Recently in PV PENINSULA Category

Future Peninsula High school freshman David Steinberg became the New York Times' third-youngest crossword constructor with the paper's publication last week of his puzzle.

Deb Amlen, writer of the Times' blog Wordplay, joked in an entry that 14 1/2-year-old Steinberg was failing to measure up, seeing that the youngest-ever puzzle-maker was just 14 when his construction was published back in 1976.

It makes me wonder what Mr. Steinberg has been doing with his time that has been causing him to slack off so much.

All kidding aside, Steinberg's Thursday puzzle impressed Amlen, who said most first-timers go easier on the Times' audience of crossword fans.

Mr. Steinberg dives right into the deep end with a Thursday theme that sets us a very clever task: Find the four-letter words (no, not that kind) that surreptitiously clue us in to a code that needs to be broken. Once you get that, there's one more job. You will need to understand what Mr. Steinberg is saying to you in order to understand the gibberish in the center of the grid at 39 Across. I love code-breaking games, so this was fun, fun, fun for me.

Steinberg will start in fall at top-achieving Palos Verdes Peninsula High in Rolling Hills Estates. He's currently living in Seattle and is moving down to the South Bay this summer after a five-week session at Google. His mom, Karen Steinberg, let the Breeze know about his unusual accomplishment this month.

The teenager says he spends most of his time constructing and solving crosswords -- a passion he developed when he was 12. He has submitted 35 puzzles to the Times, but finds time for interest in Latin, robotics, computer programming and ping pong.

The Washington Post erred in its exclusion of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School from the newspaper's list of the nation's top 1,900 public secondary campuses, according to an email from a Post columnist to Pen High. I described Pen's surprising exclusion last week.

The index should be updated later this week, and Pen High will be somewhere around 192nd rank, making it the top school from the South Bay and Harbor Area, and placing it within the top 1 percent nationwide.

Here's part of an emailed apology from Post columnist Jay Mathews to Peninsula High:

The Post erred in failing to place Palos Verdes Peninsula High School on our 2011 High School Challenge rankings of the nation's high schools. It is entirely my fault. I expect that great school--one of the first I visited when I conceived this project 15 years ago--will be added to the list this week, along with other schools we missed in the first version of the list. Every year since this list began in 1998, we have had a second updated version to make sure we include every school, including those who failed to notify us of their numbers and those, like PVPHS, whose paperwork I lost somewhere on my desk.

PVPHS will be ranked in the top 200, somewhere around 192, which puts it in the top one percent of US public schools measured this way. Its line on the list will read as follows:

Palos Verdes Peninsula Rolling Hills Estates CA 73.00 2.10 3.489

Those three numbers are, in order, the percentage of seniors who had at least one passing grade on an AP exam while in high school, the percentage of students qualified for federal lunch subsidies, and the school's Challenge Index rating (the number of AP test in 2010 divided by the number of graduating seniors.)

If you are a longtime Palos Verdes Peninsula resident and you read my story today on an effort to bring stadium lighting to a Pen High, you probably noticed a glaring error.

I stated that Pen High coach and former football star Kevin Moen graduated from the school in 1979. As any good citizen of The Hill knows, the school was then called Rolling Hills High, not Palos Verdes Peninsula High. I didn't think about that when writing that second-to-last line.

Sorry, Kevin, RHHS alumni and other sensitive readers -- my bad! Thanks for bringing it to my attention in the comments. Feel free to email me directly next time at melissa.pamer AT dailybreeze.com.

The story will be fixed shortly and we'll run a correction in tomorrow's paper.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District announced this morning that Mitzi Cress is taking over the top post at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School following the retirement of longtime principal Kelly Johnson.

A Miraleste High graduate, Cress has been with PVPUSD for 41 years, including 19 years at Pen High as a counselor and associate principal at the high-achieving campus.

"She has proven to the educational community in Palos Verdes that she is a passionate instructional leader who cares deeply about each and every student," Superintendent Walker Williams said in a press release.

The state Department of Education today released its annual list of distinguished schools -- 484 this year, which focuses on elementary campuses.

