The Brief

After more than a decade teaching in special education settings, Lisa Just was well-practiced at managing her Carver Elementary classroom in a way that kept students safe. She stayed alert to behavioral cues, and when students started getting upset, she stepped in to talk with them, adjust their environment or even move them to designated areas to calm down.

“Building that relationship where they feel safe and they trust you is huge,” she said of her kindergartners who would climb up on her lap and hug her like “sticky bugs.”

Yet, in a class with some acute behavioral needs, students sometimes became so dysregulated they hurt her. Often, she left school with “major purple marks,” the result of students who hit, pinched, bit and scratched her, she said, even if they weren’t intending harm.

On a hot day in September, one of her students grew increasingly agitated, the heat a known trigger for him. Just and other aides attempted to calm him — without success. Finally, as he lashed out at classroom staff, she tried to restrain him — the last resort when a child becomes so dysregulated — but he kept slipping out of her grip.

In an “explosive moment,” the child headbutted Just so hard that part of her vision went dark, she said. She went to the emergency room and learned she had an eye injury that has permanently changed her eyesight, causing floating dots and flashing lights.

Just is among the rising number of Long Beach Unified educators who have been seriously hurt during interactions with students in recent years. It’s a trend that’s alarmed classroom staff.

In February, Peder Larsen, vice president of the local teachers union, told his membership he was “a bit in shock” at the rate of injuries he was witnessing. “I’ve known teachers are getting injured, but I’m seeing it basically every single visit I make. I see teachers with bruises. I see people on the verge of tears.”

Seventy-two LBUSD workers reported being severely hurt by a child in the 2024-25 school year, according to an analysis by the Long Beach Post, a notable spike from 49 three years earlier.

Over that same period, the median cost of student-related claims jumped by $500. The total medical costs incurred by student-related claims increased markedly, too.

To determine this, the Long Beach Post obtained and reviewed data on 800 workers’ compensation claims documenting incidents involving students since the 2021-22 school year. To qualify as “severe,” we counted only claims that reported injuries serious enough to cause employees to miss work or incur significant medical expenses — more than $2,577, representing the top 20% most expensive claims. This scheme captured incidents where students bit, kicked or hit employees, as well as injuries sustained while educators chased eloping students, broke up fights and calmed students down.

Long Beach Unified did not make someone available for an interview about the increase, but the district “is committed to providing a safe learning and working environment for students and staff,” said Elvia Cano, a spokesperson for LBUSD, including through training to “recognize, prevent and manage crisis behaviors.”

Complete workers’ compensation data were not available for the recently concluded 2025-26 school year, but in interviews with the Long Beach Post, many LBUSD teachers said they’re continuing to see more students acting out. One elementary school teacher, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation for speaking up, said that in her last two years of teaching, “student behaviors were off the charts.” On a daily basis, she was bit and pinched, had her hair pulled and was spat on.

“A behavior is a form of communication,” she said, underscoring that she reacts compassionately and tries to address students’ underlying needs. Yet it doesn’t change the fact that “we’re also getting beaten up all day,” she said.

These experiences are consistent with data from a recent national survey of public school educators, in which 76% of survey respondents said the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected student behavior and development. As Long Beach schools reopened after pandemic closures, the total number of workers’ compensation claims involving students spiked. That total fell the following year, before climbing again to reach a slightly lower peak in 2024-25, the most recent year of complete data.

“Students are struggling,” said Milton Duena, assistant executive director of the teachers union, who helps oversee grievances, including those related to teacher injuries. Students may be facing food and housing insecurity or may need medical or mental health care they’re not getting, he said.

The rise in challenging behaviors has coincided with reduced classroom support, teachers told the Post.

Just requested more help for the child who injured her, including a thorough assessment to identify how to support him when he got upset. Instead, emails she provided show that her principal suggested she add visual schedules to the classroom, hold morning meetings and better communicate with staff — all of which Just said were already part of her approach. The response left her frustrated: “No one’s supporting us, keeping us safe,” Just said. “No one’s helping this child who needs help.”

Cano, the LBUSD spokesperson, said that each time a workplace injury occurs, the district examines the circumstances to determine necessary next steps and supports.

When Long Beach, like other districts, saw increased needs after the pandemic, it expanded training and student supports, aided by state and federal funds, Cano said. Many of these temporary relief dollars have since expired, prompting the district to scale back student mental health resources.

