latimes--2020-08-18--From 'firenadoes' to record heat, California extreme weather a glimpse of future

In the last few days , a moisture-laden heat wave has unleashed extreme weather in almost every corner of California .
In a single day , Northern California was hit with triple-digit temperatures , as well as hundreds of lightning strikes that ignited brush fires .
The mercury hit 107 degrees Sunday in Santa Cruz , known for its moderate climate , and Death Valley reached 130 degrees — one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded there .
Meanwhile , unusually muggy air made Los Angeles feel like Houston , and warm nights failed to offer much relief .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ degrees .
A fire-caused tornado touched down near the Sierra Nevada community of Loyalton .
And a pyrocumulus cloud towered over Southern California , where heat and wildfires pushed smog levels higher than they ’ ve been in years .
Did we mention the power went out too ?
As one of the worst heat waves in years continues to broil California , millions are experiencing the havoc that ensues with extreme weather that is growing more frequent with climate change .
Warmer nights in particular have the imprint of global warming , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into California ’ s future as greenhouse gas emissions gradually heat the planet .
“ Climate change is certainly increasing the frequency , severity and duration of extreme heat and warm nights , ” said Flavio Lehner , a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research .
“ It is safe to assume that climate change contributed to the extreme nature of recent events , ” though only a dedicated study could attribute to what extent .
Medical experts , meanwhile , said they were extremely worried about the health risks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its similarity to a July 2006 heat spell that resulted in thousands of emergency room visits for heat-related illness and hundreds of excess deaths .
They are bracing for a jump in such heat casualties , which they fear will be worsened by the closure of air-conditioned public spaces due to coronavirus restrictions .
These recent weather events are the result of three separate meteorological phenomena combining in a way rarely seen in California , experts say .
The heat wave broiling the West — longer and harsher than is typical for August @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It is a high pressure system rotating clockwise over California , Nevada and Arizona that steered hot , dry desert air over the Golden State , breaking daily and monthly heat records across the Central Valley .
Then Tropical Storm Elida off the coast of Mexico began feeding the heat wave moisture , which created instability in the atmosphere .
This moisture is why so many of the wildfires burning in California recently have created towering pyrocumulus clouds , said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain .
Finally , a thunderstorm some 1,100 miles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Mexico , sent an invisible rippling wave of uplifting pressure north through the atmosphere , where it mixed with the heat and moisture to produce hundreds of lightning strikes across hundreds of miles of the Bay Area on Saturday and Sunday .
That created dozens of fires , while farther inland a tornado formed .
National Weather Service meteorologist Evan LaGuardia lives in the Reno valley and said he could see a plume that would eventually spawn a fire-created tornado from his back window .
“ It was just amazing that a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” he said .
“ All the ingredients came together at the same time , the atmosphere was primed and ready to go , ” he said .
At least 100 new fires began on Monday due to lightning , on top of others that began from the 1,500 or so lightning strikes that were spread across the Bay Area over the weekend , said Lucas Spelman , spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection .
Some of those lightning strikes may have created smoldering piles of timber and brush @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sunlight and heat to turn into an active fire that can grow away from prying eyes .
An Angeles National Forest crew sent to Australia earlier this year had a similar fire spring back to life just recently .
“ The brush is primed to burn ; we know that there is huge potential there , ” Spelman said .
In the Central Valley , Modesto , Stockton and Sacramento all broke their all-time heat records for the month of August this weekend , with each community reaching temperatures of 111 , 112 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ temperatures do not dip into the 90s at all this week , Sacramento will be on pace to break its record of 11 consecutive days of triple-digit heat set in July 2006 , Mueller said .
“ It ’ s been very unusually hot for August , and even for the summer , ” Mueller noted .
“ This heat wave will go down as the hottest , or at least one of the top heat waves , for the Sacramento area for all time.
” Those records likely will continue to topple @ @ @ @ @ @ @ warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions .
California has already warmed 1 to 2 degrees since the beginning of the 20th century as a result of the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases , and according to a state science assessment , could see temperatures rise between 5.6 degrees and 8.8 degrees on average by 2100 , depending on how much pollution humanity releases , and how quickly .
Greenhouse gases increase the chances of extreme heat by gradually warming baseline temperatures and pushing the bounds of possible weather .
So far in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ average there are two daily record high maximum temperatures for every one daily record low minimum temperature , said Gerald Meehl , a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research .
“ This means with global warming , we experience more extreme heat , and this can be seen in the California heat wave , ” he said .
“ As average temperatures continue to warm , we ’ ll see even more record high maximum temperatures and extreme heat.
” But the characteristics of this heat wave that are of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health are its long duration , high humidity and lack of nighttime cooling , said Helene Margolis , an associate professor of medicine at UC Davis Department of Internal Medicine .