For more on the program, go to the CDE website. Here were the local awardees on the list:

• LAUSD schools: Kentwood Elementary, Lomita Math/Science Magnet, and Park Western Place Elementary and Seventh Street Elementary in San Pedro


• Manhattan Beach schools: Grand View Elementary and Pacific Elementary


• Palos Verdes Peninsula schools: Cornerstone at Pedregal Elementary, Montemalaga Elementary and Silver Spur Elementary


• Redondo Beach schools: Beryl Heights Elementary, Birney Elementary, Madison Elementary


• Torrance schools: Arlington Elementary and Lincoln Elementary

Highland Elementary in Inglewood Unified was also named to the list.

*An earlier version of this post excluded two local schools. Sorry about that!

It turns out the young girl who last week reported an attempted abduction at Mira Catalina Elementary School in RPV was making the story up.

Parents should get a notification e-mail from the school today.

The event in the upscale residential neighborhood caused a bit of a frenzy among parents -- and among news media.

Our update is here.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District's science fair will be held at the South Coast Botanic Garden this Thursday. Public viewing is from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m., with an awards ceremony to follow.

More than 100 high school students will display their research in a variety of areas of science in math.

Research students who have won awards at the local, state, national and international competitions will be competing to attend the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose in May.

The garden is at 26300 Crenshaw Blvd., in the unincorporated area of The Hill.

Leadership students at Palos Verdes High School are putting on a concert this evening to raise funds for relief following the earthquake in Haiti.

"We've already from $5,600 from ticket sales," said Kristin Huber, the school's activities director. "The kids have worked so hard on this event."

Huber oversees the Associated Student Body, which is organizing the event.

The event is tonight from 5 to about 8 p.m. Tickets cost $10 and about 10 student bands and soloist will perform. The public is welcome.

The event benefits World Concern, a nonprofit Christian humanitarian group.

If you can't attend, students are encouraging donations via check. Donors sending over $10 will receive a tax ID number.

Donations can be sent to:
Palos Verdes High School
attn: Kristen Huber
600 Cloyden Road
Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274

At an election forum Wednesday night, a question was submitted to moderators that asked two of the challengers running for the Palos Verdes Peninsula school board why they had not voted in past elections in the school district.

The query was based on a review of voting records for Anthony Collatos and Greg Royston, according to the questioner's statement.

Collatos, an education professor at Pepperdine University, appeared slightly dumbfounded in response, saying, "My understanding is that I have voted ... Maybe there was a mistake."

Royston, a business attorney, said that he wasn't sure he was in the district in 2005, and that he had a family emergency in November 2007 and had to leave the country.

The exchange took place at the PV Council of PTAs and the local League of Women Voters forum at the Peninsula Center Library. The debate had some jabs that were a bit nasty between the two incumbents and four challengers, promising a fight that's bound to get messier in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 3 election. Three seats are set to be filled.

Thing is, my own review of voting records yesterday with a representative of the county Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk shows that both Collatos and Royston have in fact voted in recent elections.

Collatos voted in November 2005 and in November 2007. Royston voted in Novermber 2005, but not November 2007. They both also voted in May 19 parcel tax election.

Contrary to the questioner's claim, there is no way to know if a given ballot showed marks for a specific election. Because of the privacy of ballots, all the county can say is whether a voter went the polls or submitted an absentee ballot -- NOT whether the voter participated in, for example, a school board election.

Stay tuned for more coverage.

Hi folks. We unfortunately had an error in our story on South Bay elections today.

Barbara Lucky, a board member with the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, did file papers on Friday (the last day for incumbents to file) to run for re-election. If re-elected, Lucky would serve her fourth term on the board.

I apologize for the mistake. The county website was not updated with this information until after 6:30 p.m., and we forgot to check for new filers.

This means there are five qualified candidates for three seats on the board: Lucky and incumbent Malcolm Sharp (Ginny Snider has chosen not to run again); Karen Bird, an attorney and wife of Palos Verdes Estates Councilman George Bird; Gregory Royston, also an attorney and a businessman from Rancho Palos Verdes; and Heather Haddon Mattson of Palos Verdes Estates, a former teacher and administrator with Los Angeles Unified who has served as a substitute in schools on The Hill.

Anthony Collatos, a Pepperdine University education professor who lives in Palos Verdes Estates, has pulled papers but has not yet qualified.

Donald Trump's company has completed the purchase of a once-contested piece of property in Rancho Palos Verdes near the ninth and 10th holes of Trump National Golf Club.

