District officials have come up with some creative thinking to get students back to class, a break down of this weekend's town hall, understanding our alert system.
Montecito students will return to classes at a zoo, a college and a museum
Many families in Montecito are looking for temporary housing and ways to continue with their lives after mudslides filled with boulders and debris killed at least 20 residents and destroyed or damaged more than 400 homes.
For kids, part of the process of returning to everyday life means going back to school. Tuesday more than 400 students at the Montecito Union Elementary returned to classes at remote locations outside of the evacuation zone.
Tuesday and Wednesday the kids and their teachers will be divided between the Santa Barbara Zoo and MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration and Innovation.
While the students are at the zoo and the MOXI, work will be done to prepare Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) to become an alternative campus for the elementary students, adding temporary bathrooms and reconfiguring classrooms.
Thursday, classes will move to SBCC, and Santa Barbara Unified's McKinley Elementary across the street from the college. Superintendent of Montecito Union, Anthony Ranii said they expect to be at this alternative campus for a couple of weeks at least.
There's a lot to do with gas to make that safe, with our drinking water. I think electricity is mostly online but there are still impassable roads and some really unsafe situations. So as much as we want to get back to Montecito Union School, of course, we want to do that safely.
A handful of Montecito students students stranded by the 101 freeway closure are also temporarily attending classes at Summerland Elementary in the Carpinteria School District, until the freeway is reopened.
Ranii, said that the Montecito Union had shut down earlier due to air quality concerns during the Thomas Fire. Students only attended two days of classes before the school had to close again because of the mudslide evacuations.
With all the disruptions, Ranii said it could be helpful for students to finally return to the structure of the classroom.
It might sound strange but I think it's reassuring to return to division and reading and social studies because it's something that students know how to do, they know what to expect, and that routine can be healing.
The school will have counselors and support staff, in addition to teachers, to help students process the recent natural disasters.
LA proposes temporary trailers to house the homeless
It's no secret Los Angeles has a problem housing the many people who have to live outdoors. There are currently 25,000 unsheltered homeless in the city, according to the latest estimates from Mayor Garcetti's office.
And even though voters approved $1.2 billion in bonds to help build them permanent housing, it takes time. So on Tuesday, the L.A. City Council will consider a proposal to use a downtown L.A. parking lot for temporary trailers.
Matt Szabo is Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Garcetti. He joined Take Two's A Martinez to talk about the new proposal.
The plan to install temporary trailers to house L.A. homeless
We have a crisis on our streets and sidewalks right now, so this proposal is the first of many working with City Council to site and build temporary shelters so we can get those that are unsheltered and living on the street into shelter and into services while we wait for the permanent housing to be built.
Where the trailers will be located
This particular project, the strategy the mayor identified, is that so often, as any homeless outreach worker would tell you, it takes multiple, dozens in fact, contacts with unsheltered homeless to convince them to seek shelter because the shelters are concentrated downtown. If someone is in the valley or in Hollywood, it might not be easy to convince someone to seek shelter in an area they're not familiar with. This is the first project to bring the shelter to the homeless encampment. This is focused on the El Pueblo area of downtown, using a parking lot for El Pueblo, with five trailers. These trailers are in the style of the temporary office buildings you see at construction sites.
How the trailers will be used
Three are for housing. They can hold up to 60 people. One will be for showers, bathrooms, storage, etc., and one will be an office for the services we're providing.
How the homeless can apply to live there
The intent of this project is for the Homeless Services Authority, they will contract with a nonprofit that will do extensive outreach to the surrounding community, and they will determine who gets in. This won't be a walk-up shelter but a shelter where folks from the surrounding encampments will be reached out to and placed in the shelter. Once they're in the shelter, they'll receive mental health and drug treatment services and housing placement services to get into permanent housing.
Temporary housing is a building block for permanent housing
In the mayor's view, this is absolutely necessary. We can't wait for two years when anyone who walks the streets of L.A. knows it's a humanitarian crisis. We have people living on the street and the mayor believes it's more humane to provide shelter, even if it's temporary, to get them into housing and get a second chance. It's a complimentary strategy to the permanent housing ultimate strategy.
