools that exceed the maximum class sizes defined in the education code.

Class size is also shaped by other factors, including whether the school has predominantly students of color, the types of programs offered and grade level. For example, California requires one adult for every 12 students in transitional kindergarten classes.

LAUSD recalibrates its enrollment on the fifth Friday of the school year, Norm Day. This year it was Sept. 15. Other districts, including Long Beach and San Bernardino City, typically adjust their staffing earlier in the school year.

An LAUSD district spokesperson wrote in a statement that “five weeks allows schools sufficient time to enroll students for an optimal capture.”

Though that explanation eludes even longtime educators like Schmerelson, who told LAist in October that he couldn’t explain the Norm Day timing — “I don't know the answer and I won't make one up,” Schmerelson said.

School districts also report their enrollment to the California Department of Education on “Census Day”— the first Wednesday in October. If they overestimated their enrollment, that means they’ll have more staff than they have funding for — which means layoffs or reassignments.

Ahead of the Norm Day count, some schools scramble to enroll more children to keep teachers in their classrooms. Just a few students can make the difference between retaining and releasing an educator.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said in a statement last year that while “crucial,” Norm Day brings upheaval to some schools.

“The process is not community centric, student centric, or teacher centric,” Carvalho said. “There is a better way to conduct a student count and implement its results in a way that adjusts for the movement of teachers, reflects the ongoing trends of schools and better allocates resources to address community needs prior to the start of a school year.”

A spokesperson wrote in a statement after this story was published that the district is helping schools retain would-be displaced teachers with additional funding, but did not provide details.

The consequences for a school

In early September, a colorful flier posted to Atwater Avenue Elementary’s online message board advertised the school was still enrolling students. The caption was more dire. “We are still UNDER-ENROLLED and at risk of displacing TWO teachers… Please help us by getting the word out.”

On Friday, Sept.15, Principal Jorge Ríos told parents that two teachers would lose their jobs at the school. A third position on the chopping block would be funded with money originally designated for teaching assistants, but two third grade dual-language educators couldn’t be spared.

“At the gates of the front of the school, there's just kid after kid coming out and they were in tears,” Addelson said of that day’s pick-up. “They had lost a teacher and a role model that was important to them.”

One of them was his 8-year-old daughter Eliot who said goodbye to a teacher she described as “really nice” and “really helpful.”

“If there was a problem at recess she would talk about it,” Eliot said. “She would try to, like, resolve it so no one else in the class has that same problem.”

Daniel Addelson's son, Elan, left, and daughter Eliot, right, both attend Atwater Avenue Elementary School's dual-language Spanish program. "It was really just important for us that our kids grow up learning two languages," Addelson said. "We were thrilled that that was in the neighborhood."

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A group of parents spent the weekend brainstorming how to retain their school’s educators.

Neighborhood families advocated for the start of their school’s dual language Spanish program in 2017. Parents also spoke out in 2019 against the displacement of Ríos himself. The administrator ultimately stayed at the school.

“I immediately went into research mode,” said parent Kirstin Eggers. “I went deep into the L.A. Unified paperwork, contracts, and all of this information online.”

Other parents started pleading the school’s case in an online petition, through comments on the superintendent’s social media posts, and by contacting district officials, their school board representative Jackie Goldberg’s office, and journalists.

Parents become advocates for change

Norm Day outcomes have been altered before.

LAUSD gave schools more flexibility in their staffing in 2020 and allowed them to use money from the previous year and a one-time fund to save teaching positions that would have otherwise been cut after Norm Day.

Meanwhile, Addelson's daughter Eliot was assigned a new teacher, who formerly taught second grade, while some of her peers were moved into classes that combined third and fourth grade.

An LAUSD administrator with knowledge of the situation said school and district leaders were already working to mitigate the displacement of teachers when families reached out.

“When we hear from parents we always like to be responsive to them,” the administrator said.

Lori Rosales has three sons, two who currently attend Atwater Avenue Elementary and one recently left to start middle school. Her youngest child temporarily had a different teacher after Norm Day in mid-September.

