By Dianne Anderson Good grades are almost everything, and it all starts with parent engagement, student summer programs, and HBCU tours that are now in full force through the Long Beach Unified School District’s Black Student Achievement Initiative. For Elyssa Taylor-Stewart, testing is on the periphery of successful outcomes for one of her jobs as ...

By Dianne Anderson Career pathways, self-care and mental wellness resources, cultural awareness and human relations are a few topics local teens will ponder, along with other grown-up questions on their to-do list, like how to get a good job with the city. The new Teen Academy is set to launch at each of the Long ...

By Dianne Anderson If Black students can benefit from their fair share of the latest COVID Relief funding, then some relief may be in store from the academically, social-emotionally barren year. Summer school programs are set to open in real time, and Long Beach educators hope to see students back in their traditional classrooms as ...

By Dianne Anderson In her worst childhood nightmares, Cynthia Terry could have never imagined the things that have become a daily reality for today’s kids. Back in her day, all she had to worry about was tending to her schoolwork, maybe some chores, and then a little time for play. “We never had to watch ...

By Dianne Anderson Even on a slow day, hundreds of parents are now watching the Long Beach Unified School Board meetings, which is exponentially more than what was happening pre-pandemic. For all the havoc that COVID-19 has wrought on the community, there is still some room for optimism. “Before the pandemic, at the board meeting ...

By Dianne Anderson Ammons Smith, a senior at Long Beach Unified School District, isn’t dealing with the uncertainty facing many of his peers these days. All of his core classes are finished. He has cleared major hurdles, all set to graduate and ready to move on to bigger things, even despite the school shut down ...

By Dianne Anderson Fire up the old computer, dust off the laptop, or get the smartphone palm ready. Residents over the next week will start receiving their special Census code by snail mail. They are expected to fill out that form, or they can expect the knock at the door. For those that need extra ...

By Dianne Anderson Top teenage mathematical minds in the Long Beach Unified School District are gearing up to teach students half a world away about how to build, program and code computers. Kids with the Urban Math Collaborative will soon catch up with students off the coast of Africa in a new long-distance learning project ...

By Dianne Anderson Long Beach kids are learning how to use their innate multitasking abilities to expand on something else they naturally have in play. One of the first things that Everett Glenn always tells students in his program is that making it to the top of their sports dreams might be a one in ...

By Dianne Anderson Segregation is not some awful signpost of the distant past. It’s on the playgrounds, it’s in the lunchrooms and follows kids throughout the middle and high school years. Even when students are close neighbors, they are not necessarily positively sharing their experiences and cultures. On Saturday, January 25, the California Conference for ...