California school officials would have a standardized method for identifying the thousands of homeless students who attend the state’s K-12 schools and have access to funding to support them under a bill the Legislature approved this week. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Oct. 10 to sign it into law.

The devastation wrought by the pandemic has paved the way for a once-in-a-lifetime windfall for the arts in Orange County and throughout California, thanks to a fiscal year state budget for 2021-22 which allocates some $615 million in funds, including more than $120 million in funding for the state’s designated arts agency, the California Arts Council (CAC).

A pair of housing bills just approved by the state Legislature are prompting warnings that single-family zoning will be destroyed in local neighborhoods, while others say such concerns are wildly overblown and that the bills are a modest step to make housing more affordable.

It remains to be seen who’s right, if Gov. Gavin Newsom signs the bills into law. Newsom is currently facing a recall election.

ANAHEIM, Calif. — California Assembly Bill No. 978 took two years of Lupe Ramirez’s life, but it was a risk she was willing take to keep her home.

“I couldn’t give up because I just felt like some place, somebody has to be hearing that this just isn’t right,” said Ramirez. 

Rancho La Paz senior mobile home residents now have a state law to shield them against rent spikes throughout the park — which straddles Anaheim and Fullerton — after more than two years of activism on the issue.  

Park resident Lupe Ramirez spearheaded the fight, which began in early 2019, to get Anaheim and Fullerton city councils to enact a rent control ordinance. She and other seniors from Rancho La Paz became regulars at city council meetings in Anaheim and Fullerton throughout most of 2019 and early 2020 — until the pandemic hit.

The La Palma-Cerritos Branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) recently sent four outstanding young girls to Virtual STEM Tech Trek Camps sponsored by AAUW California this past July. Sophia Chicas was one of 640 girls throughout California who were selected to attend one of three camps in June and July
of 2021.

She was honored by Principal Jennifer Brown at Walker Jr. High School’s Eighth Grade Graduation on Zoom on May19, 2021, by being selected as “Viking of the Year” for “superior academic achievement and a strong commitment towards excellence.”