The Brief

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation launched a website this week that the public can eventually use to monitor the city’s implementation of Measure HLA.

What is Measure HLA?

The goal of Measure HLA is to speed up progress on Mobility Plan 2035, a policy the city approved a decade ago that identified networks of streets to improve with protected bike lanes, pedestrian signal improvements, bus lanes and other enhancements.

Measure HLA requires the city to implement Mobility Plan upgrades when it repaves at least one-eighth of a mile of a street specified in one of the networks.

What’s its status?

More than a year after it passed, an ordinance has not yet been adopted. The L.A. City Council still has to approve an ordinance drafted by the city attorney.

What is the website?

The site centers on an interactive map. It is a required component of Measure HLA and shows all the work being done on the networks specified in the Mobility Plan. Those networks are distinguished by which mode of travel — including cycling, walking or using transit — the plan’s improvements prioritize.

How to use it

Using the panel on the left-hand side of the dashboard, you can filter projects by name, lead agency, location and type of mobility plan network.

On the right-hand side of the screen, you will see information panels for each project. The information attached to each project depends on whether it’s exempt from the requirements of Measure HLA.

Exemptions?

Not all projects on Mobility Plan network streets trigger the improvements Measure HLA requires.

For these projects, you’ll see the city’s reasoning for why it believes Measure HLA doesn’t apply.

All of the projects currently shown on the portal have Measure HLA exemptions.

Once the ordinance is adopted, the website will feature a button that you can use to contest information listed for a given project, including the city’s listed reason for an exemption.

What if Measure HLA does apply?

When you click on the information panel for a project that does involve a Mobility Plan improvement, you’ll see how work will affect the availability of parking spots, accessibility to transit and volume of people who can travel through the corridor per day, among other information.

You will also be able to see safety statistics, including how many people experienced serious injuries or died as a result of traffic collisions on the portion of road the city is working on.

Why did the city launch the website now?

Measure HLA requires the city to “provide publicly accessible information regarding Mobility Plan projects.” April 9 was set as the deadline for the publication of the website since it marks a year since the ordinance went into effect.

Just days before the start of school, some California State University students were still waiting to find out how much they’re getting in grants and loans, and university officials are blaming the federal government for those delays. But despite a flurry of social media complaints about the delays, student leaders and university officials point to no major abnormalities

Every summer brings fresh confusion to some students whose financial aid is less than they anticipated or who didn’t notice an important email, but this summer added a new hardship: Not knowing how much actual aid they’d get.

The culprit is a change implemented in April by the U.S. Office of Federal Student Aid to update its fraud protections. The move was in response to the 2025 Republican-approved One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Some universities, including Cal State, received federal files on how much aid students would receive five to six weeks later than usual.

The delay meant that an unknown number of students got their precise financial aid amounts mere weeks before the start of the school year. Some students didn’t find out what their aid amounts were until after the deadline to pay tuition. Cal State campuses had provisions in place to keep students enrolled who didn’t pay if their financial aid awards were pending.

That this occurred in the middle of the financial aid cycle “is very unusual,” said April Grommo, an assistant vice chancellor for strategic enrollment management at the California State University Chancellor’s Office.

The delay in receiving information about aid amounts is separate from actually getting federal grants and loans. Federal rules prohibit students from receiving their actual financial aid until within 10 days of the start of the school year. Cal State classes begin this month.

The student experience

A handful of users of the social media tool Reddit posted about their FAFSA delays at Cal State. One user from Cal State Fullerton wrote on Aug. 1 that “I'm very concerned because the semester begins the 22nd of August … and I do not want to be dropped from any courses.” Other redditors at Fullerton echoed that worry. Similar posts were found at subreddits for San Jose State, Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Northridge.

The delay didn’t affect students who applied using the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, by the state’s priority deadline of March 2, Grommo said.

But the sheer volume of aid going to students at Cal State is immense — some $5.5 billion was   disbursed last year to more than 385,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Campus financial aid employees worked overtime to compensate for the federal delays, Grommo said. Several Cal State schools are shortstaffed, compounding the delay in getting information to students.

Another change in the 2025 federal law placed lower caps on how much students and their parents could borrow for college. Those caps went into effect this year, likely catching off guard some students who relied on loans. Still, some 65% of undergraduates who earn a bachelor’s degree at Cal State graduate without loan debt.

The system’s undergraduate student government, the California State Student Association, hasn’t detected a major uptick in student complications, despite the confusion, said Joe Nino, the association’s executive director. “At this time, CSSA is not aware of this being a widespread issue,” he wrote by email. “To our knowledge, there are protections in place to ensure students won't be dropped from their classes due to FAFSA delays.”

Sydney Yee is the vice president of Cal State Fullerton’s student government. The rising senior and finance major said the student government office hadn’t received any complaints from students about nonresponsive campus officials. She too had questions about her financial aid package and called the school’s financial aid office over the summer to receive guidance she found useful.

Redditors also advised frustrated students to call their campus financial aid office and be persistent.

