The Brief

The North Valley Military Institute — a grades six-12 charter school founded in 2013 — voluntarily surrendered its charter and closed its doors permanently on Aug. 25, leaving nearly 800 students and 180 employees in the Los Angeles area without a place to learn and work.

Both NVMI officials and community activists who called for the school’s shutdown have said the closure was months in the making.

Officials of the charter school blame the closing on accommodation problems as NVMI relied on space at several LAUSD campuses. They told EdSource that their decision to surrender the charter at the Aug. 25 meeting — where five of its 10 board members also resigned — resulted from the school’s inability to secure a single, permanent campus location.

Community advocates, however, cited a long history of problems, including letters from the Los Angeles County Office of Education detailing alleged misappropriation of funds, unqualified teachers and insufficient services for students with disabilities. The advocates have also pointed to poor standardized test scores and academic performance plus widespread written complaints of bullying and sexual assaults in the school.

Community advocates who have called for NVMI’s closure over several years have also blamed the Los Angeles County Office of Education for having permitted the charter to continue operating, despite all the allegations. But LACOE spokesperson Van Nguyen said in a statement to EdSource that the county office is “committed to upholding accountability, quality education and maintaining a high standard of financial responsibility among educational institutions within our community.”

Nguyen also said in a later email that the North Valley Military Institute is one of 15 charter schools authorized by the county office of education since 1997 that has been “revoked, non-renewed, terminated and self-closed.” Only 25 of the 40 charter schools remain open.

It was not until Aug. 17 — four days before the charter school was scheduled to start the new year — that parents were notified via email that the school would be closed, but only for the 2023-24 academic year.

“As the captain of the NVMI ship, I am responsible for everything that happens or fails to happen here, and ultimately, I am singularly responsible for not being able to overcome the challenges that we have faced,” said NVMI’s superintendent, Mark Ryan, in the email to parents. “An apology is so inadequate, but I am sincerely sorry for not being able to get us over the finish line and operate this school year.”

More than 95% of students enrolled at NVMI are from underrepresented minorities, the bulk of whom are Hispanic or Latino, according to state enrollment data.

Ryan said most of the charter school’s students will not be able to attend other schools — including ones they may have previously attended — because they have been suspended, expelled or have been in juvenile hall.

Many expressed concern about how the students would fare in a different school setting.

“They pride themselves with serving students that are at risk,” said Carl Petersen, a community activist. “And … I’m afraid those kids are going to fall through the cracks.”

Despite concerns that not every student will find a school that will take them, NVMI hosted an enrollment and deployment fair for students and their families to help them determine the next steps.

More than 25 schools, as well as LAUSD representatives, attended the event, Ryan said. The previous Tuesday, Aug. 15, NVMI held a virtual version of the event for those who were unable to attend in person.

“We want to help! Los Angeles Unified has reached out on multiple occasions to support all families and students,” according to a statement released by the district on Aug. 18.

“Given the school year has started for many students, the district reiterates our readiness to collaborate with families to ensure their children are in school immediately, and we call upon NVMI to do the same.”

On Aug. 22 — several days before NVMI surrendered its charter and five days after parents were notified — the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which issued NVMI’s charter, sent a “notice of concern” to Ryan, Daniel Villanueva, the board’s chairperson and the rest of the board about the charter school’s noncompliance with both its memorandum of understanding with the county office of education and state law.

The letter specifically states that NVMI’s vote to shut down may have violated the memorandum of understanding between the LA County Office of Education and NVMI, which states the charter would remain effective even if the school becomes non-operational and until the school completes the mandated closure procedures.

It also stated that the agenda for the Aug. 25 special meeting was not provided with adequate notice under the Brown Act — which requires school boards to publicly an agenda for special meetings 24 hours ahead of the meeting time — and claimed that the Spanish translations “may not have accurately conveyed the intended meaning.”

“We feel it is important to update NVMI concerning future advanced appointments for its school,” the letter reads. “Based on the action taken by NVMI’s Board, NVMI will not receive any further advanced apportionments for the 2023-24 school year, pursuant to a directive provided by the California Department of Education.”