Jola Lao, who teaches kindergarten and first grade in a special education classroom at Barton Elementary, said she made numerous appeals for more aides to manage behavior in her class, as well as better training and equipment — like doors that prevent students from leaving or running away from class, called eloping.

Emails reviewed by the Post show Lao kept careful records of student behavior to support her requests for additional trained adults to help with everything from toileting assistance to supervision of students who left campus and wandered into the street. Nevertheless, she said, her requests were denied. Soon after, Lao went on leave due to intense stress and burnout, she said.

Part of the problem is a chronically underfunded public education system, said Duena of the teachers union. In a 2025-26 budget memo, the district wrote that “costs associated with behavior intervention support for students, especially at the elementary level, have increased fourfold since 2021-22.” The average cost of a 1:1 behavior aide is approximately $70,000, the district said.

These positions are notoriously hard to fill and have a high turnover, in part because of the nature of the work, said Claudia Sosa-Valderrama at a March school board meeting. The district outsources some of these jobs to agencies, but LBUSD teachers who spoke with the Post said sometimes agency aides arrive without adequate training. Just, the teacher who sustained an eye injury, said many of her aides don’t know how to safely restrain students, leaving Just as the only one who can step in at a crucial moment.

Less support in the classroom means student behaviors escalate, said Kecia Woods, who taught third and fourth grade in a special education classroom at Madison Elementary until she retired this year because “I didn’t want to go out hurt,” she said.

In the 2025-26 year alone, she said she filed four or five workers’ compensation claims. Not all of them were for serious injuries, she said, but in the past, she was flattened by a student’s punch and sustained a wrist injury from students that took a year to heal, she said.

Getting injured is assumed to be part of teachers’ jobs, Woods said, adding, “And it’s not. It shouldn’t be.”

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Neighbors in North Long Beach rushed out of their homes on Saturday and blocked federal immigration agents from detaining a man they had just violently knocked to the ground, according to first-hand accounts from four residents who spoke to the Long Beach Post.

The man is a U.S. citizen named Ricardo Gonzalez who lives near where he was detained, according to neighbors and an online fundraiser started by his family. He was riding an e-bike near Elm Avenue and 56th Street on Saturday afternoon when an agent jumped out of an unmarked car and tackled him, according to a neighbor who asked to be identified only by his first name, Joe. (Other accounts online said agents rammed Gonzalez with their car. The Post could not locate any video of this or anyone who said they witnessed it first-hand.)

The agent then accused Gonzalez of throwing something at their car, Joe said.

Agents tased Gonzalez twice while he was on the ground, and one agent knelt on his back while Gonzalez yelled in pain and said his arm was broken, according to two neighbors who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.

As residents came outside to see what was going on, they started yelling and honking, alerting more neighbors.

The area was already on edge, Joe said, because eight or so unmarked law enforcement vehicles had been parked in the neighborhood since early that morning. He said his wife at one point had even called 911 to report the vehicles and ask if they could move because they were blocking multiple one-way streets.

Volunteers with anti-ICE rapid response groups had also brought loudspeakers to warn about the vehicles and urge everyone to stay inside. Instead, when neighbors heard the growing confrontation with agents, many intervened.

“If they try to take one of us, they’re going to have to take all of Long Beach,” said Patricia Velazquez, who has lived in the area for more than three decades.

Cellphone video shows roughly 50 people yelling expletives at masked agents who were carrying handguns and wearing vests that said “ICE.” Neighbors demanded to see a warrant, dragged trash cans behind the agents’ vehicles or stood in front of them, blocking them from driving off.

One agent made racist comments to the mostly Latino crowd, saying they didn’t “look legal,”  according to Joe. They also used pepper spray on the crowd, neighbors said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the confrontation.

At one point during the roughly hour-long standoff, agents grabbed two women — both U.S. citizens — and put them in the backs of different vehicles, according to two neighbors. They were soon freed, according to Joe. He described the crowd distracting agents while people sneaked behind their vehicles to open their doors.

Long Beach police soon showed up. In a statement, they said federal agents had called for help providing medical aid to someone and dealing with a crowd that had vandalized vehicles.

One officer attempted to step in immediately but was held back by his partner, one neighbor said. Video shows federal agents then allowed Gonzalez to leave with the Long Beach officers after agents searched his wallet and looked at his identification.

An LBPD officer uncuffed Gonzalez and took him to a nearby fire station. Paramedics then took him to a hospital. 