“ That means the built environment , such as homes , buildings and the street itself , are not able to let the heat go , ” Margolis said .
“ So you have this cumulative heat gain over multiple days .
And the entire environment becomes hotter and hotter , amplifying the risk .
Because people basically can ’ t cool @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it harder for people ’ s bodies to recuperate overnight and increases the likelihood they will land in the hospital with heat stroke , dehydration and other ailments .
Extreme heat also increases risk of complications for people with a spectrum of chronic illnesses including kidney disease , cardiovascular disease and diabetes .
Margolis and other health experts also expect this heat wave will be more dangerous because of restrictions in place to control the pandemic .
Heat disproportionately affects the elderly and people with preexisting health conditions — the same populations already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus .
But with malls , libraries , movie theaters and other air-conditioned public spaces mostly closed , “ they have less options for staying cool , ” Margolis said .
“ COVID-19 has caused them to be fearful of leaving their homes to take advantage of cooler environments , and there are fewer cooled environments to go to , ” she added .
“ So the likelihood of heat exposure is greater , and the risk of heat-related health impacts will be amplified.
” Adding to health-related woes , air quality has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extreme heat generated smog readings that were the highest in Southern California in over a decade .
Hourly levels of ozone — the invisible gas in smog that triggers asthma and other health problems — reached 173 parts per billion , or ppb , in Redlands on Friday and 167 ppb Saturday in Glendora .
One-hour average concentrations of ozone hadn ’ t gone above 163 ppb in the region since 2009 , according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District .
Rolling blackouts and the threat of additional outages are also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the heat .
Even in Death Valley there is no guarantee the power will remain uninterrupted to activate air conditioners if demand for electricity soars too high , said David Blacker , executive director of the Death Valley Historical Assn .
and a resident of Death Valley National Park for 20 years .
“ You can tough out being in the hottest place on Earth for two consecutive days — provided you ’ ve got air conditioning , ” Blacker said .
“ But this is the last place on Earth you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power.
” ” We ’ re looking at a forecast of about 120 degrees for the rest of the week — and 122 on Sunday , ” he added .
“ When it ’ s this hot for that long , kids can ’ t play outdoors , adult tempers start getting shorter and there ’ s a lot of yelling at the TV when the news is on.
” Undeterred were heat-seeking vacationers from around the world , who on Monday flocked to the park ’ s headquarters in Furnace Creek , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to sweat through historic highs .
Many of them gathered around a large digital thermometer prominently displayed at the entrance , posing for snapshots .
Park spokeswoman Brandi Stewart welcomed the attention , up to a point .
“ But , honestly , people shouldn ’ t be jumping in their cars and heading to Death Valley to experience the broiling temperatures , ” she said .
“ We are remote , and cellphone service is not available everywhere.
” Death Valley has contingency plans in the event of a power outage .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stewart said , “ evacuation is part of the plan .
”

Tony Barboza, Louis Sahagun, Joseph Serna

Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland on Sunday. Numerous lightning strikes sparked brush fires throughout the region.
In the last few days, a moisture-laden heat wave has unleashed extreme weather in almost every corner of California.
In a single day, Northern California was hit with triple-digit temperatures, as well as hundreds of lightning strikes that ignited brush fires. The mercury hit 107 degrees Sunday in Santa Cruz, known for its moderate climate, and Death Valley reached 130 degrees — one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded there.
People take selfies at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center’s thermometer in Death Valley National Park on Monday. Death Valley recorded a scorching 130 degrees Sunday — one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded there. (John Locher / Associated Press)
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Meanwhile, unusually muggy air made Los Angeles feel like Houston, and warm nights failed to offer much relief. The Central Valley sweltered with temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. A fire-caused tornado touched down near the Sierra Nevada community of Loyalton. And a pyrocumulus cloud towered over Southern California, where heat and wildfires pushed smog levels higher than they’ve been in years.
Did we mention the power went out too?
As one of the worst heat waves in years continues to broil California, millions are experiencing the havoc that ensues with extreme weather that is growing more frequent with climate change. Warmer nights in particular have the imprint of global warming, scientists say, and offer a glimpse into California’s future as greenhouse gas emissions gradually heat the planet.
“Climate change is certainly increasing the frequency, severity and duration of extreme heat and warm nights,” said Flavio Lehner, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “It is safe to assume that climate change contributed to the extreme nature of recent events,” though only a dedicated study could attribute to what extent.