Trump's VH Property Corp., which runs the seaside golf course, today completed its payment of $4 million to the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District for an 8.5-acre piece of property refered to as the "Loma del Mar" site.

The payment was part of the terms of a settlement reached in 2004. The agreement, which came after Trump's company sued the school district, required $200,000 in rent for five years and then a $4 million purchase.

Press releases from the school district and Trump follow.

Semi-official results published this afternoon showed Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District's $165 parcel tax won voter approval.

Measure V, which needed a two-thirds vote to pass, won over 68.9 percent of voters, according to the county elections Web site. That was a slight increase from the figure reported at the conclusion of all-mail election on Tuesday night.

More than 43 percent of registered voters cast ballots.

The parcel tax will raised an estimated $3.3 million annually for the school district, which is struggling with state budget cuts. The measure will sunset in 2013.

An estimated 500 to 600 ballots remain to be counted in Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified's all-mail parcel tax election, county officials said this afternoon.

Preliminary results from the election's Tuesday deadline showed the $165 parcel tax passing with 68.6 percent of the vote. Nearly all of the remaining ballots would need to be "no" votes for the measure to fail.

Supporters of the $100,000 campaign in favor of Measure V celebrated last night, though the margin was much more narrow than for the 2007 extension of the existing $209 parcel tax. (See today's story.)

Today, they said they were waiting on final results from the county.

The ballots should be counted by Friday afternoon, when the Department of Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk will make semi-official results available at lavote.net.

Nearly 42 percent of voters cast ballots, according to the preliminary vote total.

The school district is set to hold a board meeting Thursday evening on its budget, which has been slashed following cuts to state education funding.

A meeting scheduled for July 6 will take into account the election results for the parcel tax, which is expected to raise about $3.3 million per year until it sunsets in 2013.

This Thursday's meeting is set for approximately 6:30 p.m. at 3801 Via La Selva, Palos Verdes Estates.

Incidentally, there is apparently some speculation as to whether the the mail-only ballot constituted a "rigging" of the election.

Here's an email I received:

There are some people who think the PV schools election was rigged, because it held unusual circumstances. For instance, you didn't get to vote at a polling place, you had to mail in your
ballot. If you didn't vote via mail you had to physically drop the ballot off at City Hall I believe in PVE.

The question is: was this done to make sure it passed.

In fact, the school district went with an all-mail election to save the cost of a full election -- a move that several other school districts have made this spring. Tuesday's balloting cost the district an estimated $123,000, while a to-the-polls event could have cost nearly $600,000.

Of course, the district hoped to make the terms of the election favorable to a "yes" vote. The school board chose not to hold the election on May 19 to avoid being associated with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ill-fated budget measures.

Voters in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District should mail their ballots Thursday or Friday, at the latest, to ensure they arrive by Tuesday's mail-only election deadline.

Here's some background on Measure V, the $165 parcel tax, which would raise $3.3 million per year for the high-achieving school district. It comes on top of an existing $209 tax. Both would sunset in 2013.

The district has cut some $6 million from its budget since the state Legislature ordered broad cuts to education with its February budget. The governor's newest budget proposal -- which seems to be losing out to the budget committee's version -- would cut more than $6 million more, district officials have said.

More than 200 employees have received pink slips. District Superintendent Walker Williams said "several dozen" teachers could be rehired if the ballot measure passes.

But Measure V comes at a time when many of the district's 41,229 registered voters (according to the county registrar) are feeling the pain of the recession.

A parcel tax is leading by a hair in South Pasadena, which is one of several mostly wealthy areas where education agencies are seeking parcel taxes to make up for state cuts.

Some interesting thoughts on parcel taxes in a blog post today from one the LA Times' editorial board members.

Voters on The Hill can drop off their ballots on Tuesday. More information on ballots and voting after the jump.

So, this is not the most hard-hitting news item with which to return from a month-long hiatus, but I bring it to you nonetheless.

Apparently, a Palos Verdes Peninsula High graduate and aspiring comedian has made a short documentary about her experience at the school's 10-year reunion at the Torrance Marriot. Except she didn't go to the reunion; she sent a tattoo-covered stripper in her place.

ABC's "Good Morning America" had a segment on Andrea Wachner and "Cricket" (the stripper) yesterday, in which we see scenes of Andrea talking through an earpiece to Cricket at the reunion.