Abysmal academic performance

During the 2021-2022 academic year, based on the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments, only 15.81% of NVMI students across all grade levels met or exceeded state standards in English language arts, while only 3.22% met or exceeded math standards. In science, 4.17% of NVMI students met or exceeded state standards, based on the California Science Test.

Previously, in the 2013-14 academic year, the year the school opened, NVMI did not have any reportable SAT scores because of the low number of students who completed the exam, according to staff findings on the North Valley Military Institute College Preparatory Academy.

In 2015-16, the same staff findings revealed that the average SAT score for NVMI students was 1,235 on a 2,400 point scale — below LAUSD, county and state averages. Only 11.1% of NVMI students tested above the median score.

No students at NVMI completed AP exams during the 2013-14 and 2014-15 academic years. In the 2015-16 academic year, 13 students took AP exams, but none passed with a 3, the staff findings show.

Ryan said this is largely because the students who come to NVMI are already years behind their peers but that the school had a number of academic supports for students, resulting in about 90% of its students successfully completing a college course before graduating.

“I would love to improve standardized test scores,” Ryan said. “But I do think that there are these other, you know, metrics that you can point to: the number of kids who are successfully completing A through G requirements, the number of kids who successfully graduate. You know, those are very, very important metrics that, ultimately, are much more important for a kid’s adult life than whether or not they did well on a standardized test.”

Staffing concerns

A Dec. 1, 2022, letter from the LA County Office of Education to Ryan, Villanueva and the school board outlined a series of violations of the law and the Memorandum of Understanding under which the charter operates. Among the violations was an allegation that the school failed to provide evidence of 11 teachers’ credentials.

“For 10 of these staff members, it could not be determined if they held any California teaching credential or English Language Authorization,” the letter continued.

It also noted that seven teachers did not have the correct credentials; one had an expired credential, and six did not have the correct EL authorizations.

The letter states that NVMI was notified of the concerns on Oct. 5 of the concerns, but that it failed to resolve them as of Dec.1.

Ryan attributed the problem to a hardship in finding teachers. “Everybody, this most recent school year, struggled with finding fully credentialed teachers to teach in every single classroom, and NVMI was no exception.”

But were the people the school hired qualified to teach? Ryan explained, “We absolutely struggled to find people that were fully credentialed. But … when we found somebody that we thought would be a good teacher — who had at least a bachelor’s degree, who had demonstrated basics … so that they would qualify for the equivalent of an emergency credential — we did hire multiple people in that situation.”

Inadequate support for students with disabilities

The Los Angeles County Office of Education also stated in the letter detailing a series of concerns about the school’s operations that 37 special education students at NVMI had overdue individualized education program meetings — and that there were “15 students with a total of 1,240 minutes of owed services.”

Ryan said in response, that yes, NVMI occasionally had overdue IEPs or owed services, but not currently. “As of June 2023, when the most recent school year ended, there were no overdue IEPs and no owed service minutes.”

Allegations of bullying and vandalism

In a series of written complaints, community members alleged that there was widespread harassment and vandalism from NVMI students toward members of their host campuses, particularly the VOCES campus.

[NVMI “is a school that has subjected the communities in which it has tried to operate to chaos over the last year in particular,” alleged Hans Johnson, the president of East Area Progressive Democrats, which has called for action against the charter for years. “The pattern of misconduct … and neglect of its students … is extremely disturbing.”

On Dec. 17, 2022, German Gurrola, the co-location coordinator at VOCES Magnet, wrote an email to county office of education officials detailing a series of incidents involving alleged harassment— a couple of which were against students with special needs.

They ranged from verbal harassment to throwing trash from NVMI students to cases where NVMI allegedly threatened to take over shared spaces.

“We tried really hard to not purposely, to not intermingle with the Valley Oaks Center for Enriched Studies’ community, not because we were trying to be separatist, but because we knew from co-location stories,” Ryan said in response, adding that students at both schools were “equally guilty.”