1 / 24 A firefighting helicopter makes an approach to drop water on the Ranch 2 fire in the hills above a cluster of homes along the San Gabriel River near Azusa. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times) 2 / 24 LAKE HUGHES, CALIFORNIA AUGUST 15, 2020-Firefighters from the Santa Barbara County strike team tput out hot spots from the Lake Fire along Pine Canyon Road in Lake Hughes Saturday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) 3 / 24 A house sits alone as the Lake Fire creeps its way up the hill towards Palmdale Friday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) 4 / 24 The Ranch fire burns in the hills above a cluster of homes along the San Gabriel River. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times) 5 / 24 A man walks by a row of homes as the Ranch Fire burns in the hills of Azusa Thursday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) 6 / 24 The Ranch fire burns in the hills above a cluster of homes along the San Gabriel River near Azusa on Thursday. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times) 7 / 24 A Cal Fire helicopter makes a water crop on the Skyline fire behind homes on Clearing Lane in Corona. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times) 8 / 24 People watch smoke and flames rising from the Ranch Fire in the San Gabriel mountains above Azusa. (Apu Gomes / AFP ) 9 / 24 A firefighter battles the smoke and flames from the Ranch Fire in the hills in Azusa. (Apu Gomes / AFP ) 10 / 24 The Lake Hughes fire burns vehicles in Angeles National Forest. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/ Associaited Press ) 11 / 24 Firefighters battle the Lake Hughes fire in Angeles National Forest. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/ Associaited Press ) 12 / 24 Firefighters battle the Lake Hughes fire in Angeles National Forest. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/ Associaited Press ) 13 / 24 Firefighters battle the Lake Hughes fire in Angeles National Forest o (Ringo H.W. Chiu/ Associated Press ) 14 / 24 Firefighters battle the Lake Hughes fire in Angeles National Forest. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/ Associaited Press ) 15 / 24 Los Angeles County Firefighter Brandon Smith runs hose through a burned out home to complete mop-up in the Lake Fire. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) 16 / 24 A scorched statue stands in front of a home on Pine Canyon Road destroyed by fire along Pine Canyon in the Lake Hughes area. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) 17 / 24 The smoldering remains of a home on Pine Canyon Road that was destroyed by the Lake fire. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) 18 / 24 Melted metal from a car destroyed by the Lake fire on Pine Canyon Road. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) 19 / 24 A home burns along Pine Canyon Road near Lake Hughes early Thursday after the Lake fire burned thousands of acres. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 24 A helicopter makes a water drop along a ridge near Lake Hughes after the Lake fire burned thousands of acres. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 24 A truck sits along Pine Canyon Road near Lake Hughes early Thursday after the Lake fire burned thousands of acres. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 24 A helicopter makes a water drop on the fast-moving Lake fire near Lake Hughes. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 24 The fast-moving Lake fire blacked thousands of acres near Lake Hughes. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 24 Fire crews prepare to battle the Lake fire in Northern Los Angeles County. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Medical experts, meanwhile, said they were extremely worried about the health risks posed by this heat wave because of its similarity to a July 2006 heat spell that resulted in thousands of emergency room visits for heat-related illness and hundreds of excess deaths. They are bracing for a jump in such heat casualties, which they fear will be worsened by the closure of air-conditioned public spaces due to coronavirus restrictions.
These recent weather events are the result of three separate meteorological phenomena combining in a way rarely seen in California, experts say.
The heat wave broiling the West — longer and harsher than is typical for August — was the first to arrive.
Advertisement
It is a high pressure system rotating clockwise over California, Nevada and Arizona that steered hot, dry desert air over the Golden State, breaking daily and monthly heat records across the Central Valley.
Then Tropical Storm Elida off the coast of Mexico began feeding the heat wave moisture, which created instability in the atmosphere. This moisture is why so many of the wildfires burning in California recently have created towering pyrocumulus clouds, said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.
Finally, a thunderstorm some 1,100 miles south of the Bay Area in Sonora, Mexico, sent an invisible rippling wave of uplifting pressure north through the atmosphere, where it mixed with the heat and moisture to produce hundreds of lightning strikes across hundreds of miles of the Bay Area on Saturday and Sunday. That created dozens of fires, while farther inland a tornado formed.
National Weather Service meteorologist Evan LaGuardia lives in the Reno valley and said he could see a plume that would eventually spawn a fire-created tornado from his back window.
“It was just amazing that a fire can create something like this,” he said. “All the ingredients came together at the same time, the atmosphere was primed and ready to go,” he said.
At least 100 new fires began on Monday due to lightning, on top of others that began from the 1,500 or so lightning strikes that were spread across the Bay Area over the weekend, said Lucas Spelman, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Some of those lightning strikes may have created smoldering piles of timber and brush that’s just waiting for enough sunlight and heat to turn into an active fire that can grow away from prying eyes. An Angeles National Forest crew sent to Australia earlier this year had a similar fire spring back to life just recently.
“The brush is primed to burn; we know that there is huge potential there,” Spelman said.
