General
Three more COVID-19 testing sites opened up this week for students and staff in the West Contra Costa Unified School District, which resumed in-person classes on Monday amid a coronavirus spike propelled by the highly contagious omicron variant of the virus. The district already was offering tests at most schools and on Tuesday, added the Alvarado Adult School in Richmond, the Ohlone Elementary School campus in Hercules, and the district central office in Richmond to that list. Those sites are…
Contra Costa Health Services reported Monday that it has identified the highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19 in three people in Contra Costa County. “We knew it was just a matter of time before the omicron variant appeared in Contra Costa County,” said Dr. Chris Farnitano, Contra Costa County health officer, said in a news release. “We’ve been encouraging anyone who is eligible to get a booster dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine to do so. With today’s news…
Students in the West Contra Costa Unified School District have until Feb. 18 to get vaccinated against COVID-19, after the School Board extended the deadline by more than six weeks. The School Board agreed to push back the deadline last week, as Contra Costa County reported that only about 1 in 4 children under 12 had been fully vaccinated, and fewer than half had received a dose of the vaccine. Q&A: What WCCUSD parents want to know about the COVID-19…
Julia Brady, an English teacher at Pinole Valley High School, has seen the impact that a lack of stable internet access can have on students. She recalled a student a few years ago who couldn’t do an online assignment because their family decided to pay for emergency dental work instead of the internet that month. That student’s family is among many for whom Wi-Fi is a luxury. Almost 2 million households with children across the state lack consistent internet access,…
Damien Grace made a harrowing discovery at Pinole Creek in November. A portion of a 3-foot-long PVC pipe was lodged in the muddy bed. Grace and five other volunteers picking up trash that day knew where the pipe had come from. Pipes like this are typically found on construction sites, not buried in a creek. Grace had to lie on the bank and stretch to reach the pipe. “I found the biggest treasure of the day!” Grace shouted. The team…
Administrators at Vista Virtual Academy, West Contra Costa Unified School District’s virtual K-12 independent study program, are scrambling to fill teacher positions ahead of a January deadline when unvaccinated students will no longer be allowed to attend in-person classes. If students at district schools are not vaccinated against COVID-19. by Jan. 3, they will be transferred to Vista Virtual by Jan. 17. The only other options for unvaccinated students are a medical exemption or to unenroll from the district, according…
Throwing rocks and shouting loudly are effective ways to be a good neighbor — to overconfident coyotes. While the wild canines and humans have been sharing habitat for a very long time, a spate of incidents involving aggressive coyotes over the past year and a half has prompted a new educational campaign by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in partnership with local agencies in Contra Costa County. The program, called Wildlife Watch, relies on trained volunteers to spread…
In 2019, after eight years as an English teacher at Richmond High School, Rebekah Ponce-Larsen was excited to start a new job as a librarian at Lovonya DeJean Middle School. Being a librarian, she thought, would give her an opportunity to work with kids but in a different way. “I have more time to get to know individual students sometimes than teachers do,” she said. It’s through that personal relationship with students that Ponce-Larsen has transformed the library at DeJean,…
Bolo Quesada was 13 when his older brothers inspired him to get his first pair of gold grillz. “It used to be a specific type of person that had grillz,” Quesada, who is now in his early 30s, says. “It went from the dope boys to now the average kid getting them.” Grillz, the dental jewelry typically made of gold and encrusted with diamonds or other gems, has exploded in popularity. And grillz shops have popped up across the country,…