“In every case where anything was ever reported to us, or we became aware of anything, even if it wasn’t reported to us, we [took] appropriate disciplinary action … and it’s not a fair statement to say that we somehow encouraged it.”

Gurrola’s email said he was only aware of one incident where a VOCES student was involved, but that the student had been a previous NVMI student.

“There is constant harassment by NVMI students towards our students and staff, including harassment by NVMI staff,” the email alleged. “This is creating a climate that affects our socio-emotional learning environment and places undue stress on our students, staff and families.”

A separate 2017 lawsuit alleged that NVMI students were victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by the school, LAUSD and Brice Tschappat, an administrator hired to assist with the annual summer camp. The lawsuit also argued that LAUSD, which supervised and oversaw the charter at the time, allowed the sexual abuse of NVMI students.

The sexual abuse accusations include alleged exposure to sexual language and pornographic images and a claim that an NVMI administrator “assaulted and battered at least one of the minor plaintiffs.”

Alleged misappropriation of funds

On March 7, the county office requested an audit of NVMI, which is still in progress, according to Nguyen. The county office did not, however, respond to questions about whether NVMI complied with the audit.

“Based on our review of receipts and internal documents of NVMI’s recent leadership retreat, there is reason to believe that fraud, misappropriation of funds, or other illegal fiscal practices may have occurred,” the audit request reads, stating that the school “mismanaged and misappropriated” $90,000 of public funds to conduct a leadership retreat in Las Vegas.

The letter also cites an internal staff bulletin that promises NVMI staff fully paid daytime family activities — ranging from bowling to trips to a water park — as well as group tickets to the “Tournament of Kings” show and “America’s Got Talent,” among others.

A Dec. 8, 2022, email from Ryan to the county office of education admitted that NVMI “used one-time ESSER dollars for the staff well-being activities,” and that non-employees attended the events as well.

The request letter further alleges that Local Control Funding Formula money was used to serve breakfast — with $2,300 being incurred by non-employees — and demanded that NVMI provide a complete list of its expenditures from the retreat.

Ryan explained that the retreat was necessary for staff and that they spent most of the time at the retreat working.

“This was a very sincere working retreat, where 100% of the people who were in attendance can attest … that this was not just some, you know, some junkets to Vegas for people to go gamble and enjoy themselves. This … was absolutely hard work.”

Looking back

Support for the charter has waxed and waned over the charter’s decade of existence, Ryan said, adding that several community members expressed apprehension about having a military academy in Los Angeles.

“This school has served a very special niche,” Ryan said. “There is a population of kids who have simply not been successful in traditional public or private schools, kids who have been suspended, expelled, justice-involved youth, foster youth, homeless youth, kids with significant learning differences … for whom the traditional special education programs have not worked.

“This school was founded on the premise that military structure … and culture could really provide a place where students who haven’t necessarily been successful in other places, where they could be successful.”

For eight years, NVMI administrators have relied on LAUSD campuses to house their school, Ryan said. And each year, they would have to go through a process outlined by Proposition 39, under which LAUSD would offer NVMI a space to locate the charter, usually within the campus of another school.

Toward the end of the 2021-22 academic year, LAUSD made an offer that would place NVMI on two district campuses. NVMI filed a lawsuit against the district in response, alleging that the offer was illegal and that the charter school could have been housed on a single campus, Ryan said.

The complaint accused LAUSD of “splitting our campus, upsetting the military culture of the school, causing us financial challenges, causing us operational challenges.”

LAUSD declined to comment on the multisite offer or lawsuit.

Ryan said he eventually convinced NVMI’s school board to accept LAUSD’s offer and do their best to operate on multiple campuses. During the split-campus operations, NVMI started each day with a gathering of all NVMI students at the VOCES campus in order to be able to engage in military formation, before busing students to the other locations for the rest of the school day.

In the spring of 2022, Ryan said LASUD came back with their 2023-24 campus site offer that would require NVMI to operate its school from four different campuses, including three LAUSD campuses.