In the Central Valley, Modesto, Stockton and Sacramento all broke their all-time heat records for the month of August this weekend, with each community reaching temperatures of 111, 112 and 113 degrees, respectively.
If temperatures do not dip into the 90s at all this week, Sacramento will be on pace to break its record of 11 consecutive days of triple-digit heat set in July 2006, Mueller said.
“It’s been very unusually hot for August, and even for the summer,” Mueller noted. “This heat wave will go down as the hottest, or at least one of the top heat waves, for the Sacramento area for all time.”
Those records likely will continue to topple in the coming years due to the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions.
California has already warmed 1 to 2 degrees since the beginning of the 20th century as a result of the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases, and according to a state science assessment, could see temperatures rise between 5.6 degrees and 8.8 degrees on average by 2100, depending on how much pollution humanity releases, and how quickly.
Greenhouse gases increase the chances of extreme heat by gradually warming baseline temperatures and pushing the bounds of possible weather.
So far in the 2000s in the United States, on average there are two daily record high maximum temperatures for every one daily record low minimum temperature, said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
“This means with global warming, we experience more extreme heat, and this can be seen in the California heat wave,” he said. “As average temperatures continue to warm, we’ll see even more record high maximum temperatures and extreme heat.”
But the characteristics of this heat wave that are of greatest concern when it comes to human health are its long duration, high humidity and lack of nighttime cooling, said Helene Margolis, an associate professor of medicine at UC Davis Department of Internal Medicine.
“That means the built environment, such as homes, buildings and the street itself, are not able to let the heat go,” Margolis said. “So you have this cumulative heat gain over multiple days. And the entire environment becomes hotter and hotter, amplifying the risk. Because people basically can’t cool off.”
That lack of relief makes it harder for people’s bodies to recuperate overnight and increases the likelihood they will land in the hospital with heat stroke, dehydration and other ailments. Extreme heat also increases risk of complications for people with a spectrum of chronic illnesses including kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Margolis and other health experts also expect this heat wave will be more dangerous because of restrictions in place to control the pandemic.
Heat disproportionately affects the elderly and people with preexisting health conditions — the same populations already at a higher risk of contracting the coronavirus. But with malls, libraries, movie theaters and other air-conditioned public spaces mostly closed, “they have less options for staying cool,” Margolis said.
“COVID-19 has caused them to be fearful of leaving their homes to take advantage of cooler environments, and there are fewer cooled environments to go to,” she added. “So the likelihood of heat exposure is greater, and the risk of heat-related health impacts will be amplified.”
Adding to health-related woes, air quality has also taken a dive. Wildfires and extreme heat generated smog readings that were the highest in Southern California in over a decade.
Hourly levels of ozone — the invisible gas in smog that triggers asthma and other health problems — reached 173 parts per billion, or ppb, in Redlands on Friday and 167 ppb Saturday in Glendora. One-hour average concentrations of ozone hadn’t gone above 163 ppb in the region since 2009, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
Rolling blackouts and the threat of additional outages are also complicating people’s plans for coping with the heat.
Even in Death Valley there is no guarantee the power will remain uninterrupted to activate air conditioners if demand for electricity soars too high, said David Blacker, executive director of the Death Valley Historical Assn. and a resident of Death Valley National Park for 20 years.
A person walks on a boardwalk at the Badwater Basin salt flats in Death Valley National Park on Monday. “Climate change is certainly increasing the frequency, severity and duration of extreme heat and warm nights,” a climate scientist said. (John Locher / Associated Press)
“You can tough out being in the hottest place on Earth for two consecutive days — provided you’ve got air conditioning,” Blacker said. “But this is the last place on Earth you want to be without proper and consistent power.”
”We’re looking at a forecast of about 120 degrees for the rest of the week — and 122 on Sunday,” he added. “When it’s this hot for that long, kids can’t play outdoors, adult tempers start getting shorter and there’s a lot of yelling at the TV when the news is on.”
Undeterred were heat-seeking vacationers from around the world, who on Monday flocked to the park’s headquarters in Furnace Creek, 190 feet below sea level, hoping to sweat through historic highs. Many of them gathered around a large digital thermometer prominently displayed at the entrance, posing for snapshots.
Park spokeswoman Brandi Stewart welcomed the attention, up to a point.
“But, honestly, people shouldn’t be jumping in their cars and heading to Death Valley to experience the broiling temperatures,” she said. “We are remote, and cellphone service is not available everywhere.”
Death Valley has contingency plans in the event of a power outage.
“In a worst-case scenario,” Stewart said, “evacuation is part of the plan.”


latimes--2020-08-17--Overruling Cal State trustees, Newsom approves new ethnic studies requirement

Gov .
Gavin Newsom signed a bill late Monday requiring all 430,000 California State University undergraduates to take ethnic studies , a notable rebuke to the university ’ s governing board , which had passed its own , much broader requirement last month .