“Something I think that the financial aid (staff) has done very well here has been staying very proactive with these delays,” Yee said in an interview, pointing to explanatory emails as well as Instagram posts that explained why some students received dropped course notifications on their accounts and why those holds were lifted.

Grommo explained that the notification was meant to give students peace of mind. If the drop hold was lifted and they’re still enrolled, that means the campus concluded the student is in good financial standing.

Jessicca Barco, associate vice president for strategic enrollment management at Cal State Fullerton, added that normally returning students would learn their financial aid amounts between May and June. The information is provided near the end of the academic year to ensure students meet federal grade requirements to continue receiving aid. The federal delay meant some 23,000 returning students received their aid information last Friday. The campus moved back the deadline to pay for tuition to Aug. 19, Barco added. For many students it’s typically in mid-July.

Reasons for getting financial aid late

As for why some students may get their federal financial aid late — some students in the past received theirs as late as October — Grommo cited several factors.

One may be that those students applied for financial aid well into summer rather than in late winter. Another may be that they were selected to undergo an audit of their family finances to ensure they’re eligible for financial aid. Or their grades are too low to continue receiving aid and they must appeal to the school to restore their eligibility. Other students may experience a sudden loss of personal or family finances that isn’t captured in the income data they filed in their aid applications.

“The majority of students go through the process just fine, but of course, the small group that does not go through the process fine, those are the really major issues,” Grommo said.

Her advice to students: Make sure their school email account is set up in case the campus is only emailing them there rather than their personal account and to keep calling their school’s financial aid office.

Cal State Fullerton students got their financial aid disbursements Wednesday.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

After 70 years as the epicenter of Long Beach football, the iconic Veterans Memorial Stadium will be demolished later this month to make way for a modern replacement, slated for completion in 2029.

The $250 million transformation will have an 18-acre footprint and include a new stadium that pays homage to the original as well as a massive sports complex featuring a 2,500-seat arena, fields for football, soccer and track, basketball and volleyball courts, athletic training and rehab facilities, offices, kinesiology classrooms and a hall of champions. The project is funded by Measure LB, an $850 million bond measure that finances LBCC construction.

The leveling of Vets Stadium closes a celebrated chapter of Long Beach history. The stadium hosted high-profile local and national sporting events, served as a movie set for Evel Knievel and became woven into the fabric of the city. It has accommodated countless graduations, and Long Beach City College and numerous area high schools will have to relocate their commencement ceremonies during construction.

Graduation caps fly in the air after the completion of the Wilson High School commencement ceremony at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach Monday, June 14, 2022.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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From its inception, Vets Stadium was intended to be a monument for the people of Long Beach, living and dead. During World War II, seventeen homesick soldiers stationed in the South Pacific wrote a letter home to Long Beach, which appeared on the front page of a 1945 edition of the Press-Telegram. As alums of Poly and Wilson high schools, the soldiers implored the city to build a stadium and dedicate it to those who “went beyond the final yard marker” — including their own classmates who had died.

They enclosed $75 as their contribution to the proposed stadium, and the city took it from there, passing a $550,000 bond measure to fund construction. By 1950, the city had erected a colossal arena (significantly over budget, forcing the city to dip into its special projects fund) with 12,500 east-facing seats, the Press-Telegram reported. It boasted a double-decker press box, equipped with a snack bar and its own toilets — a state-of-the-art facility meant to attract visitors to Long Beach, according to a 1951 publication in the public library’s archives.

“The sheer capacity of it was such a big deal,” and it became a significant regional stage, said Mike Guardabascio, sports reporter and editor at The 562 and author of the book “Football in Long Beach.”

The stadium’s size meant it could accommodate state track and field championships, college and pro football, motorcycle racing, roller derby and rugby. It became the site of holiday food drives, large-scale swap meets, Covid-19 vaccinations and the distribution of emergency sandbags.

Yet its defining identity has been the heartbeat of high school football. Even after Long Beach City College acquired the venue from the city for $1 in 1987, Vets was the home stadium for Poly High School’s powerhouse program.

Few events in Long Beach draw tens of thousands of fans, Guardabascio said. But high school football games had a magnetic pull, and spectators consistently sold out the stadium, he said.

In 2001, the country’s top-ranked high school football teams matched up in Long Beach: Poly vs. De La Salle in what was billed as the Game of the Century. Over 17,000 people poured into Veterans Stadium for standing room only, and many more tuned into the first nationally televised high school game.

Veterans Memorial Stadium at Long Beach City College on Thursday, July 7, 2022.

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Brandon Richardson

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Long Beach Post

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The noise coming from the stands was deafening — “like nothing else that you would ever hear,” Guardabascio said. He was a senior in high school at the time and remembered how much attention was dialed into the game. “You just had that feeling of Long Beach being the center of the world,” he said.

In the years since, as other large sports arenas became options, Vets Stadium became less of a go-to choice in the region, Guardabascio said. And the structure is now crumbling — pieces of concrete are falling off the back; a hole in the floor of the press box bathroom offers a window to the ground several stories below, he said.

