The Weekly Newspaper of Torrance Herald Publications - Torrance, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hawthorne, Lawndale, & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 5, No. 17 - April 23, 2015 Inside This Issue Certified & Licensed Professionals.....................10 Classifieds............................4 Crossword/Sudoku.............4 Film Review..........................3 Food.......................................7 Legals....................................9 Police Reports.....................3 Real Estate.........................12 Sports....................................6 TerriAnn in Torrance..........5 Weekend Forecast Arlington Elementary School Shows Earth Day Some Love Earth Day Should Be Everyday: Arlington Elementary showed their love in a big way. Dressed in green and blue, Arlington students showed their love of Earth by partaking in environmentally friendly actions during the week.. The Earth Day activities included sorting trash into three bins - compost, recycle and trash, switching to cardboard lunch trays from Styroform, having a “Clean Up Campus” lunch recess on Friday and encouraging student to turn off lights. Photo by Mark Berggren. Board Approves Funds to SoCalRoc for Career Technology Education By Cristian Vasquez The Torrance School Board unanimously approved an amendment to fund Southern California Regional Occupational Center for the 2015-2016 year to the tune of $490,000, which will allow the center to continue providing Career and Technical Education [CTE] to students from all over the greater Los Angeles area, including Torrance Unified School District students. The staff report presented at the board meeting indicated that the SoCal ROC Board Budget Subcommittee formulated a temporary funding solution to operate the SoCal ROC Center during the upcoming year. As one of the participating districts in the Joint Powers Authority [JPA], Torrance Unified School District is asked to contribute 50 percent of its CTE funds. The JPA is made up of the Palos Verdes School District, Manhattan Beach School District, Redondo Beach School District, Torrance School District, Inglewood School District, and El Segundo School. “Almost two years ago, myself, and the other superintendents were requesting a plan as to how to deal with this situation,” Superintendent Dr. George Mannon said. “This essentially is the best we have for the 2015-2016 school year, but I think the real concerns need to be addressed by the SoCalRoc Board because come March of 2016, some difficult decisions would have to be made again without an ongoing funding plan. That is why I requested from them, and I know Mrs. Ragins continues to make that type of request.” Due to the budgetary woes of the state, Governor Brown changed the funding process for SoCalRoc, which was created more than 60 years ago and is only one of two centers in the entire state. “What happened was that the governor took their CTE money and divided it by the number of high school students in the state, and allocated that amount of money to each school district,” Ragins said. “So if we as a school district want to fund SoCalRoc, then it is up to us then to contribute, but even if all of the JPA districts contributed all of their CTE money, it doesn’t come close to providing the amount of money necessary to run the center. They can run the classes for our kids but maintaining the center with all of the resources of the center is where the lack of funding.” The battle for SoCalRoc is that they want the funding levels they enjoyed in the past but the state is refusing to comply and passing the buck over to the school districts. “The problem is because there are only two of them, they have very limited attractiveness to other legislators that could be involved to getting legislation passed to support them,” Ragins said. “They had a dedicated funding stream that was dedicated to support the center as well as the students that were partaking of the services in the center, but one year the governor changed his funding formula and all of a sudden they were entirely lined out of the budget.” The SoCalRoc Board has operated independently for years and is not used to disclosing detailed information with regards to their operations, as TUSD is accustomed. While TUSD is very supportive of CTE education, there have been concerns expressed regarding the future funding of SoCalRoc via its CTE funds. “We need vocational education, especially here in the South Bay; definitely here in the United States, I am just not thrilled with the way that we are seeing it right now,” Board Member Michael Wemers said. “Unless Governor Brown comes through with some kind of miracle, we are going to see things get really sticky during the next twenty-four months.” If TUSD decided to not contribute its share of CTE funds [50 percent as required by the state], all of the Torrance students that attend SoCalRoc would be denied participation in the programs. See School Board, page 10 Friday AM Clouds/ PM Sun 66˚/55˚ Saturday Partly Cloudy 66˚/55˚ Sunday Sunny 69˚/58˚
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