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THE BUZZ
SCHOOL DAZE
: Make no mistake: it’s all about the schools. Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer hit Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home turf Wednesday, clearly showing off his gubernatorial campaign’s strategy and how he’d challenge Newsom in a 2021 recall election.
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Many Los Angeles students have not seen the inside of a classroom since March. Now, after a brutal winter surge and nearly a year of remote learning, falling coronavirus case rates in Los Angeles County have finally cleared the state threshold to reopen elementary schools.
But Monday’s big announcement hardly means campus doors are swinging open across L.A. County. Just because a district
can reopen doesn’t mean it will immediately do so. It’s a local decision based on the readiness of all concerned, including the school system, as L.A. County Office of Education superintendent Debra Duardo put it.
Wednesday, Feb. 10. Here’s what’s happening with the coronavirus in California and beyond.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the stress and isolation the pandemic has caused so many students in the formative years of their lives and foundational years of their education. But I hadn’t realized the extent of some teens’ burdens until I read Laura Newberry’s story about high school students who have taken up jobs and more family duties even as they struggle to keep up with their schoolwork.
For 13 years, nearly every aspect of Britney Spears’ life including major financial, professional and medical decisions has been controlled by her father Jamie Spears through a court-approved conservatorship.
Instituted after Spears’ very public breakdown in 2007-2008, the legal arrangement is now older than Spears was when she debuted on “The Mickey Mouse Club.” It has endured even as Spears appeared to stabilize and mount an impressive comeback, releasing multiple albums, touring the world and performing 248 shows during a wildly lucrative four-year residency in Las Vegas.
Since Spears abruptly canceled a second planned residency in early 2019, the legal arrangement shrouded in mystery and a thicket of non-disclosure agreements has increasingly raised questions. Why, many wonder, is someone so capable and productive not allowed to make her own decisions? Journalists have produced think pieces and investigative deep dives alike about the conservatorship, and her