The decision comes amid a growing push for ethnic studies in public education following Black Lives Matter protests and calls to dismantle systemic and unconscious racism , starting in schools .
The bill signed by Newsom , AB 1460 , requires all CSU undergraduates to take at least one three-unit course in ethnic studies , defined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Asian Americans , Latino/a Americans and Native Americans .
Authored by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber , chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus and a longtime professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University , the legislation will go into effect beginning with students graduating in the 2024-25 academic year .
“ We ’ re elated , ” Weber said .
“ It ’ s been quite a journey , and we take a sigh of relief that that journey has ended.
” The California Faculty Assn.
, a sponsor of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first state in the nation to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement in a four-year public university system .
“ Governor Newsom , by signing AB 1460 , has demonstrated his understanding of the power of a true Ethnic Studies graduation requirement to change people ’ s lives and to change the racial trajectory this state and country are on , ” president Charles Toombs said in a statement Tuesday .
The bill supersedes a related mandate passed by the Cal State ’ s board of trustees .
That mandate , favored @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called for a three-unit course on ethnic studies and social justice , defined broadly to include Jewish , LGBTQ and disability studies .
Students could have satisfied it by taking a class focused only on social justice or social movements — a point of concern for ethnic studies purists .
Newsom was sure to generate criticism no matter his decision .
Cal State Chancellor Timothy White , members of the university ’ s board of trustees and the university ’ s systemwide academic senate had opposed Weber ’ s bill , expressing concerns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
White ’ s office had estimated the cost of the legislative requirement to be about $ 16.5 million each year , compared to $ 3 million to $ 4 million for its version of the proposal .
Mike Uhlenkamp , a spokesman for the chancellor ’ s office , said , “ The university will begin work to implement the requirements of the new legislation.
” The legislation was opposed by some Jewish groups , who said they feared it would foster “ anti-Zionist advocacy and activism ” at the CSU , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But ethnic studies students , faculty and allies said the time is past due for the CSU , the birthplace of ethnic studies , and where Latino , Black and Asian American students are the majority , to create a dedicated requirement .
They said California law similarly requires students to take a course in American institutions and ideals .
And they criticized the chancellor ’ s office for developing an overly broad proposal without consulting experts .
“ We saw it as an effort to dilute and to not deal with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ studies required at the CSU , ” Weber said .
“ It was also a proposal that came from those who are not even scholars in the field.
” Melina Abdullah , a professor of Pan-African Studies at Cal State L.A. and a leader of Black Lives Matter , said at a news conference this month that Black studies “ literally saved my life ” as a young person growing up in East Oakland .
She said Weber ’ s bill was one of just three bills Black Lives Matter California has supported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to sign it in order to create an “ authentic ethnic studies ” requirement at the CSU .
“ We are in a Black lives matter movement moment , and the intentionality behind that moment is saying let ’ s dismantle white supremacy , ” Abdullah said .
“ The notion that someone with no background in ethnic studies could seek to redefine it and make it so broad that it ’ s meaningless ... .
It ’ s the equivalent of saying , ‘ All lives matter.
’ Either you believe Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t. ” A separate bill , expected to be taken up by the legislature this month , would make ethnic studies a requirement at all public high schools .
State officials last month released a new draft of a “ model curriculum ” for the course , nearly a year after the first draft was shelved over controversy over which groups were included and excluded .
The latest draft reestablished a focus on African Americans , Asian Americans , Latino/a Americans and Native Americans .
At Los Angeles community colleges , where the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Black and Asian American , faculty have recently called on the chancellor ’ s office to create a special task force on ethnic studies .

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill late Monday requiring all 430,000 California State University undergraduates to take ethnic studies, a notable rebuke to the university’s governing board, which had passed its own, much broader requirement last month.
The decision comes amid a growing push for ethnic studies in public education following Black Lives Matter protests and calls to dismantle systemic and unconscious racism, starting in schools.
The bill signed by Newsom, AB 1460, requires all CSU undergraduates to take at least one three-unit course in ethnic studies, defined as having a focus on African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino/a Americans and Native Americans.
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Authored by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus and a longtime professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University, the legislation will go into effect beginning with students graduating in the 2024-25 academic year.
“We’re elated,” Weber said. “It’s been quite a journey, and we take a sigh of relief that that journey has ended.”
The California Faculty Assn., a sponsor of the bill, said that California will be the first state in the nation to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement in a four-year public university system.
“Governor Newsom, by signing AB 1460, has demonstrated his understanding of the power of a true Ethnic Studies graduation requirement to change people’s lives and to change the racial trajectory this state and country are on,” president Charles Toombs said in a statement Tuesday.