Fellow alums were doubtful of Cricket-as-Andrea.

"She was just so different. You have to understand the community we had come from," Daniel Wolowicz, 32, told ABC's Christina Caron. "Everyone was questioning who this person was."

Andrea wasn't a big fan of Pen High, as you can see in the six-minute trailer for her 40-minute documentary "I Remember Andrea."

The Palos Verdes Peninsula school board this evening approved taking its planned parcel tax election to voters on a mail-only ballot.

The board voted 4-0 to approved the plan, with Barbara Lucky absent. Ballots will be due June 23.

The move follows a March 11 board vote to rescind its earlier approval of a regular go-to-the-polls parcel tax election. Voters will weigh a four-year $165 parcel tax, which will come on top of an existing $209 tax that was originally approved by voters in 2003 and extended in 2007.

Superintendent Walker Williams said county elections officials informed the school district that the regular election would have cost about $600,000, while a mail-only ballot would cost about a quarter of that.

The new tax would cover about half of a $6 million shortfall that the district faces over the next 16 months.

Two local sixth-graders took first and second place at Wednesday's Los Angeles County Spelling Bee.

Catherine Velardez of Lawndale's Will Rogers Middle School won the 35-student competition on the words "lithosphere" and "procumbent."

Second place went to Carina Kan from Palos Verdes Intermediate School in Palos Verdes Estates.

Congrats, girls! Both will go to the statewide spelling bee at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park on May 16.

The Wednesday event, held at an Alhambra conference center, was the fourth annual countywide spelling contest. Students from grades 4 through 6 competed.

Other local students who participated: Jesse Torres of Bud Carson Middle School in Hawthorne, Danielle Woodcock of Torrance Unified's Magruder Middle School, and DeAndre Young of Dana Middle in Wiseburn School District.

Happy Monday! Here's some linkage, catching up from the weekend:

Torrance Unified officials found an unhappy surprise this morning: Four district vehicles had had their windshields smashed.

Vu has a story today about Mira Costa High's successful media arts program.

And ... all of the short items that ran on today's School Notebook page (in the paper) can be found here.

We also have some great photos from Point Vicente Elementary School's visit to White Point on Friday. It was part of an educational program run by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy.

My story ran on Saturday about the possible closure of LAUSD's Sellery Special Education Center in Gardena. In a related story, Connie Llanos at the Daily News writes about the potential shut-down of West Valley Special Education Center in Van Nuys, with some interesting background on special ed centers.

Officials have said the two campuses are the furthest along the path toward "consolidation." We should have an idea of how many other small campuses will be closed by the March 24 board meeting.

The Daily News' George Sanchez has a story about the nearly 9,000 layoff warnings that the LAUSD board will weigh on Tuesday.

Also Saturday, I reported on Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District's move to place a $165 parcel tax on the June 2 ballot. (* FYI: This tax would require a two-thirds approval to pass.)

L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez on Sunday wrote about administrators are asking parents for $1,000 (each) at his daughter's LAUSD elementary school in LAUSD.

If parents can come up with $327,000, the school will be able to keep three academic coaches who, among other things, take the pressure off teachers in the overcrowded fourth and fifth grades. It would also pay for P.E. coaches, three kindergarten aides, library resources, computer replacement and technology support.

As I heard the pitch, along with the testaments to Ivanhoe and how lucky we are to have a great school that's been a neighborhood institution since 1889 -- yes, I said 1889 -- I was thinking the same thing I thought when I heard the pitch a year ago:

We really are lucky, because the school is so good, and because many of us are able to fork over a little extra, even in a recession. But what about the vast majority of schools that aren't as good and don't have as many parents who can write checks?

Marymount College is looking for families to interested in hosting 43 Japanese high school and college students for a two-week exchange program beginning March 8.
Host families must provide students with a bed, desk and dresser, and transportation to and from the college.
Those chosen will receive compensation for participating. Information 310-303-7358 or mfileta@marymountpv.edu.

Ridgecrest Intermediate School on Wednesday will host a meeting to inform local parents about a teen's life in public schools, 28915 Northbay Rd. in Rancho Palos Verdes. Area high school students will share their memories in intermediate school including experiences with peers, family relationships, time management and homework.

The free event is open to parents of intermediate and high school students in Palos verdes Peninsula Unified School District. Information: 310-732-0900 ext.209.