NVMI’s board knew that a lawsuit would be costly, Ryan said, adding that they were “dipping significantly into our financial reserves” that had accumulated to nearly $3.8 million.

“At that point, because we knew we had burned through so much of the reserve … I recommended to my board there’s just no way we can do this. We simply cannot operate another year the way that we operated in ’22-23,” Ryan said. “We went through way too much money, killed staff who were working terribly hard to be able to make this very complex operational plan come to fruition, and it was difficult on families. It was difficult on kids, and it was financially simply not sustainable.”

As a result, the board made a decision this spring to suspend only the middle school for the 2023-24 academic year.

Meanwhile, Ryan said the school board realized on July 5 that they didn’t have a campus site. In negotiations, they agreed to lease a five-story building from the Foursquare Church, costing the school $60,000 monthly. Rent at the LAUSD campuses, by comparison, was significantly lower, totaling more than $73,000, according to Ryan.

Ryan said they submitted “a material revision” to the LA County Office of Education that would have amended the charter with the updated church location.

“Almost immediately, there was more upheaval, and there was an outcry that, ‘Well, gee, you know, this is a public school … giving public money to a church,’” Ryan said.

The city of Los Angeles said a public school could operate on the church site but that acquiring the necessary change of use permit could take years. These promises from the city, Ryan noted, were made verbally and not in writing.

Ultimately, Villanueva, the school board’s chairperson, said deciding to close the school was the “biggest disappointment” of his life.

“Our heart was always full,” Villanueva said. “{We thought): ‘Let’s give this one more try … to literally not only turn every stone but every pebble and every grain of sand in our house up until last week.’”

A new NASA space telescope launched Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will help scientists probe the nature of dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the universe.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is about the size of a tour bus, lifted off at 4:26 a.m. PT on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. The 18,000-pound spacecraft is now on a million-mile journey that will take it to its new home in space.

"What a glorious dawn launch," NASA's Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, said at a press briefing soon after liftoff. "The ride was magnificent. It put us right where we wanted to be."

More good news came shortly after launch as the telescope began deploying its solar panels and other instruments. "Ground controllers at NASA Goddard have been receiving telemetry data from Roman, and apparently all systems are nominal," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

The journey to Roman's new home

Roman has an unusual origin story: Initially designed as a spy telescope for the National Reconnaissance Office, the spacecraft was donated to NASA instead. The new telescope is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer who was known as the 'Mother of Hubble' for her championing of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. Her namesake telescope will have the sharpness of Hubble but a field of view that is at least 100 times larger, allowing it to image huge swaths of the sky at once.

Before it can do that, the Roman Space Telescope will have to get to its new home in the sky about a million miles away. Roman will live at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point known as L2. There, the competing gravitational pulls of the Earth and the Sun help the telescope keep a steady orbit while using minimal fuel. The James Webb Space Telescope orbits at this point, which gives the spacecraft an unobstructed view of the sky.

"It takes us a good three-plus months to get out there, and we're spending that time checking everything out and doing a whole bunch of calibrations and making sure everything is working the way we know it can," said NASA's Jeremy Perkins, an integration and test scientist on the mission. "It's basically like our time to kick the tires and just make sure that the focus is right, the pointing is right."

Uncovering cosmic mysteries

Roman is on a kind of ghost hunt, searching for more evidence of dark matter — mysterious, invisible stuff whose gravitational influence appears to hold galaxies together and define the overarching structure of the cosmos. Roman will study how gravity subtly affects the path of light along great distances throughout a massive survey of the sky. By doing this, the telescope will help map both normal and dark matter, giving scientists a better understanding of just what this elusive substance might be.

Astronomers will also use Roman's observations to uncover dark energy, the strange force that is believed to drive the expansion of the universe. Scientists' understanding of dark energy comes from observations of a kind of exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova. These supernovas appear to shine at known and predictable brightness throughout the cosmos, giving them the nickname "standard candles." By cataloguing even more of these supernovas, scientists hope to develop a better understanding of how dark energy works, which could fundamentally change the way astronomers view the universe.