The bill supersedes a related mandate passed by the Cal State’s board of trustees. That mandate, favored by the chancellor’s office, called for a three-unit course on ethnic studies and social justice, defined broadly to include Jewish, LGBTQ and disability studies. Students could have satisfied it by taking a class focused only on social justice or social movements — a point of concern for ethnic studies purists.
Newsom was sure to generate criticism no matter his decision. Cal State Chancellor Timothy White, members of the university’s board of trustees and the university’s systemwide academic senate had opposed Weber’s bill, expressing concerns about legislative interference into matters of curriculum. White’s office had estimated the cost of the legislative requirement to be about $16.5 million each year, compared to $3 million to $4 million for its version of the proposal.
Mike Uhlenkamp, a spokesman for the chancellor’s office, said, “The university will begin work to implement the requirements of the new legislation.”
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The legislation was opposed by some Jewish groups, who said they feared it would foster “anti-Zionist advocacy and activism” at the CSU, though they did not provide specific examples.
But ethnic studies students, faculty and allies said the time is past due for the CSU, the birthplace of ethnic studies, and where Latino, Black and Asian American students are the majority, to create a dedicated requirement. They said California law similarly requires students to take a course in American institutions and ideals. And they criticized the chancellor’s office for developing an overly broad proposal without consulting experts.
“We saw it as an effort to dilute and to not deal with the real issue of, is ethnic studies required at the CSU,” Weber said. “It was also a proposal that came from those who are not even scholars in the field.”
Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at Cal State L.A. and a leader of Black Lives Matter, said at a news conference this month that Black studies “literally saved my life” as a young person growing up in East Oakland.
She said Weber’s bill was one of just three bills Black Lives Matter California has supported. She had called on the governor to sign it in order to create an “authentic ethnic studies” requirement at the CSU.
“We are in a Black lives matter movement moment, and the intentionality behind that moment is saying let’s dismantle white supremacy,” Abdullah said. “The notion that someone with no background in ethnic studies could seek to redefine it and make it so broad that it’s meaningless.... It’s the equivalent of saying, ‘All lives matter.’ Either you believe Black lives matter, or you don’t.”
A separate bill, expected to be taken up by the legislature this month, would make ethnic studies a requirement at all public high schools. State officials last month released a new draft of a “model curriculum” for the course, nearly a year after the first draft was shelved over controversy over which groups were included and excluded. The latest draft reestablished a focus on African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino/a Americans and Native Americans.
At Los Angeles community colleges, where the vast majority of students are also Latino, Black and Asian American, faculty have recently called on the chancellor’s office to create a special task force on ethnic studies.


latimes--2020-08-19--Reopening elementary schools is risky — but so is keeping them closed

While the vast majority of California ’ s schools and universities are remaining closed to in-person instruction this fall , a small number of elementary schools are still hoping to reopen their doors in what will be a major test of how safe it is to begin in-person learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic .
California is generally not allowing schools to reopen in counties that have been on the state ’ s monitoring list for at least 14 days — and more than 88 % of Californians live in counties on that list .
There are exceptions for elementary schools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ waiver to the ban on reopenings , but to do so , coronavirus case rates must be under a certain threshold and the local health officer must approve the reopening plan , which requires consultation with the school ’ s staff and the state Department of Public Health .
It ’ s going to be a tough call to figure out how to get elementary schools reopened .
Younger children are generally seen as being at lesser risk for COVID-19 than older children and adults .
Still , reopening elementary schools when disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Questions about the availability of tests and contact tracing also are big factors .
California is still struggling on both fronts , and that has some worried about how quickly officials can identify outbreaks and limit their spread .
The Los Angeles Unified School District this week announced an ambitious testing plan for its nearly 500,000 students and 75,000 staff members , an effort intended to establish the baseline level of infection in the community , and eventually help determine when it is safe to reopen campuses .
Waiting too long to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ done in a more safe way — can have its own harmful effects .
Not only does online-only learning worsen educational disparities for lower-income children , it also results in increasing anxiety and depression in both students and adults , higher levels of obesity , signs of increased child abuse and domestic violence , and job loss because of the need to care for children at home , said Dr. Naomi Bardach , a UC San Francisco pediatrician and associate professor of pediatrics and health policy .
But a path forward must be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ It ’ s a false dichotomy to say that teachers and families are at odds , ” Bardach said .
“ Openings can not be done on the backs of the teachers and staff.
” Local conditions are perhaps the biggest factor in getting some schools reopened .
Some sparsely populated counties with few new cases have been allowed to reopen schools .
Shasta High School in Redding reopened for in-person instruction last week that keeps only half the population in classrooms at any time ; students have in-person instruction two days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the time .
Shasta County is reporting 66 new coronavirus cases for every 100,000 of its residents over the last 14 days .
