The James Logan Courier

By Rocky Barker
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

BOISE, Idaho — Sockeye entered the Columbia River in recent weeks, beginning a 900-mile migration that very nearly ended 20 years ago.

Only four Snake River sockeye made their way through eight dams and past nets and predators in 1992, a year after the fish that makes its home in Idaho's Sawtooth Valley was listed as endangered. Only one male completed the final climb up the Snake and Salmon rivers to a weir on Redfish Lake Creek on Aug. 4.

Allyson Coonts, the 7-year-old daughter of Sawtooth Hatchery technician Phil Coonts, named the sockeye Lonesome Larry. When then-Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus put the stuffed fish on his office wall, Lonesome Larry became the symbol of the entire Snake and Columbia salmon restoration program.

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Director of Parent and Community Relations

If voters reject a statewide tax initiative on the November ballot, the New Haven Unified School District faces the loss of an additional $1.3 million over previous estimates for the 2012-13 budget, the result of revisions to the state budget announced last week by Gov. Brown.

“We now must plan to reduce our budget by more than $12 million,” Superintendent Kari McVeigh wrote Wednesday in an e-mail to employees.

“When the Governor announced his May budget revisions last week, it appeared public education had been spared further cuts, or at least those cuts would be relatively minor,” the Superintendent wrote. “But as details of the revisions became clear, it became evident that two key pieces of the funding model had been impacted.”

By David Siders
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — University of California regents warned Wednesday of more potential tuition increases, while student protesters again disrupted a meeting of the university's governing board.

The UC system, which raised tuition last year by about 18 percent, is considering a 6 percent tuition increase this year.

Frustrated students, who have clashed with administrators over fees and service cuts for months, forced regents to break unexpectedly from the public portion of their meeting when about 18 protesters wearing prison garb started marching in a circle in the audience.

The students at the meeting, at the Sacramento Convention Center, complained they had been "sentenced to debt."

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Director of Parent and Community Relations

The vast majority of nearly 1,000 parents who responded to an electronic survey say the New Haven Unified School District meets their children’s academic and social needs, provides a safe learning environment, practices equity and communicates effectively. And the District’s marks in virtually every area have improved – sometimes dramatically so – in comparison to a similar survey taken in 2010.

A total of 952 parents responded to District-wide and school-specific automated phone invitations to participate in the survey, which was open from April 10 through May 4. The response rate – roughly13 percent of the District’s approximately 7,500 households – is about average for such surveys.

By Rick La Plante, New Haven Schools Director of Parent and Community Relations

The Board of Education on Tuesday night approved a plan to designate the District’s Independent Study Program as its own school, to be located on the campus of the New Haven Adult School.

The Independent Study Program, currently headquartered at the Cabello Student Support Center, includes independent study for James Logan High students as well as independent study for kindergarten through eighth grade students and home schooling for kindergarten through 12th grade students. It is estimated that the new school will serve about 300 students, the vast majority in grades 9 to 12.

By Kim Ode
Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (MCT)

Dust always needs a place to land. Take the record turntable, rarely used, but there when you want to listen to some classic vinyl. Or the transistor radio. The sound quality is awful, but it'll come in handy if a storm knocks out the power. The telephone? Well, every once in a while, it does ring.

Sometimes you might even see it sporting a blinking light — if you ever looked.

By Carla Rivera
Los Angeles Times (MCT)

LOS ANGELES — The number of eligible California high school graduates entering the state's public four-year universities has plunged in the last five years, as budget-strapped institutions increasingly adopt practices to reduce enrollment, a new study has found.

At University of California and California State University campuses, enrollment rates dropped by one-fifth, to fewer than 18 percent of all state high school graduates in 2010, from about 22 percent in 2007.

By Yari Nieves-Rivera, Courier Book Editor


The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith was a really great book to read in my spare time, considering that it was everything that I wasn’t expecting. I picked it up because John Green, my favorite author, suggested it. Oddly enough, it has become one of my favorite books to read. It’s new, and a great read for teenagers.

It’s set in an airport, in the span of one day. Hadley Sullivan is a seventeen year old girl on her way to her father’s wedding, in London. Considering that her mother and father are divorced, she’s forced to go by herself. It was supposed to be a pretty normal flight across the country, until she misses her flight. At first, she thinks of it as a sign of good luck, and fate telling her to not go to the wedding. Still, she re-schedules the flight so that she can get to the wedding just on time.

Then, she has to go to the bathroom. When people don’t want to watch her suitcases for her, she decides to take a bunch of her stuff with her. That’s when Oliver walks into her life, a British gentleman going to Yale.

By Phillip Reese
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

SACRAMENTO — Fed up with tuition increases and frustrated by rejection at packed California universities, more high school graduates than ever are leaving the state to attend college.

Enrollment of Californians at Boise State rose tenfold in the past decade. Arizona State doubled its enrollment of freshmen from California. The University of Oregon has quadrupled it, with freshman enrollment from California growing from 280 in 2000 to 1,100 in 2010.

By August Brown
Los Angeles Times (MCT)

LOS ANGELES — The nine young women of Girls' Generation sauntered onto the performance stage of "Late Show With David Letterman." Flanked by a DJ and live drummer, the South Korean pop group wore lacy black mini-dresses and thigh-high leather boots, as if they were hosting a goth cocktail party. It was a rare American network television performance from a South Korean music group.

By Rick LaPlante, New Haven Schools Director of Parent and Community Relations

In response to an outpouring of concern about how state budget cuts might affect the District’s music program, Board of Education members Tuesday night urged an audience of more than 100 people to get involved in efforts to pass Measure H on the June 5 ballot.

More than 20 students and parents spoke during the public comment portion of the Board’s regular meeting, concerned about how the possible reduction or elimination of elementary school specialists and middle school electives might impact the music program, particularly at James Logan High.