Beverly Hills Unified has recently voted to give schools the authority to penalize families who don’t live in the district for enrolling their kids in its schools. Also, UCLA and Rand Health researchers say critically ill patients receiving “futile care” are creating delays in care for other patients in Intensive Care Units. Then, is In-n-Out’s double double the best burger in LA?
Coveted school districts nationwide crackdown on enrollment fraud
Out-of-district students have been an issue for many high-performing school districts in Southern California. Beverly Hills Unified has recently voted to give schools the authority to penalize families who don’t live in the district for enrolling their kids in its schools. The fine is calculated to be around $150 a day.
The new rules, updated two weeks ago, let the district collect "any and all damages, including compensatory damages, consequential damages, punitive damages, and liquidated damages" from "parents, guardians or others who intentionally misrepresent the student's residency in order to gain admittance to the district."
Beverly Hills Unified is one of the more aggressive districts in Los Angeles County when it comes to policing enrollment fraud. But school districts elsewhere are also turning to hardball tactics. A school district in New Jersey this year is offering a $50 gift card for tips leading to the expulsion of out-of-district kids, and last year, a district in Atlantic City kicked out a number of students in violation of the residency requirement and recouped over $30,000 in tuition costs.
Guests:
Paul Teske, Dean and Professor, School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver; Teske specializes in education policy
Lisa Korbatov, Board Member, Beverly Hills Unified School District
Is closer scrutiny of “futile care” necessary to provide better ICU care?
Critically ill patients receiving “futile care” are creating delays in care for other patients in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). So say researchers from UCLA and RAND Health, in their report published in the journal Critical Care Medicine.
Futile care is defined as care “used to prolong life without achieving a benefit meaningful to the patient.” An example is that of a patient who will die in a few days or weeks, but is kept alive with a machine. The study took place over the course of three months, and out of 1,136 patients, 123 were determined to have received futile treatment. The authors of the study determined that no one had ever quantitatively researched non-beneficial care, and felt numbers were needed in order to have an effective public discussion.
Are some critically ill patients taking up space that could be better used for a patient that has a shot at life? Or is the extension of life a right of a dying person and their family? When and how do patients and families decide it’s time to let go? Is it worthwhile for families and individuals to explore end-of-life decisions well before those decisions are forced upon them?
Guest:
Dr. Neil Wenger, co-author of the report, a professor at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, and Director of UCLA’s Health Ethics Center
Should schools push back start times to accommodate sleepy teens?
The American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement yesterday advocating later school start times to accommodate teen sleep schedules.
Anyone who’s ever tried to get a teenager out of bed knows why: teens body clocks make it hard for them to fall asleep before 11pm and wake up before 8am, so as a group, they’re not quite morning people. At a time of critical mental and physical development, sleep is especially important, and teens need a lot of it.
The AAP recommendations say that allowing a teen to wake up after 8am would improve the quality of their learning during the day. Nationally, 43 percent of schools have start times before 8am.
Critics of plans to push back school start times argue that orchestrating widespread changes to scheduling is too difficult, and that later start times mean later end times: for kids with increasingly busy after school schedules, that could be a problem.
What’s the best way to accommodate teen body clocks? Should schools push back their start times?
Guest:
Dr. Judith Owens, Director of Sleep Medicine at Children’s National Health System, member of the American Board of Pediatrics
Should CA Vietnam Memorial include soldiers who did not die in combat?
The names of 5,622 soldiers from California who died in combat in the Vietnam War are etched on the panels of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Sacramento. A bill signed into law last year by Gov. Jerry Brown requires that names be added by the California Department of Veterans Affairs to the monument every year until 2020.
Previously, only service members died in the line of duty were included, but now, vets who died from war-related causes like exposure to Agent Orange or suicides tied to post-traumatic stress disorder could also be eligible. The move has rankled critics, who feel that the inclusion of non-combat deaths strays from the original intent of the memorial. They suggest that those who died from war-related illnesses could be honored in a separate section of the memorial instead.
Guests:
Pete Conaty, a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel who served in Vietnam. He is also an adviser to the CalVets Vietnam memorial name committee
Zack Earp, a Vietnam vet who was exposed to Agent Orange during combat. He’s a director of the Inland Empire Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America
You won't believe what Facebook is doing to save you time (filtering out click-bait)
Social media giant, Facebook, says users are tired of misleading headlines and "spammy" posts, so it's weeding out stories based on engagement data. Click-bait is when a content poster lures in people with an over-hyped photo or headline, which leads to a lot of user clicks, then increases the popularity of the post -- regardless of its true value.
The content website Upworthy is particularly notorious for over-the-top headlines. For example, the article entitled "Why some Doctors are Freaking Out Over a Popular Pastime We Assume is Good for Us" simply shows a trailer for a documentary about concussions - without much content to support the original headline. Facebook says it will measure engagement by gauging how long users spend visiting a post or writing about it.
How do you interact with click-bait? Do you like it or loathe it? How will content creators respond to Facebook’s new qualitative gauge?
Guest:
Nick Mokey, Managing Editor, Digital Trends - news and review site focused on consumer technology
Vote in our best LA burger poll: Is In-n-Out tops?
Zagat named In-n-Out’s double double the best burger in the city of LA. It’s a coveted title, especially in a region known to have catapulted the hamburger into US uber-popularity. (Though it’s origins are traced back to Wichita, Kansas and the White Castle burger.)
Out of Glendale, Bob Wian created the “big boy” burger, leading to the once popular chain, Bob’s Big Boy. In 1948, the McDonald brothers, spiffed up their San Bernardino restaurant, birthing America’s first fast food chain: McDonald's, giving customers the first burger on-the-go. Then there’s the stand-alone restaurants, currently loved of locals, like Pie 'n Burger in Pasadena, and Apple Pan on the west side.
Today, we’re digging in to that special meaty sandwich, to find-out which burger you think is best here in Los Angeles. Are you an In-N-Out devotee, or do you favor another burger?