But Los Angeles County , a hot spot since the early months of the pandemic and on the state ’ s COVID-19 monitoring list , has more than quadruple the new case rate of Shasta County .
“ We don ’ t want infections from the community coming back into our schools and creating an increase of outbreaks , ” L.A. County public health director Barbara Ferrer said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ counties for elementary school reopenings .
Orange County has received at least 50 waiver applications .
In Silicon Valley , most of the elementary schools interested in reopening were private schools , said Santa Clara County health officer Dr. Sara Cody .
There are a number of reasons why officials and experts say elementary schools are primed to reopen first .
Younger children are biologically less likely to contract COVID-19 The way the coronavirus enters the body ’ s cells is by latching itself on a specific kind of protein on the cell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way the virus can start injecting itself into the human body ’ s cells — to hijack it and start flooding the body with more copies of itself — is by latching itself on the ACE2 receptor proteins .
Younger children less than 10 years old have the fewest ACE2 receptors of any age group ; adolescents , however , have more of them than younger children , but fewer than adults .
“ Now , that ’ s a physiologic explanation for why there ’ s so few cases in children .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ re none ... but it ’ s really underrepresented relative to their population , ” said Dr. George Rutherford , epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert at UC San Francisco .
In California , children 5 to 17 make up about 8 % of California ’ s coronavirus cases , despite comprising 17 % of the state ’ s population .
And of more than 11,500 Californians who have died after being sick with COVID-19 , just one was under the age of 18 — a teenager who lived in the Central Valley .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ are less likely to spread the virus to their families and older children , Rutherford said he suspects kindergarten to third grade students have a lower risk than older children .
There are also some practical reasons why children are less likely to transmit the virus , Bardach said : • Younger children have smaller lungs , which means they emit smaller clouds of virus if they do sneeze or cough ; • Because they usually get less severe disease , there ’ s less coughing in general ; and , • Younger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus-laden respiratory droplets children generate by talking , singing , sneezing or coughing are more likely to drop to the floor than to reach the height of an adult face .
“ This suggests some practical advice for elementary and preschool teachers : generally , and especially for kids who may need comforting , keep your head above the child ’ s and position yourself on their side or towards their back rather than face-to-face , ” Bardach said .
In fact , most children actually get infected with COVID-19 from someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Chicago , Australia , China , Greece and Switzerland , Bardach said .
It ’ s almost always the case that it ’ s an adult in the household who shows symptoms of COVID-19 first , and the child develops the illness afterward .
“ We just don ’ t see transmission much from young children , ” Rutherford said .
High school students are different matter .
Studies showed that evidence of prior COVID-19 infection was much higher among students and teachers at a high school in Oise , France , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elementary schools .
In fact , the prevalence of antibodies to the coronavirus at the elementary schools was essentially the same as that in the general community , Bardach said .
The reopening of schools in Israel is a clear lesson of how not to reopen schools .
Soon after the reopening after a two-month closure at a combined middle and high school in Jerusalem , the Ministry of Health suspended a mask-wearing policy for three days due to a heat wave , according to a study published in Eurosurveillance .
Classes were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ per class — and social distancing not possible between students and teachers , and air conditioning was used in the classrooms and the windows were shut .
The result was a mass COVID-19 transmission event .
Twenty-five staff members and 153 students eventually tested positive for the coronavirus .
How you reopen also matters The details of how venues for children reopen also matter .
The California Department of Public Health requires schoolchildren in third grade through high school to wear face coverings , unless otherwise exempted , and strongly recommends the wearing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through the second grade .
An outbreak at an overnight camp in Georgia is also an example of what not to do .
At this camp , organizers did not require cloth masks for campers nor did they open windows and doors for increased ventilation , and attendees engaged in a variety of activities , including “ daily vigorous singing and cheering , ” activities that are known to easily spread the coronavirus .
“ They sang — which is like the worst thing you can do , ” Rutherford said .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ positive , according to a study by Georgia and federal health officials .
But in San Francisco , a summer indoor camp for children between kindergarten and eighth grade found a successful way to operate without an outbreak , Bardach said , with the camp implementing masking , physical distancing , good ventilation and dividing up the children into groups that did not mix with one another , reducing the risk of a widespread outbreak .
None of the children were infected with the virus by the end of camp , Bardach said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good — if not perfect — at wearing masks .
“ The implication from this is it ’ s possible to follow public health principles ... and it can lead to limited or zero infections.
” But disease transmission levels need to be lowered Officials , however , have started to come to a consensus that disease levels in hot spot zones still need to be lowered before elementary schools can reopen .
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , school reopenings internationally seem to be safe in communities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when transmission rates are already high , reopening schools may further increase the risk of spreading disease , the CDC said .