Roman will also search for planets outside our solar system. Since astronomers confirmed their existence in the 1990s, more than 6,000 exoplanets have been identified. With Roman, NASA expects to identify more than 100,000 of them by identifying dips in starlight caused by a planet passing in front of its own star. The telescope also hopes to find some 1,000 through microlensing — a technique that searches for tiny changes in background starlight caused by the gravity of a far-off planet.

"Why do we care so much about exoplanets? Because one of our main goals at NASA is answering the question: Are we alone in the universe?" Nicky Fox, NASA's associate administrator of the science mission directive, said at the Sunday morning briefing.

The spacecraft is poised to bring scientists a step closer to answering that question: It will demonstrate technology that can take a picture of a planet by selectively blocking out the light from its home star.

"We are going to make this giant leap forward with the coronagraph technology that is going to allow us to look at these distant worlds and start to really resolve the atmosphere around them to let us know if they could be habitable," she said.

A deluge of data

The telescope will beam back 1.4 terabytes of raw science data each day, using a refrigerator-sized high-gain antenna. The data will be available immediately to scientists and the public.

"Roman's database at the end of its prime mission after five years is going to be bigger than your standard music streaming platform," Perkins said.

Because of the massive amounts of data, NASA is making it available to anyone through a cloud-based system called Roman Nexus. For Perkins, that's what makes this mission unique — anyone can look at the raw data and find new discoveries.

"It's all the things that we are not expecting to see," he said. "It's all these one-in-a-million things that we're going to be able to see with Roman that really excites me."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday backed off his proposal to reduce costs for electrical utilities after their equipment sparks wildfires, agreeing instead to a narrower deal after homeowners, insurers and fire survivors argued his original plan would have shifted those costs onto them.

Instead, Newsom and Senate and Assembly leaders agreed on a narrower package of wildfire policies, including prohibiting private equity groups from investing in wildfire claims and denying utility CEO bonuses in the years their companies cause fatal fires.

The deal is a victory for lawmakers who refused to reduce damages to victims and shift costs away from utilities. Opponents included insurance companies, consumer advocates and survivors of the January 2025 Eaton Fire caused by Southern California Edison equipment that killed 19 people in Altadena.

Under the agreement announced Saturday, the state would create a “fast-pay” program for survivors’ property loss, pain and suffering in the wake of a utility-caused fire. It would include deadlines for determining which claims are valid within 60 days of receipt, and settlement offers within 30 days after that, but survivors could still pursue the long process of suing utilities if they choose.

The state also commits to improving its local wildfire mitigation efforts and sharing more data on insurance coverage in areas with fire risk.

The final agreement, which lawmakers will vote on in Senate Bill 492, caps a contentious series of closed-door negotiations between Newsom’s office and legislative leaders on how much utility companies should pay after fires.

Newsom wanted utilities to have to pay less to insurance companies, some wildfire survivors, local governments and corporations claiming damages after a fire. His administration is concerned the mounting costs threaten investor confidence in the state’s three major for-profit utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. He said that could lead to higher borrowing costs for the companies and higher electricity bills for Californians.

Newsom also argued his plan would prioritize paying survivors who lose their homes. In past fires, investors have funded lawsuits or claims have been sold to hedge funds, increasing the number of third parties seeking to profit from wildfire payouts, Newsom’s office has said.

SB 492 does not include most of the proposals Newsom wanted and does not substantially change how much utilities must pay after fires they cause. California’s $18 billion wildfire fund that utilities draw from to pay fire damages — and which would fund claims in the fast-pay program — is funded 50-50 by utility customers and shareholders. Proponents of Newsom’s proposals remain concerned that another catastrophic fire could drain that money, leaving utilities facing a mountain of costs and another round of potential bankruptcies.

Nine of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires were caused by electrical equipment or power lines.

“This system needs full structural reform — not a partial one,” Newsom said in a statement Saturday morning. “I urge the Legislature to build on this progress next year and finish the work we started to secure the Wildfire Fund’s long-term durability, stabilize electricity rates, and ensure fire victims are never again turned into unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding.”