Gonzalez is a Long Beach resident who, until recently, worked for the city, Long Beach City Councilmember Tunua Thrash-Ntuk said in a statement. He was riding through his own neighborhood, she said, “when he was racially profiled and violently assaulted by ICE agents—leaving him with broken bones and crushing medical bills.”

In their online fundraiser, Gonzalez’s family says he is a hardworking man who supports his family. He is still recovering, they said, and asked for help spreading the word about what agents did to him.

Long Beach Congressman Robert Garcia said he was “proud of the neighbors who documented and stood up for the family being terrorized by ICE.”

“ICE agents brutally attacked and broke the arm of a North Long Beach resident and U.S. citizen,” he said in a statement. “The videos are horrific and should concern not just our community but the country.”

Mayor Rex Richardson said he is outraged by agents’ actions and is demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security.

One of the first major signs of this year's "Super El Niño" has reached the U.S. It's called a Kelvin wave – a deep ocean wave that's currently raising sea levels along the West Coast.

Scientists have long known about Kelvin waves, but this year, the phenomena grabbed the public's attention with video explanations receiving thousands of views across TikTok and X.

"It does surprise me – I mean, here it's been around all this time," says Mark Cane, who created one of the first models to forecast and predict El Niño. "I'm sure Lord Kelvin is happy in his grave."

(Lord Kelvin, the British physicist who also developed the Kelvin temperature scale, first described the wave back in the late 1800s.)

Kelvin waves can develop along the equator during El Niño years, when a vast region of water in the Pacific Ocean becomes much warmer than usual.

Some of this warm water, in the form of a Kelvin wave that stretches thousands of miles, moves slowly east beneath the ocean's surface until it reaches South America. Then it splits, traveling north along the West Coast and as far south as Chile.

"It's like an enormous bathtub sloshing around," Cane says, professor emeritus of earth and climate sciences at Columbia University. "But the slosh is very peculiar, because it only goes west to east along the equator in a Kelvin wave."

These are not the massive, highly visible waves that crash into shorelines during major storms and hurricanes.

"It's not a wall of water, it's not a tsunami, it's not a wave you can surf," says Dillon Amaya, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University. "It's a planetary-scale wave."

A Kelvin wave's impact is gradual, raising sea levels as it moves up the coast, and bringing with it an elevated risk of floods and warmer water temperatures.

What's the impact? 

Kelvin waves can increase the risk of flooding and coastal erosion.

By themselves, Kelvin waves don't cause flooding, Amaya says. Instead, they load the dice, making flooding more likely by raising sea levels.

"It makes the background conditions more favorable towards coastal flooding, but what you need are triggering factors," Amaya said, such as a major storm or very high tides.

Josh Willis, a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says Kelvin waves raise the chances of a "triple whammy" along the California coast: "El Nino, the high tide and the storm surge all coming at once."

That's exactly what some Southern California communities experienced in early October. Sea levels were already higher than normal because of the Kelvin wave – about six to eight inches, Amaya says. Then, when Tropical Storm Rachel hit, a storm surge flooded neighborhoods and left oceanfront homes partially submerged.

"That storm surge was almost certainly made more devastating because of the Kelvin wave," Amaya says.

Warmer water temperatures

Kelvin waves move slowly east beneath the ocean's surface until they reach South America. Then they split, traveling north along the West Coast and south as far as Chile. The dark red represents higher than normal sea levels.<br>

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Dillon J. Amaya

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North Carolina State University

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Kelvin waves also bring warmer water up the coast, which can be disruptive and put stress on marine life.

"We've seen tropical fishes in places that we don't normally see them," Amaya says. "Like a whale shark was spotted off the coast of San Diego."

The Kelvin wave can push down nutrient-dense cold waters that support productive marine ecosystems. Amaya says researchers have already seen evidence of sea birds dying in response to warmer water temperatures along the coast.

When is the next Kelvin wave? 

There are usually five to six Kelvin waves during a strong El Niño year, Amaya says.

Amaya predicts the next Kelvin wave will reach San Diego in late October or early November. Several more waves are expected through the fall and early winter, he says. Kelvin waves usually subside before the peak of El Niño.

The El Niño pattern typically peaks late in the year or early January. This year, NOAA researchers predict the El Niño will remain strong through early 2027.
Copyright 2026 NPR

When California voters open their ballots this November, they will find 14 statewide measures on issues such as immunology research funding, voter ID requirements and billionaire taxes. Add in various city and county propositions, and it’s — a lot.

