Education
On a night when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney held most voters’ attention, the four candidates for the West Contra Costa Unified School District board spoke Tuesday to about 15 people at a candidate forum at Murphy Elementary School in Richmond. Todd Groves, Robert Studdiford, Antonio Medrano and Randy Enos are vying for two seats on the school board. “I thought all of them were very articulate and very knowledgeable,” said moderator Jackie Coulter-Peebles, a member of the League of…
There wasn’t anything unusual or exciting about the white shirt, gray slacks, black shoes or the red, diamond patterned tie that Jael P. Myrick wore. Even the way he blended in with people didn’t make him seem out of the ordinary. Myrick is to all appearances a regular guy. But in a field of City Council candidates where many of the big names are part of a deep partisan division, the 27-year-old Myrick hopes his youth and regular-guyness brings a…
In Richmond, a city in which 51 percent of students in grades 5, 7 and 9 were obese or overweight in 2010 and where two-thirds of students are from families near and below the national poverty line, how to feed the children, what to feed the children — and if the children choose to eat what they’re fed — has created a world of dietary perplexity.
On Saturday, students from Making Waves teamed up with The Watershed Project for a trash assessment and cleanup effort at Baxter Creek, which was recently named one of California’s trashiest waterways. From cardboard and paper, to styrofoam and plastic bags—and even the occasional shoe—students and other volunteers removed debris and freshened up the area. Richmond Confidential caught the action in the video above.
About 30 2nd graders marveled at their teacher, Linda Townsend-Bryson as she pulled a new microscope out of its box to show them. “Whoa,” said the Peres Elementary students in unison as Townsend-Bryson explained that the microscope came with prepared slides containing samples of carrot root, onion skin and cucumber. The three boxes full of school supplies that were awarded to Townsend-Bryson’s class came from Fuel Your School, a program spawned by a partnership that began in 2009 between DonorsChoose.org,…
Richmond native Anthony Green spent 13 years in the Air Force – first as an Aerospace Ground Equipment mechanic, then as a loadmaster for the C-5 airplane, which he told me was one of the best jobs he ever had. “I still got to fly around everywhere,” he said. “I just wasn’t flying the plane.” The Air Force took him from battlegrounds in Iraq and Afghanistan to training grounds at Travis Air Force Base, as well as to Washington, Texas,…
Eleanor Thompson is known in the Iron Triangle neighborhood as an advocate for youth and their safety. What’s less known is that she is motivated to work for the young people of Richmond by her own childhood experience. Thompson was born in Arkansas but moved to Arizona when she was six. By the time she was 14, she had lost both her parents and entered a foster home with her two younger sisters, then 13 and 12. Despite being the…
Candidates for the Richmond City Council, Congress and the West Contra Costa Unified School District school board appealed to Richmond youth at a Kennedy High School candidate’s forum Thursday. Graduating seniors from teacher Jeff Pollock’s AP Government and U.S. Government courses gathered in the school cafeteria for the event. Kennedy High School counselor J.P. De Oliveira said he started organizing the event a month and a half ago when Virginia Fuller, the Republican candidate for the 11th Congressional District seat,…
When the bell rings signaling the end of the day at Mira Vista Elementary School the playground comes alive with the sounds of elementary students pouring out of their classrooms. The brown portable on the edge of campus, though, is filling up. Laden with backpacks and sweatshirts, children burst through the door, deposit their backpacks and begin pulling folded, metal contraptions — soon to be music stands — out of a box. Then the cases begin to pop open the…