The roll-out plan for permanently housing the homeless
Right now, the voters approved a $1.2 billion bond. In the first year of that bond, we have funded 440 units. That bond will support up to 10,000 units. Those projects are underway. One project near downtown in the East Hollywood area has broken ground, and we'll be rolling out those projects as soon as we can get the ground broken. You should see those projects up and running in the next few years. But again, the temporary shelter strategy is to deal with the problem and the crisis we have right now. We can't wait three years for the permanent housing to be built. We need to provide shelter right now.
California governor's forum gets contentious
New music from I'm With Her, Bonsai Universe and Starcrawler
Every week Take Two gets the latest new music that you may not hear anywhere else. Music journalist Steve Hochman came to the studio recently with his list of must-listen new music.
Here are his picks:
I’m With Her
Album: “See You Around”
“I’m With Her” is the name for a singing collective of Sara Watkins, Sara Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan - many know that from their appearances — together and separately — on the NPR show “Live From Here,” hosted by Chris Thile.
These are three supremely talented artists, as writers and musicians as well as singers. All three are accomplished guitarists, while Sara Watkins is a premier fiddler and Sara Jarosz an ace banjoist.
This debut trio album was made in Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in a village outside of Bath, England. But it could have been done almost anywhere as it was recorded with the three of them performing together around one mic, voices and instruments all at once. And it’s no mere studio trick — they just did this same thing live at a special showcase performance here in L.A.
“Game to Lose” is a stellar showcase of all of that, alternating between brittle, wistful and determined in stance. Wistful may be the most common aesthetic, though, “Pangaea” getting almost gothic (in the ancient sense, not the black lipstick sense) in its opening, and“Overland” echoing past folk songs of intra-continental migrations.
But even in the songs of sadness, of movement, of seeking and growing, there’s always at root the joy they clearly have simply from singing and playing together. Or at least they make it seem simple. However they do it, we’re with them.
Bonsai Universe
Album: “Moonstream”
Los Angeles guitarist Woody Aplanalp has gotten pretty far out there working with artists ranging from free-jazz fencing with Nels Cline to power-driven jazz-funk-soul with Miles Mosley’s West Coast Get Down, and he’s toured with R&B stars Lauryn Hill and Bobby Womack. But here, as Bonsai Universe, it seems he’s a lovelorn, introspective gentle spirit with a cosmic gaze.
It’s with that gaze that he opens this album, on title track “Moonstream,” with a tone that almost matches some of Yes’ most ethereal passages. Heck, his reedy voice even evokes that of Yes singer Jon Anderson.
He also has a penchant for wordless “shooby dooby” vocal lines, a device he uses on several songs, and while it might be annoying nonsense if done by someone else, with him it simply adds to both the blissful charm and melancholy musings.
Starcrawler
Album: “Starcrawler”
Based in Los Angeles, the band Starcrawler includes members Arrow de Wilde, Henri Cash on guitar, Austin Smith on drums and Tim Franco on bass.
Arrow De Wilde comes to rock naturally. Her mom is photographer Autumn de Wilde who has shot many album covers and band photos — of Beck, the White Stripes, Willie Nelson, Elliot Smith and Nick Cave, among the many.
Live fronting her band Starcrawler, she’s a lanky wildcat, all legs and arms and hair spidering around the stage, sometimes spitting fake blood, at once spontaneously chaotic and purposefully, even calculatedly theatrical. Check out the various fan-shot videos on YouTube from shows around Southern California and you’ll get the idea. Sure, sometimes maybe it seems she’s trying too hard to be wild — she’s only 18 after all. And she’s not even the youngest in the band, as the spit-fire punk-metal guitar licks are coming from a mere 17-year-old, Henri Cash, who co-founded the band with de Wilde at their high school in Echo Park.
That can be hard to capture on a recording, but the debut, “Starcrawler,” does it well, thanks in good part to one fan, veteran rocker Ryan Adams, who recorded it, giving a professional gloss without losing the grit. Glam, punk, Sunset Strip metal, ‘90s grunge all co-exist as equal influences here.
Their song, “I Love LA," (nothing to do with Randy Newman) is a rockin’ tour around town, a youthful, side-eye stare, nicely mirrored in a video for the song, shot largely at and around a donut shop on Silver Lake Blvd.
Notably, this is not one of the recent wave of shops trying to hipster up the form with gimmicky or gourmet variations. Sometimes the classic approaches are the best, be it with donuts or Hollywood rock.