How do Californians feel about all these propositions padding out the ballot? When pollsters ask, they tend to get mixed signals. People say the measures are too complicated. There are too many. And they can’t get enough of them.

The state’s love-hate relationship with direct democracy is on full display in surveys by the Public Policy Institute of California. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said recently there are too many ballot measures, and 89% said the wording of propositions is too confusing.

But two years ago, 79% of those surveyed also said propositions are a “good thing,” and 87% agreed that they “bring up important public policy issues that the governor and legislature have not adequately addressed.”

Feeling both overwhelmed and empowered by all this decision-making is a byproduct of deeply rooted California political traditions.

Other states ask voters to weigh in on far fewer contests. About half have no initiative process. Even those that do tend to use it far less often than California does.

Between 1904 and 2024, California put 396 initiatives before voters, more than any other state.

“We set up a system where we wanted to vote on things,” said John Matsusaka, executive director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California.

“People just believe that if they think there's something wrong with what the government's doing, they have a right to bring it before their fellow citizens and get an opinion on that,” he said. “It's just in the DNA of the state.”

Where did all these propositions come from? 

Ballot initiatives have become a big business in California. Collecting signatures, producing ads, paying political consultants — an entire industry depends on this system. Between 2020 and 2024, nearly $1.9 billion was spent on California ballot measure campaigns.

But the system was initially supposed to be a check on monied interests.

California’s adoption of citizen initiatives, referendums and recalls dates back to the early 20th-century Progressive Era. At the time, states across the Western U.S. expanded direct democracy in the hopes of countering dominant political machines and corporate monopolies.

Ed Lascher, a public policy professor emeritus at Cal State University, Sacramento, said he believes Progressive Era reformers probably would not recognize their vision in today’s initiative system.

“It’s doubtful to me that they would, because of the amount of money involved, the fact that decisions are made basically through advertising and the sort of overwhelming nature of things,” he said.

Then there’s the question of whether asking voters to decide complex issues makes for good policy. Over the years, Californians have approved some dubious, regrettable and ultimately illegal initiatives. Some have a whiff of absurdity, such as 1964’s Proposition 15, which sought to ban cable television. The California Supreme Court overturned it on First Amendment grounds.

Others reveal a darker side of the Golden State. Now a hotbed of resistance to federal ICE raids and deportation efforts, California passed Prop. 187 in 1994. Though it was quickly ruled unconstitutional, the law sought to ban undocumented immigrants from receiving public education, healthcare and other social services.

Less than two decades ago, Californians voted to outlaw same-sex marriage through Prop. 8, an outcome many would find unthinkable just a few years later. And in 1964, nearly two-thirds of Californian voters opted to allow racial discrimination in housing sales and rentals through Prop. 14.

“Most initiatives fail,” Lascher said. “But most initiatives that have targeted minorities in the state have passed. … If you look at things like gay rights, if you look at civil rights in the early '60s, these have been, generally, better protected by the Legislature than by the ballot initiative.”

Should California have fewer ballot measures? 

There have been various attempts to rein in the initiative process. Lascher himself supported making it harder to amend the California Constitution by initiative. That proposal sought to raise the voter approval threshold from a simple majority to two-thirds support. Such a reform would’ve doomed Prop. 8.

But there hasn’t been a groundswell of support for chipping away at the power held by voters.

“Most Californians — and we know this from polls — value having this opportunity,” Matsusaka said.

Though many say the number of ballot measures is too high, research shows it’s not driving Californians away from the polls. Political scientists say initiatives typically have the opposite effect, increasing turnout by about 3% to 8% compared with states that lack initiatives.

Matsusaka said this slight boost could be the result of certain measures turning out voters who care deeply about a particular topic. “When there's an issue they care about, I think it is valuable for them to have the opportunity to vote on it,” he said.

Voters may turn out more in initiative states, but Lascher said research suggests they often feel conflicted. He co-wrote a 2019 book on this topic called Initiatives Without Engagement.

“The bottom line is, voters aren't feeling more efficacious or more ability to control things in states that make heavy use of initiatives,” he said. “They're actually somewhat less trusting.”

Critics argue that today, rather than empowering citizens to directly enact popular political changes, California’s initiative process has evolved into an expensive tool for deep-pocketed interest groups to carry out their agendas.

In some cases, interest groups don’t intend to get their initiatives on the ballot, instead using the process as leverage to get what they want from elected leaders. They’re essentially saying: Cut a deal with us, or we’ll drag you into a costly ballot measure fight.