Negotiations may resume next year

Sen. Josh Becker, a Menlo Park Democrat who was closely involved in the negotiations, acknowledged that lawmakers would likely have to return to the issue of utility liabilities under a future governor.

“What I heard very clearly, certainly from senators, from the Assembly and even from all the stakeholders was that they’re willing to do that,” he said. “They’re willing to start getting around the table and looking at some of those structural issues. But that takes time. We ran out of time in this session.”

“We certainly stood with fire survivors,” said Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat who represents Palisades Fire survivors. “Challenges with affordability of electricity (remain). That’s not going away.”

The utilities agreed and said there needs to be a long-term solution.

“While we appreciate the efforts made, we are disappointed that the state couldn’t develop comprehensive wildfire reform,” said Southern California Edison spokesperson David Eisenhauer.

San Diego Gas & Electric would not comment and referred questions to Wildfire Victims First, the utility-backed campaign whose priorities aligned with the governor’s wish list.

Campaign spokesperson Nathan Click said the state still needs to make urgent structural reforms “to ensure a fair recovery system.”

PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo said the company is reviewing the bill and is “focused on helping wildfire survivors recover faster, making communities safer, and protecting customer utility bills.” Company stocks tumbled Friday after reports of a potential agreement that did not include any utility cost-shifts.

Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, the Santa Barbara Democrat whose caucus opposed Newsom’s cost-shifting proposals, said in a statement the agreement “supports survivors in their recovery, curbs Wall Street practices that increase costs on consumers, and mitigates the destruction of these wildfires in the first place.”

Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, an Irvine Democrat who led negotiations for the Assembly, in a statement called the deal “an important step forward.”

“We held the line to protect the people who needed it most,” she said.

The biggest sticking point was the governor’s insistence on eliminating subrogation, which allows insurance companies to sue utilities to recoup their costs for wildfire claims. Lawmakers were staunchly opposed to eliminating that avenue out of concern that it would disrupt the state’s fragile insurance market, raise premiums and cause insurers to flee the state, and they rejected it.

“This outcome keeps costs with the parties responsible for wildfires and helps protect the progress California is making in stabilizing its insurance market,” said Denni Ritter, a vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

While the deal is a win for the insurance industry, a senator who represents Eaton Fire survivors said it’s important to also hold insurers accountable.

“We know that in many cases, insurance companies delayed and denied fire survivors’ claims and payments, delaying recovery,” said Democratic Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez. “We need all industries to come to the table in a real way.”

State lawmakers also resisted the governor’s effort to limit survivors’ non-economic damages, an important victory for the Eaton Fire survivors who relentlessly campaigned against the proposal.

Fire survivors and consumer advocates credited the Senate, especially Limón, for pushing back on Newsom.

“In the face of extraordinary pressure from some of the most powerful interests in our state, they centered survivors and California families,” said Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network.

Advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which worked in concert with fire survivors, called the negotiations “an exercise in the democratic process.”

“(The Legislature) told (Newsom) they wouldn’t bend in closed-door negotiations,” said Jamie Court, president of the group.

Pérez commended survivors for pressuring lawmakers over the past couple of weeks.

“The fire survivors have shaped this entire conversation,” Pérez said. “They made a tremendous impact.”

For many millennials, '90s Nickelodeon shows such as Hey Arnold!, Doug, and Rocko’s Modern Life represent a golden age of animation, with theme songs and music scores often just as weird and offbeat as the characters and storylines.

Take the theme song of Hey Arnold! — an earworm that introduced a generation of young TV viewers to acid jazz, funk, hip-hop and more, even if they didn’t realize it at the time.

Hey Arnold! composer Jim Lang is taking the show's music on tour, with a few stops in SoCal.

LAist’s Robert Garrova caught up with Lang to talk about the show’s endearing music legacy.

On whether he and the other musicians on the show set out to introduce young people to new musical genres

Lang:  I wish I could take credit for being that intentional about it. But we weren't really hoping to introduce anybody to jazz. That was just a wonderful kinda side benefit of the way the show played out.