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But for parents, it was unclear what resources were available to retain beloved educators.

“It was just so hard to, like, work at something and just not feel like anybody was listening to us,” said parent Lori Rosales. The former parent teacher association president stepped in to help coordinate the families’ response.

Ultimately, the Region West Superintendent’s office provided an undisclosed amount of funding to fund one of the third-grade dual language teacher positions and the school funded another according to a district spokesperson.

In her third classroom configuration of the year, Eliot was reunited with her best friend.

“I'm learning a lot more than I learned in second grade,” Eliot said. Her recent homework included practicing spelling words like sharks, carnivores, forward, and arctic.

Her dad, and other parents, are still wary of future disruptions.

“When Eliot goes to fourth grade, I don't want to have to wonder, 'Is she going to lose her teacher five weeks or six weeks into the school year again?” Addelson said.

Eliot scrolls through her third-grade homework. She likes to create dishes like mushroom stew in the video game Minecraft when she has free time on the computer.

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Kirstin Eggers’ son was among the handful of third grade students who remained in a combined fourth grade classroom even after the school restored two teachers.

“I feel like his world got very small,” Eggers said. “And yet he's also overcrowded. It kind of feels like the worst of both worlds right now. I'm trying to be patient, but it's difficult to hear.”

Eggers said the experience has her rethinking how she volunteers her time engaged with her son’s education.

“I feel really ingrained and really interested in the numbers aspect of this and the policy aspect of this,” Eggers said. “That has kind of awakened in me being an extreme advocate.”

Data center builders don’t tell the public how much water they use, according to a new report — and the industry is encroaching into water-stressed and vulnerable communities.

The report, by the think tank Next10 and researchers at Santa Clara University, finds that planned data centers — the ganglia of artificial intelligence — are spreading to regions reliant on overtapped groundwater and strained surface water, with potentially major effects in the Central and Imperial Valleys.

But, reinforcing previous studies, the researchers found that a patchwork of state, federal and local policies allows data center operators to avoid publicly disclosing their actual water use.

California lawmakers tried to address this last year, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure. Now, the legislature is trying again, with bills mandating disclosures about water use and planning.

“We have this huge build out, and we have very little data,” said Irina Raicu, who directs the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

Paired with California’s precarious water supplies, Raicu said, “It’s just not a good combination.”

Shaolei Ren, an expert on the environmental impacts of AI at UC Riverside who was not involved in the study, said the findings point to a much broader problem.

“Limited publicly available information about data center water use makes it difficult for communities, water providers and researchers to have meaningful public discussions and responsibly assess power-water trade-offs,” Ren said in an email.

Murky water use 

Few environmental impact reports for California’s data centers were publicly available online, the researchers found.

Raicu and co-author Iris Stewart-Frey, a professor of environmental science, went looking for the reports, meant to assess and disclose a project’s impacts for both nature and people under the landmark California Environmental Quality Act.

They found almost none. The ones they did find were largely for facilities in the city of Santa Clara.

Through interviews with planning officials, they discovered that projects can slip through with little environmental review if they fall under certain size or water use thresholds, or if they meet a city or county’s criteria for other approval pathways. These include something called ministerial approval, which requires planning agencies to approve a project that meets local zoning and other standards.

Even for data centers that undergo more stringent environmental scrutiny, the researchers found that documentation is rarely available to the public.

In the few cases the planning documents were posted publicly, the information — on the data center’s owner or operator, size, type of cooling system, the amount of water used, whether it’s recycled or potable — was often “missing, contradictory, or vague,” the report said.

The researchers said they contacted water providers in areas where data centers cluster, seeking usage data. None responded.

A shift to vulnerable regions

California’s data centers mostly cluster in the south San Francisco Bay Area and the city of Los Angeles, with smaller concentrations in Sacramento and San Diego.

But the report noted large, planned projects in rural and less affluent regions — like in Santa Clara County’s Gilroy, as well as in the heavily agricultural Imperial Valley.

