The Police Department's Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program narrowly escaped elimination at the previous Council funding. The program is under renewed scrutiny.
The Arcadia Police Dept. will receive $1,227,823 of a total of $12 million for its part in the largest drug bust in history at a Sylmar warehouse last September. The money will be used to step up drug enforcement, as well as for community programs in drug prevention and awareness. The undercover work was by officer Dean Caputo.
The Arcadia Unified School District's scores on the California Assessment Program went up in math for all grades this year, but down in reading in the 3rd and 6th grades, while 8th grade students showed an increase in reading. Other figures are also given in the article, as well as a chart of scores for each AUSD school on page A-2.
The City Council approved a drug and alcohol policy despite concerns voiced by police officers and fire fighters about the language used in the document concerning "designated standby or on-call status," normally used to describe around the clock periods.
About 300 students in kindergarten through 5th grade will attend new schools in September because the school board unanimously approved changes in school attendance boundaries.
Gary Southworth, Arcadia Teachers Association president and 5th grade teacher at Highland Oaks Elementary School, was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol following an automobile accident that killed a 21 year old University of La Verne student.
Jenny Lee, 15, is now a super hero character in the comic book "The Good Guys" following an essay contest given by Defiant comics. The idea was to create 8 new characters, then conduct a search for real-life kids to match them.
A $1,040 gift was presented to the Arcadia Unified School District by the Lions Club for the Lions-Quest Skills for Growing Program designed to help steer students away from alcohol and drug use.
The opening day of Oak Tree marked the introduction of satellite wagering on Santa Anita Park races at Hollywood Park and Los Alamitos. After years of resistance, Santa Anita Park has fully embraced satellite wagering in a bid to win back fans lost to the lottery and urban congestion.
The 9-person team of Arcadia High School placed 3rd out of 73 teams in the county's 41st annual Academic Decathlon, thus performing the best ever in Arcadia High School history. The decathlon consists of speech, math, science, fine arts, social science/history, economics, language, literature and essay competitions.
The new CAS (2) program, an acronym for Curriculum Alignment System and Comprehensive Assessment System, will replace the California Assessment Program (CAP), the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS), and the District Minimum Proficiency Tests. CAS (2) testing will begin in November for high school seniors, with all other grades to take the test in the spring. Advantages of the new test are given in the article.