Was the music too good for a kids' show? Take for instance the theme music for the fan-favorite Pigeon Man episode

Lang:  I don't think there's any such thing as music that's too good for a kids' show. I think children have the hugest imagination for absorbing things that they've never seen before, for being delighted by the unusual.

Those things [music scores] all work because the writers and the animators and the background artists and everybody did such an incredible job before it ever showed up at my studio. That's it. You just kind of shut up and get out of the way and let the image kind of play through you in a way.

On what it felt like being at Nickelodeon in the '90s when the bosses were saying, 'Hey, yeah, let's do some acid jazz on a kids show'

Lang: Well, the women that started Nickelodeon and that ran that company in that era were a really unusual breed, and they were super adventurous. They didn't discourage, you know, people doing crazy stuff.

On what fans' reactions are at the live shows

Lang: Oh, it's just such a love fest. It is nostalgic. The music is meaningful to them because the show, after five seasons, there was a sound to it, and people found it relatable. So getting to hear a band actually play that stuff live, it sounds familiar to the audience in a way that I think people were just thrilled by.

Before the 1980s, tribal leaders of the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation were struggling to care for their people. That’s when, like many tribes, they decided to open a bingo hall on their reservation in San Bernardino County.

The enterprise eventually became the powerhouse Yaamava’ Resort & Casino, a place famous across the Southland for its snappy “you in?” slogan and roster of concert billboards, featuring the likes of Pitbull, Stevie Nicks and the Jonas Brothers.

The tribe is celebrating 40 years of gaming. But in between the high-limit gaming rooms, intimate performances and the  biggest gaming floor in the West — with over 7,500 slot machines — you’ll find a story of self-determination in the face of California bureaucracy.

A brief history

The Yuhaaviatam’s homeland is the San Bernardino mountains, valleys and high deserts. They were previously known as the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, but recently reclaimed their ancestral name, Yuhaaviatam (yu-HAH-vee-ah-tahm), which means “people of the pines.” According to the tribe, the community was forced to leave after decades of violence, colonization and displacement.

One big change came in the mid 1800s when a San Bernardino militia killed Native people. The Yuhaaviatam’s leader at the time, Paakuma, who was known outside the tribe by his Spanish name of Santos Manuel, led the couple dozen remaining members out of the mountains.

The tribe moved around the region, but the federal government eventually placed them on the San Manuel Reservation in 1891. Johnny Hernandez Jr., the Yuhaaviatam’s vice chairman, told LAist it was a time of hardship.

“ We were put up against the hillside there with non-fertile land and really in an area where people probably didn’t think that we were going to survive,” he said.

The Yuhaaviatam had to rebuild largely on their own. The tribe got by financially with apricot orchards and other small ventures. When members needed money, they’d sell some of their livestock or hold bake sales. Hernandez said it wasn’t enough to fund what people needed.

The bingo hall origin

The entrance of San Manuel Bingo.

(

Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

)

By the ‘80s, other tribes across the United States were in a similar predicament. Looking for ways to generate other forms of revenue, some turned to bingo halls, often outside the jurisdiction of states’ gambling regulations, as their economic springboard.

Under the leadership of tribal chairman Henry Duro, the Yuhaaviatam proposed opening a high-stakes bingo hall. According to newspaper reports, they faced immediate opposition.

Local officials feared the operation would disrupt nearby neighborhoods and foster illicit activity. One critic was San Bernardino City Councilmember Steve Marks, who reportedly instructed city officials to find “every legal way possible to stop the project.”

“ I think from the community, there was a lot of concern about having gaming in their backyard,” Hernandez said, who’s Duro’s nephew. “Everybody understands that gaming can lead to issues with not only the person, but the families …  so we really take that responsibility seriously.”

City leaders tried to push the bingo hall off the reservation and even tried to delay construction in court. The Yuhaaviatam had talks with San Bernardino to find a solution, but according to reports in October 1985, that effort broke down.

San Manuel Bingo could hold 2,500 players at a time.

(

Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

)

A view of San Manuel Bingo in its heyday.