“They need a bunch of cheap land,” Raicu. “If we’re not careful, they will end up being pitched, very convincingly, to communities that have real needs — without enough attention being paid to the water part.”

Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, which has opposed bills mandating more granular water-use reporting, said in an email the industry is “committed to being a good neighbor.”

Boender argues that data centers collectively “used significantly less water than other essential industries in 2025, including the agriculture, power, food and beverage, and semiconductor sectors,” but the coalition offers no data to back that up.

Collective use matters less than local impacts in a state where each community has its own mix of water supplies and strains, according to a previous study published by a team at UC Berkeley.

Whether data centers use a lot or a little water relative to agriculture or other industries, “what matters most is the scale of new local use compared to available local supply,” the Berkeley team concluded earlier this year. “Unfortunately, this picture is clouded by data deficiencies.”

In this week’s report, the Santa Clara University team drilled into those local supplies and community vulnerabilities to anticipated expansion.

“We’re at the brink of this happening in California,” Stewart-Frey, the environmental scientist, said. Her report, she added, isn’t advocating against data centers. But “communities should know what they’re getting themselves into.”

Debates over proposed data centers are erupting in a Kern County desert community with dwindling groundwater and in the hot Imperial Valley, which draws from the strained Colorado River. 

Monterey Park residents in the San Gabriel Valley successfully opposed one data center project over environmental concerns and inadequate information and secured an upcoming vote on a citywide ban.

In a letter to city officials, a representative for the developer dismissed opponents as “rage-baiting an uninformed mob to pressure your decisionmaking.”

Raicu pushed back. “If those communities are uninformed about the issue — whose fault is that? Who should be informing the people so that you don’t have this kind of pushback, if there is no need for it?”

New laws v. Big Tech

Last year, Assemblymember Diane Papan, a Democrat from San Mateo, authored a bill requiring data center operators to report estimated or actual water use to their water supplier when seeking or renewing a business license or permit.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure amid industry pressure, saying he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements about operational details on this sector without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of their technology.”

Now, Papan is trying again with two bills. One largely reprises last year’s measure, with additional reporting required to the city and county. The other would bar local governments from approving new or expanded data centers unless the developer discloses information about their water use and plans.

It would also set other requirements — like prohibiting development in overdrafted groundwater basins in places like the San Joaquin Valley, unless state water managers OK it.

“You cannot manage what you have not and cannot measure,” Papan said. “The public likes transparency, and they should.”

Both bills cleared a key legislative chokepoint this week but face staunch opposition from the tech industry and business groups.

“If they run out of water, guess what happens? And they can’t cool their systems — are they going to succeed?” Papan said. “To which I say, help us help you.”

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

Founders Jenny Yang and Chris Capizzi spent seven years operating as a pop-up without a brick-and-mortar location. Opening their doors to local vendors pays homage to their own roots selling at Los Angeles markets, from the Melrose Trading Post to the Pasadena Rose Bowl Flea Market.

“Mega giant online sellers have the scale and the resources and the patience and the reach to capture most people,” Capizzi said. “Whereas for us, I think we have to be really creative — we have to band together.”

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

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Yang and Capizzi’s long history of vending at markets taught them how isolating running a small business can be. At their market, they aim to build connections with each vendor and strategize the best timing and layout so everyone can succeed.

“[Amazon and Barnes & Noble] are Goliath, and we’re not even David — we’re just the ant underneath David’s foot,” Capizzi said. “I think we can do what we do and try to get as many people, at our level or even smaller, to get together.”

Weekly markets at A Good Used Book have captivated the neighborhood since its opening in October 2023, with charming names like “Sunday Funday,” “Saturday School” and “Hi-Fi Friday Night,” plus hand-drawn flyers by well-known artist Noah Harmon. Now, it’s become a weekly occurrence where LA pop-ups can display their own crafts, allowing local readers to indulge in a little more than a pocket paperback.

