Science bowl winners

And the winner is ...

North Hollywood High took first place in the 2008 L.A. Department of Water and Power Science Bowl regional competition. It was the school's 10th regional title for knowledge in science, math and technology.

That means the team goes to the National Science Bowl in May in Washington, D.C.

Each of the five team members -- Angela She, Emily Ye, Brian Kim, Ryan Thorngren and Murtaza Saifee -- receives a medallion and a $1,000 scholarship from Hitachi Corp. Their coach is Altair Maine.

Harvard-Westlake came in second, LAUSD’s Van Nuys High School was third, and Bravo Medical Magnet High came in fourth. Fifty-four teams from 30 schools in Los Angeles County participated this year.

The L.A. DWP Science Bowl is an official, regional qualifying tournament of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Science Bowl. The Department of Energy started the competition in 1991, and more than 100,000 students have participated.

-- Mary MacVean

Capistrano budget woes

More possible budget cuts for schools. Capistrano Unified School District trustees tentatively approved $27 million in budget cuts this week in preparation of a tighter state budget.

But they also increased the superintendent’s salary by 11%.

The cuts could eliminate about 427 jobs, two-thirds of them teaching positions, said Beverly De Nicola, chief communications officer for the district. The job cuts represent close to 10% of the workforce in the southern Orange County school district, which serves more than 50,000 students at 56 schools.

"It means the layoff of a lot of really good teachers," De Nicola said. Under the proposed plan, class sizes in kindergarten through third grades are expected to grow from 20 students to 31.5. Supt. A. Woodrow Carter’s salary would be boosted from $245,000 a year to $273,000; additional benefits, including healthcare, bring the total to nearly $325,000 a year.

School garden grant

A gardening program at Grant High School in Valley Glen won a $10,000 award from the AARP, L.A. Unified announced today. The Serenity Garden for Wildlife Conservation Program is meant to encourage teamwork. It provides gardening opportunities for senior citizens in the neighborhood and fosters relationships among students, parents, teachers and other residents.

AARP received nearly 1,000 applications from public schools and granted an Innovation Award to one public high school in each state. Grant High has nearly 3,000 students.

-- Mary MacVean

Financial aid reminder

Don't say we didn't give you notice. This is our third.

California's deadline for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, is Sunday.

Also, the deadline to register for the next ACT college admission exam -- a rival to the SAT –- is next Friday. The exam will be given April 12. (Late registration is accepted until March 21 -- for an extra $19.)

-- Shelby Grad

Tips for SAT success

Can you feel the collective anxiety? Hear the hundreds of thousands of students sharpening their No. 2 pencils? They're taking the nearly four-hour SAT college-entrance exam Saturday morning, and the Princeton Review offered a few tips.

The test-prep firm urges its students to relax the night before the exam, eat breakfast the day of the test and -- try really hard -- avoid "freaking out."

Here's the long version:

The Night Before the Test
1.       Repeat after me -- I will not take a practice test the day/night before. It doesn't help. You either know it by then or you don't. This is not a test you can cram for the night before.
2.       Do something relaxing, like renting a movie.
3.       Don't go to bed at 8 p.m. You'll just lie there thinking about the test. Go to bed at your normal time.
4.       Pack your bag, so you don't forget anything when you leave the house. You need your admission ticket, water bottle, several No. 2 pencils, good eraser, photo ID, watch, a magazine to read in the car and waiting in line, and a calculator (check the batteries).
5.       Make sure to bring wooden No. 2 pencils to the test, not mechanical pencils.

Live from Quiznos

Since when does the Los Angeles school district have a satellite office at 6262 Van Nuys Blvd.?

That's one of the addresses listed on the top of the agenda for today's special meeting about the Budget Communication Action Plan. The other is the usual 333 S. Beaudry Ave., the district's headquarters. 

It turns out that board member Tamar Galatzan, who also is a deputy city attorney assigned to the Los Angeles Police Department's Van Nuys division, can't make the meeting and will instead call in from the Quiznos sandwich shop on Van Nuys Boulevard. To comply with California law, the district must list board members' location when they teleconference into meetings. The location must also be publicly accessible.

The meeting's at 4 p.m., well after the lunch rush and a little early for dinner, so no word if Galatzan will be ordering a hot and toasty sub.   

-- Jason Song

Stand up, don't sit down, fight fight fight?

Think the Los Angeles school board is concerned about the possible $460-million budget cut it's facing next year because of Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposed budget? The board called a special meeting Tuesday night to vote on a resolution titled "Opposition to State Budget Cuts to Education."

During the meeting, the board changed the title to "Standing Up for Children: Opposition to State Budget Cuts to Education." To drive their point home, the board members stood up while they voted and urged all four or so audience members still remaining to also get to their feet.

The measure passed unanimously.

-- Jason Song

Kira-Kira author goes to school

It took two years, and the student who started it all has gone on to college, but today everyone at Ramona Convent Secondary School in Alhambra had a visit from Newbery Award-winning author Cynthia Kadohata.

Using slides, Kadohata told the girls assembled in the gym about how she writes. She showed heavily edited manuscript pages, her child, her dog, her family and herself to tell them what a writer's life is like.

The novel Kira-Kira engaged Kassandra Palmas, an 11th-grader, because "I like it when I can picture myself there," she said as she waited for an autograph.

And Kadohata knew just how to engage her audience of more than 500 girls in grades seven to 12. Her mother, she said, was 18 years old and had an 18-inch waist when she married. Kadohata once made so little as a writer that she repaired her glasses with dental floss.

Others of her books are Weedflower and Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam.

-- Mary MacVean

Torrance's refined 8th-grade girls

It's Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day for eighth-grade girls at the Exxon Mobil refinery in Torrance! Really, it is. Tomorrow too. Now you know.

(This is all part of National Engineers Week, and is intended to fix a serious imbalance: Women are grossly underrepresented in the engineering profession. Think about it: When was the last time you saw a woman with a pocket protector?)

--Mitchell Landsberg

Cheating expulsions

When the story broke that six students had been expelled from Harvard-Westlake in a cheating scandal, a colleague said she told her daughter that flunking a test was better than cheating to pass. It's likely there will be lots of conversations between students and their parents about this important topic. I wonder whether readers believe that the punishment fit the crime. Read what some students think here.

The Daily News talked to Don McCabe, a Rutgers University professor who has long studied cheating in college. He says that about a fifth of undergraduate college students report cheating on tests. The paper also reports on some ways that students are using technology to cheat. If only they had spent that time studying ancient Greece....

-- Mary MacVean