(

Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

)

Ultimately, the Yuhaaviatam moved forward with building San Manuel Indian Bingo on the reservation, which opened on July 24, 1986. It was a hit. They had sold out nights.  People even climbed over the back walls to play.

“A funny story that my chairwoman Lynn always tells is that those ones that really were against [the bingo hall] and had the biggest concerns were the first ones in line to go into the bingo and to game,” Hernandez said.

He grew up next door to the bingo hall and would sit outside to watch the stream of people go in and out. He said the building looked like a box compared to the casino they have now. But inside, hundreds of hopeful bingo winners packed rows upon rows of tables.

“ They would have costume contests and everything, and it was real lively,” Hernandez said. “I remember a lot of people were excited to be there.”

When the bingo hall opened in 1986, it soon became popular.

(

Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

)

Employees at the bingo hall.

(

Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

)

As controversial as the bingo hall was to some, it was also a source of employment for San Bernardino. Kenneth Shoji, the tribe’s spokesperson, told LAist how when the hall opened, much of the area around was in an economic downtown.

“ The air base had closed. Kaiser Steel was closing. Santa Fe [Depot] had down-scaled significantly,” Shoji said. “Many people who came to work here were coming from those industries.  In fact, many tribal elders … also came from those businesses.”

The rise of tribal gaming

San Manuel Indian Bingo opened the door to financial stability, but tribal gaming enterprises still faced trouble in California. State and local leaders wanted to shut them down.

One fight ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court.  Two Native reservations, Cabazon and Morongo, ran bingo and card games in Riverside County, which began a few years before the Yuhaaviatam’s enterprise. Officials argued the state had the right to ban tribal gaming to discourage gambling.

The Supreme Court ended up siding with the tribes in part because California already permitted multiple forms of gaming, like horse racing, card games and a state-sponsored lottery.

The ruling led to the creation of the  Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, a landmark piece of legislation that Congress signed into law in 1988. It paved the way for tribal nations to run more profitable forms of gaming, like craps and slot machines.

Casino games at Yaamava’ Resort & Casino.

(

Cato Hernández

/

LAist

)

The act established regulations that split gaming into three classes and created a system where tribes would have to make agreements with states before offering the highest level.

Randall Akee, a professor of economic development in Indigenous communities at Harvard University, told LAist it took awhile for California to get on board.

“Tribal gaming really as an industry, larger scale in California, took off in the post-2000 era,” he said.

That came with the passage of Prop. 1A and Prop. 5, which permitted compacts for Class III gaming on tribal lands in California. The deals have been moneymakers. According to the National Indian Gaming Commission, California and northern Nevada (which are calculated together) lead the nation in gross gaming revenue, bringing in $12.6 billion in fiscal year 2025.

Akee said the Yuhaaviatam people have created a large gaming footprint in California despite their small population and geographical size. Overall, the tribe is one of San Bernardino County’s top employers with nearly 8,000 employees, according to Shoji.

A miniaturized version of Yaamava's tower.

(

Cato Hernández

/

LAist

)

A display celebrating 40 years of the Yuhaaviatam's gaming enterprise.

(

Cato Hernández

/

LAist

)

They’ve also expanded their gaming enterprise into new, larger buildings. When San Manuel Casino (as the bingo hall was later named) opened in 2021, it was rebranded to Yaamava’ Resort & Casino. The $760 million expansion, with a 17-story hotel tower and 432 rooms and suites, brought their footprint to over 700,000 square feet. A parking structure now stands in place of the former bingo hall.

Hernandez said tribal gaming has helped his community thrive. They use the revenue to pay for critical resources, like supplying medical care to elders, hiring teachers for schools and buying generators to curb power outages. The tribe has also donated over $450 million to local communities.

“  I think the thing that people always forget or don’t understand is that every time we buy a piece of land, we’re just going to throw a casino there,” Hernandez said. “First and foremost, we’re a tribe. We have the needs for our people, and [want to] protect our cultural resources.”

The Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation is a financial supporter of LAist. Like other funders, the tribe has no influence on our coverage.