Each week holds a Pandora’s box of niche snacks, crafts or trinkets you didn’t know you needed, ranging from Southeast Asian-inspired trail mix to natural incense sticks to vintage Japanese audio equipment. One week you might be enticed to adopt a kitten from a rescue booth outside, another week you might impulsively get a stick-and-poke tattoo in the back of the store.

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

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Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

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On one sunny Sunday afternoon, Brandon Stanciell hand-tossed fresh pizza dough on the sidewalk outside the bookstore. His 2-year-old pop-up, Pizza Ananda, which he named after his daughter, is an homage to her and to Italian cooking, a hobby he started during paternity leave. An hour before the market closed, Stanciell had already sold out and garnished his last pepperoni-and-hot-honey pie for one lucky customer.

“I love that places like this allow us all to meet at once to share what we have and give it to the community around us,” Stanciell said.

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

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Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

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For the owners, building a community market is about deepening relationships with the people who walk through their doors. In an increasingly digital landscape, it is also a reciprocal partnership among local businesses.

“A lot of people talk about community building nowadays as a marketing strategy,” Capizzi said. “But I think the actual community building comes from talking to each vendor and each customer and being a consistent presence in the neighborhood.”

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

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Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

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While customers browsed for unique titles, Gerin del Carmen worked her booth of ceramic dishware, oyster-shaped trinket holders and vases resembling miniature boxes. As a ceramicist, del Carmen draws from her Filipino heritage, including the Balikbayan boxes that represent immigrants sending gifts to family in the Philippines.

“Sharing the community and your space is such a big deal. This is not a huge, gigantic Barnes & Noble store,” del Carmen said. “It has so much foot traffic, and the fact that [the owners] are setting up and sharing the space once or twice a week with other vendors and other artists is huge.”

Yang and Capizzi may think of themselves as an “ant underneath David’s foot,” but A Good Used Book is building a colony of vendors, rooted in community.

Whether you and your friends are looking for a brunch spot to cater to everyone's palates, or taking a trip to the historic Grand Central Market, food halls make for an easy, affordable place to satisfy cravings — especially in SoCal, where diverse selections of dishes reign supreme.

But these spaces fill a void much deeper than our appetites. They bring new life to old storefronts, factories or even airfields (see list below), and can offer a way to keep dollars within the community by becoming a hub for local businesses.

With that said, here's a short list of food halls where you'll get more than just a killer meal.

For good vibes

BLVD MRKT food hall on the corner of 6th Street and Whittier Boulevard in downtown Montebello.

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BLVD MRKT is an open-air food hall in downtown Montebello that feels like a party. The 8,500-square-foot space currently has five eateries, or "concepts" as they're known in the restaurant industry, and hosts live DJs every Friday night and Sunday during brunch. They also host Open Vinyl Night on the second and forth Tuesday of every month, where patrons get $2 off beers and margaritas from Alchemy Craft if they bring a vinyl record to be played in the BLVD courtyard.

The space is pet-friendly and has growing concepts like Los Taquero Mucho, which offers classic al pastor, grilled chicken and slow-cooked carnitas tacos, as well as specialty flavors like vegan tacos with whiskil sautéed in coconut milk, and Pork Belly Cochinita Pibil Tacos, perfect for those who crave crispy, slow-roasted pork with a hint of sweetness.

Los Taquero Mucho participates in BLVD's incubator program, run by co-founders Barney and Evelyn Santos. The program offers mentorship to local entrepreneurs until they can set up shop permanently.

Pork Belly Cochinita Pibil Tacos with salsa from Los Taquero Mucho at BLVD MRKT in Montebello.

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BLVD MRKT is part of the couple's commercial real estate development firm, Gentefy. Its mission is to invest in retail and hospitality projects that ignite economic development and revitalization in Black and brown neighborhoods.

"Blvd Mrkt is our first project," Barney Santos wrote in a text message. "It was our social proof to prove to banks, investors and cities that a socially conscious business model could exist in a traditionally overlooked area."

VCHOS Pupuseria Moderna also has a spot in the BLVD courtyard, offering handmade pupusas with filling choices such as shrimp with spinach and cheese, and tender beef birria with a side of consommé, onions and cilantro. Coffee lovers can get an Oaxacan Mocha at Cafe Santo, or stop by Cold Pizza for a wood-fired slice.

