Classroom

Gary Moskowitz BURBANK -- Class-size reduction remains one of the Burbank Unified School District's top priorities for the 2001-02 school year. The school board adopted a resolution last week to apply for annual state funds made available to districts that participate in the class size reduction program -- a program that allows no single classes in kindergarten through third-grade to exceed 20 students. To Donna Coffey, principal at Thomas Edison Elementary School, keeping class size to 20 in lower elementary grades is crucial to each student's education.

A Los Angeles City College student sued the college recently after his professor allegedly called him a ?fascist? and refused to let him finish an in-class speech opposing same-sex marriage. According to the student, who is a Christian, the professor told him to ?ask God what your grade is? and threatened to expel him when he complained to campus authorities. Some of the students? classmates were reportedly offended by the speech, however, and the dean quoted one of them accusing the student of ?

At Bliss Unlimited in the Burbank Town Center, everything has a back story. Take, for example, the work of San Francisco-based Serendipity Glass Studio artist Carla Geraghty, an Army wife who creates decorative fixtures and glass vases. Or the bowls made out of recycled candy packaging by kids in India or the bowls made out of recycled telephone wire made in Vietnam. Each art piece and ware the retail gift shop sells can be traced to independent artists around the world — from India and Guatemala to Vietnam and El Salvador.

It was almost 2 p.m. on Thursday afternoon when a classroom of middle school students broke out into the chorus of “Lean on Me.” The 30-person sing-along was the culmination of social studies teacher Anthony Dima’s second “Rock the Classroom” course, a program that incorporates literacy fundamentals into music instruction. Students at John Muir and Luther Burbank middle schools as well as Emerson Elementary will participate in the Rock the Classroom courses for 12 weeks.

BY CHRIS WIEBE The Leader NORTHWEST DISTRICT — School was out for spring break at Bret Harte Elementary on Thursday, but a group of civic-minded volunteers were hard at work on school grounds. More than 40 Lockheed Federal Credit Union employees put down their pens, pushed away from their keyboards and picked up paint brushes, setting their sights on four fading portable classroom units that were left out of the school’s modernization efforts in 1999. “We’ve always had these eyesore bungalows that no one has really done anything about,” Principal Diane Berger said.

Logan Hovestreydt looked across a long table covered in scratched and slightly sullied cardboard, took a deep breath and smiled. It was the first time the 17-year-old Monterey High School student had worked on a large-scale group art project with his peers at the continuation school, and he was happy. ?I love this class,? Logan said. He and his classmates were taking part in the fifth installment of The HeArt Project, a Los Angeles-based program that puts working artists in classrooms at alternative high schools.

BURBANK — The first floor of a classroom building at Joaquin Miller Elementary will have to be mended to the tune of $150,000 this summer to repair moisture damage that was creating a safety hazard, officials said. Workers did not install a moisture barrier on the original floor built eight years ago in the campus's No. 27 two-story classroom building, the school district's Chief Facilities Officer Craig R. Jellison said. Instead, a less effective vapor barrier was placed on the floor, he said.

Efrain Valenzuela opened the door to his mobile dairy classroom — an unusual classroom to say the least — to reveal a cow. And his audience was duly impressed. About 60 students sat on the floor of Roosevelt Elementary School’s playground in amazement Monday morning. “Wow,” the children said in unison as Milky Way, the cow, chomped on hay and whisked flies away with her tail. The children unanimously agreed that Valenzuela, of the Dairy Council of California, doesn’t look like he lives in the city.