The rebuild could reassert the city as a central player in the wider sports scene, Guardabascio said. He pointed to the exceptional sports facility upgrades Long Beach City College has already executed, including its pool and beach volleyball courts.

Still, the demolition of a symbol for the city weighs heavily on some. “Our whole football history runs through that place,” Guardabascio said. “Everyone who grew up caring about sports and football in Long Beach has memories of being there.”

Football fans can watch the Poly football team’s final game at Vets Stadium on Friday, Aug. 28, and the LBCC Vikings’ last stadium game on Saturday, Aug. 29. LBCC also invites community members to attend a celebration and groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday, Sept. 9.

Parents could soon be headed for an even bigger child care crunch in California, experts say.

That’s because the rollout of a new grade for 4-year-olds in the state’s public schools is having unintended consequences for child care businesses, according to a new report by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley.

Child cares have historically cared for children 5 and under, but the report found they’re losing more 4- and 5-year-olds to transitional kindergarten, a universal option that was fully implemented last school year.

Sue Carrera, who runs a home daycare in Inglewood, said that before the pandemic, she had an average of 12 kids enrolled in her program. Now, she has only four — the lowest since she opened up her business in 2008 — as she’s seen children move to the public school system earlier.

“ I don't really see myself staying in this business for any lengthy period of time,” she said.

The way that part of the child care business model worked was that older-age preschool children have helped subsidize the cost of caring for infants and toddlers, who are more expensive to care for, said Anna Powell, the report’s lead author.

“ When we're tinkering with a model where there's — ‘it already kind of barely makes ends meet’ — it absolutely can cause big ripple effects and potentially lead to system-level closures,” Powell said.

Between 2019 and 2025, about 1,100 preschools have closed across California.

The report, which used a survey of thousands of child care providers, found that at child cares based at facilities, average enrollment of 4- to 5-year-olds fell by five children from 2023 to 2025. It also found that at the same time, providers haven’t been able to make an easy shift to caring for more babies. The teacher to child ratio is higher for infants (1 to 4) than for older preschoolers (1 to 12).

“ There's no resources to help them buy cribs that they didn't need before, and now suddenly they must have on site. There's no resources for educators who are used to, after decades, working with 4- and 5-year-olds, learning, 'How do I need to adapt my craft to work with these younger children?’” Powell said.

The study recommends California invest in the early education system in the same way it has invested in transitional kindergarten.

If more preschools close down the line, it could mean families may struggle more to find child care in an already scarce environment, said Debra Coleman,  director of the L.A. County Office for the Advancement of Early Care and Education.

In 2022, there were licensed spaces in L.A. County to be able to serve only 4% of children under 2 years old.

“If you have less options, you will have less choices of where to go. It might impact the capacity,” Coleman said. “ It might take us from a very fragile system to a fractured system.”

Southern California is getting a dose of unseasonably cool weather — a welcome break after a series of hot, humid heat waves over the last few months.

Lower than normal temperatures are expected to stick around through the weekend.

Highs along the coast will be in the 70s over the next few days. Inland areas of L.A. and Orange counties will get up to the 80s. Even the Inland Empire is expected to peak at about 90 degrees on Friday.

The cooler temperatures are also expected to come with cloudy skies across the region.

The cloud cover will likely be widespread on Friday and much of Saturday, but concentrated mostly in the morning hours and along the coast, where skies could stay cloudy through the afternoon.

The cool, mild conditions won’t last long, though.

Forecasters say temperatures will start to tick back up on Saturday. They will stay below normal seasonal levels for a few days, but the summer heat will be back by the middle of next week.

So this weekend might be a good time to go on a hike or host that barbecue.

Low pressure equals mild temperatures 

The cool weather is a pretty stark change.

Just a few weeks ago, the National Weather Service was issuing warnings across Southern California for extreme heat and predicting nearly record-breaking temperatures. Now, atmospheric conditions have shifted.

Much of that suffocating heat was driven by a massive system of high pressure air hovering over the Southwestern U.S.

High pressure systems trap warm air beneath them and compress it, further warming the air and preventing cooler air from displacing it.

This week, the high pressure system finally loosened its grip.

“That ridge of high pressure kind of broke down, and then a trough of low pressure developed off and along the coast of California,” said Devin Black, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Low pressure systems force air to rise, and as air rises it cools. It also eventually condenses, often forming cloud cover.

That’s one reason behind the clouds in Southern California this week.

Meanwhile, a deep marine layer and onshore winds are helping push those clouds farther inland. Forecasters note that the low pressure system and onshore winds are also keeping humidity levels up.

Despite the cloud cover and moisture, it’s unlikely there will be much, if any, rain. Some minimal precipitation could be possible in Ventura and Santa Barbara county mountains.

The low pressure system and marine layer will start to shrink on Saturday, allowing heat-generating high pressure to move back into the region.