Edison High recently celebrated the completion of a powerful campus mural depicting figures from the 1960s civil rights movement.
Graduating senior Logan Dunn, 17, leveraged his talents to transform 63 square feet of wall space at the Huntington Beach campus into a tribute to Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I’m pretty satisfied,” the young artist said. “It came together a lot better than I thought.”
According to the Daily Pilot, it was the 10th campus mural produced under the direction of Edison art teacher Jennie Roy-Atwood, and the entire senior student body picked the theme.
And here are some of the other news stories from the week ending July 2:
- School districts, cities and other government agencies in Orange County are gearing up to draw new voting boundaries that will hold through the next census count in 2030.
- Not far from where she and her brothers were once denied enrollment at a school because of their Mexican heritage, civil rights icon Sylvia Mendez visited Westminster High School to help dedicate a brand new learning pavilion named in her honor.
- The Lowell Joint School District, which has long operated under the umbrella of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, transferred over to OCDE’s jurisdiction starting Thursday, July 1. The shift, approved by local voters last year, is believed to be a first for a school district.
- Language divides, homelessness, academic challenges and single parenting were some of the challenges facing recent graduates of OCDE’s Alternative Education program, known as ACCESS. The OCDE Newsroom shared three personal journeys.
- Buoyed by a robust infusion of federal dollars and California’s progressive tax structure, state legislative leaders agreed on a spending plan for 2021-22 that would provide record funding for public schools while adding a year of school for 4-year-olds and significantly expanding financial aid for college students.
- Based on its newly passed Local Control and Accountability plan, the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District will look to create a new ethnic studies course as a high school elective, the Voice of OC reports.
- The Laguna Beach Unified school board recently approved a 4 percent salary increase for district employees in the 2021-22 fiscal year.
- Childhood experts say the impacts of the pandemic may linger for years to come for children who have fallen behind socially, academically and emotionally. One report suggests the average U.S. student has lost the equivalent of five to nine months of learning.
- The Literacy Lab program run by Girls Inc. of Orange County is boosting literacy skills and self-esteem among elementary-age girls by nurturing a love for reading.
- And finally, the Capistrano Unified School District announced a pair of new principals for Capistrano Union High and Las Flores Middle schools. The appointments will take effect on July 1.
This is the part where we encourage you to keep up with local education news stories by bookmarking the OCDE Newsroom, subscribing for emailed updates and following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.