For eclectic tastes

Rodeo 39 Public Market in Stanton.

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An O.C. favorite, Rodeo 39 Public Market lives on Highway 39, also known as Beach Boulevard, in Stanton. This 40,000-square-foot space is an eclectic mix of more than 20 food and drink concepts and retailers. There are three outdoor patios and five murals, plus an arcade, tattoo shop and photo booth. Food options cover everything from Lil' Breezy's adobo breakfast burritos to Cajun crab fries at The Crawfish Hut.

Mural by artist David Flores outside of Joystix arcade at Rodeo 39 Public Market.

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Rodeo's menu choices make it well-suited for a casual weekend brunch. At its entrance sits Here & There, where you can grab a coffee or matcha latte, or try one of their signature drinks like the Iced Vienna, a combination of milk with caramelly demerara sugar and your choice of matcha or espresso, topped with sweet cream and garnished with sea salt. The result is a drink that's smooth and not too sweet.

Eggyo bulgogi egg sandwich with spicy mayo at Rodeo 39 Public Market.

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Eggyo, a recent addition to Rodeo, offers Korean corn dogs and fluffy egg sandwiches on crispy, house-baked milk bread. Try the bulgogi option with spicy mayo for a savory kick. If you crave a cocktail, venture over to CAPO, which also serves craft beer. Or just sit on one of their sun-filled patios while you decide what to try.

For a page from history

The Hangar in Long Beach.

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The Hangar is a 17,000-square-foot food hall that pays homage to Long Beach's aviation history. It sits on former Boeing Co. land where military and commercial aircraft were built. Today, it serves as a dining destination at the Long Beach Exchange Shopping Center, or LBX, neighboring the city's international airport.

This space currently has a mix of 14 food concepts and two retail shops. Patrons can enjoy local favorites outside their flagship locations, like the Joe's Special bagel sandwich from Cassidy's Corner Cafe, with bacon, egg and the star of the show — tangy jalapeño cream cheese. Fans of spice can try Jay Bird's Nashville Hot Chicken, which offers chicken sandwiches and tenders, and Blazin' Fries, all with six levels of heat.

Historic aviation photos are displayed above food concepts at The Hangar food hall at LBX in Long Beach

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Inside, there are vintage pictures of aircraft that were built at the site, and a wall of clocks showing the time in cities named Long Beach across the country.

A Pan Am Hawaii travel poster (left) and a TWA Spain travel poster (right) at the patio of The Hangar food hall.

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Outside, you'll find patio seating with umbrellas where you can sit and watch the occasional plane fly overhead. Or sit and enjoy the adjacent display of towering Pan Am and TWA posters promoting travel to Hawaii, Spain and Paris.

For fun and work

Mercado La Paloma on Grand Avenue in South L.A.

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Open since 2001, the approximately 34,000-square-foot Mercado La Paloma sits in the Figueroa corridor of South L.A., and is known for its focus on community, art and culture. From rotating art exhibits to colorful tiled tabletops, this space feels like it was made to nurture creativity.

Interior of Mercado La Paloma.

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There are meeting rooms to rent starting at $25 an hour. It's a space where locals can bring their laptop to work or study, or have a long conversation with a friend, with bites from six acclaimed restaurants.

Holbox's Erizo dish at Mercado La Paloma.

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At the Mercado, visit Holbox for Michelin-starred seafood dishes like Erizo — velvety sea urchin laid atop a bed of tender scallop ceviche. The combination is fresh, flavorful and oceanic. Tip: If you can swing it, come on a weekday to avoid a long line, or order ahead.

For something sweet, walk over to Oaxacacalifornia Cafe & Juice Bar for a Spicy Pineapple Juice with a gingery kick, or go for the classic pairing of Hot Oaxacan Chocolate, made with your choice of water or milk, and light-as-air conchas crowned with a solid layer of vanilla or chocolate streusel.