Other measures end up on the ballot because legislators are required to put them there. Lawmakers cannot pass bonds without approval by a majority of voters. They also cannot amend the state constitution or alter previous voter initiatives without a new ballot measure.

Could technology change how Californians handle confusion?

Matsusaka said despite feeling overwhelmed, most Californians are able to cut through the confusion and make up their minds.

Voters may lack the time or expertise needed to fully research every ballot measure, but they know how to turn to ideological groups for cues on how to vote. Others consult non-partisan guides written by fact-based journalists, such as the LAist Voter Game Plan (shameless plug).

Matsusaka said he believes busy Californians could increasingly offload their decision-making to another time-saving resource: AI chatbots.

“You have an app on your phone, and it reads the text for you, and it also knows your party, and it knows your political affiliations and your issue positions, and it says, here's how you should vote,” he said. “We're not quite there yet, but I don't actually think we're very far.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

It’s Thursday night at Eastwood Bar in Koreatown, and the place is packed with about 300 people chatting under sparkling disco lights. Haystacks, wooden guitars and retro beer signs decorate the space. In the center, a metal stool holds a Mac laptop, and a big screen displays a visual sales presentation, or pitch deck. A beaming young woman steps to the mic and begins her slideshow pitch. But she’s not selling anything. She’s trying to get someone in the audience to date her friend.

This is Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles, one of LA’s hottest dating events, where singles looking for a match rely on a good friend with great slideshow skills as their wingman.

The goal is to connect people to dates in real life, but the unique concept also allows singles to see their friends say nice things about them in creative ways, Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles organizer Jackson Wise told The LA Local.

“I get to see best friends kind of hype each other up and talk about their friends’ characteristics and sometimes that’s not always spoken,” Wise said. He added that he often notices the friend being pitched sitting in the audience and getting teary-eyed from all the encouragement.

Wise began the LA offshoot of Pitch-A-Friend nearly two years ago. The original event began in Philadelphia. After spending several years struggling in LA’s notoriously difficult dating scene, Wise scrolled past the Instagram account for a Philly-hosted event of Pitch-A-Friend. “I reached out to them, and they said I should start it in Los Angeles,” Wise recalled.

He said his LA offshoot was not very successful early on, drawing small crowds. But he kept at it, relying on social media and word of mouth to grow the event, which now draws crowds in the hundreds.

Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles leader Jackson Wise opens the night at Eastwood Bar in Koreatown.

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Cristabell Fierros

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The LA Local

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What is Pitch-A-Friend?

The concept is simple: Instead of single people promoting themselves on a dating app, their friends do it for them, live, in front of a room full of strangers. Each presenter gets four to five minutes and a slide deck, usually made in Canva or Google Slides, to show off a single friend’s best qualities, quirks and what they’re looking for. Singles in the crowd who like what they see can find that person afterward, in the room or through the Hooked Up app.

The LA Local got a front-row seat to an LGBTQ+ singles event at Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles. Here’s how it went down.

Half an hour before presentations, Wise made sure all participating friends were signed up. He checked that their five-minute Canva or Google Slides decks were good to go. Soon after, he energized the crowd with lively announcements like: “At the end of every presentation, I get, ‘Hey, I didn’t meet anybody.’ My first question is, ‘Did you talk to anybody?’ It’s usually no.”

Then he encouraged everyone to scan the QR code for the Hooked Up app or to break out of their circles, mingle and help their friends connect. He introduced stickers to help direct singles on queer night: green for women or friends, red for men and white for both or nonbinary.

Among the crowd was Elektra Armenta. “We don’t really get many mixers or dating events for queer folks in LA. So, I was really excited to be here, to experience all of us,” Armenta said.

The first presenter used colorful and playful multimedia slides to hype up her 23-year-old gay male roommate as someone who is intelligent, supportive and attentive and, above all, has a gift for listening.

Next, two young women took to the stage to introduce their accomplished friend, a 35-year-old retired three-time Olympian now thriving in tech at LA28. “Lauren is looking for something serious,” one of them declared. Someone in the crowd shouted back, “Yeah, we don’t play.”

As the night went on, each presenter was greeted with cheers and applause for their creativity, thoroughness and appreciation of their friends’ achievements. More importantly, singles were finding potential matches.

“Getting to know people through their friends is actually a really special experience,” first-time attendee Brex Garay told The LA Local. “It’s been really impressive to see people’s creative sides on pitching their friends.”