L.A. County ’ s rate of new coronavirus infection is still too high .
In L.A. County , for instance , there have been 29,356 new cases reported in the last 14 days , which translates to a per capita rate of 291 new coronavirus cases for every 100,000 residents in the past two weeks .
L.A. County needs to get that number at 200 new cases per 100,000 residents to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through the waiver process , according to state rules .
And L.A. County will need to get that number to 100 new cases per 100,000 residents for the last 14 days to get off the state ’ s monitoring list , allowing for the reopening of even more schools .
The experience at one junior high school in Indiana is sobering .
A student came into the first day of classes hadn ’ t yet received the results of a coronavirus test but went to school anyway and was later found to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home to be quarantined .
“ You don ’ t want that start-stop-start-stop-start-stop kind of thing .
That ’ s why we want to have incidence low in the communities from which these kids come , ” Rutherford said .
Also important for the reopening of elementary schools seeking permission to reopen : the support and consultation among staff , unions and parent organizations , said Dr. Erica Pan , the California state epidemiologist .
“ We need to get the community prevalence down in order to feel comfortable to reopen schools , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make sure we prioritize reopening schools before reopening bars and restaurants .
Reopening schools is a key piece to reopening our economy , allowing parents to return to work.
” Bars and restaurants don ’ t contribute to the economy at close to the same scale as having schools reopened , Bardach said .
It ’ s understandable why people might be uneasy at the prospect of schools resuming , such as older teachers with underlying conditions .
And there remains the chance , albeit extremely rare , of the COVID-19 related multisystem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a child exposed to the coronavirus can later experience their body parts becoming inflamed .
Bardach considers the inflammatory syndrome extremely rare .
And there are treatments for this inflammatory syndrome , which is similar to a syndrome known as Kawasaki disease .
“ It ’ s such a lower risk than so many other things you just normally do in our daily lives that I would encourage people to feel less panicky about that particular syndrome , ” Bardach said .
Reopening schools must also be vigilant about the risk of adults @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the journal Lancet Child and Adolescent Health found that , in school settings , staff members were more than four times as likely to be infected by another employee than a child .
That means that schools should ensure that break rooms have adequate physical distancing and mask-on policies and avoid all in-person staff meetings .
“ As we reopen schools , adult-to-adult transmission is where we should really be thinking about how to create ways of staying safe , ” Bardach said .

Tunette Powell and her son Joah wait to pick up school supplies at Baldwin Hills Elementary School. All L.A. Unified schools are only online learning to start the school year.
While the vast majority of California’s schools and universities are remaining closed to in-person instruction this fall, a small number of elementary schools are still hoping to reopen their doors in what will be a major test of how safe it is to begin in-person learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
California is generally not allowing schools to reopen in counties that have been on the state’s monitoring list for at least 14 days — and more than 88% of Californians live in counties on that list.
There are exceptions for elementary schools, however. Schools can request a waiver to the ban on reopenings, but to do so, coronavirus case rates must be under a certain threshold and the local health officer must approve the reopening plan, which requires consultation with the school’s staff and the state Department of Public Health.
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It’s going to be a tough call to figure out how to get elementary schools reopened. Younger children are generally seen as being at lesser risk for COVID-19 than older children and adults. Still, reopening elementary schools when disease transmission is too high can be risky.
Questions about the availability of tests and contact tracing also are big factors. California is still struggling on both fronts, and that has some worried about how quickly officials can identify outbreaks and limit their spread. The Los Angeles Unified School District this week announced an ambitious testing plan for its nearly 500,000 students and 75,000 staff members, an effort intended to establish the baseline level of infection in the community, and eventually help determine when it is safe to reopen campuses.
Waiting too long to reopen schools — when it can be done in a more safe way — can have its own harmful effects.
Not only does online-only learning worsen educational disparities for lower-income children, it also results in increasing anxiety and depression in both students and adults, higher levels of obesity, signs of increased child abuse and domestic violence, and job loss because of the need to care for children at home, said Dr. Naomi Bardach, a UC San Francisco pediatrician and associate professor of pediatrics and health policy.
But a path forward must be safe for both students and teachers. “It’s a false dichotomy to say that teachers and families are at odds,” Bardach said. “Openings cannot be done on the backs of the teachers and staff.”
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Local conditions are perhaps the biggest factor in getting some schools reopened.
Some sparsely populated counties with few new cases have been allowed to reopen schools.
Shasta High School in Redding reopened for in-person instruction last week that keeps only half the population in classrooms at any time; students have in-person instruction two days a week and remote instruction the rest of the time. Shasta County is reporting 66 new coronavirus cases for every 100,000 of its residents over the last 14 days.
But Los Angeles County, a hot spot since the early months of the pandemic and on the state’s COVID-19 monitoring list, has more than quadruple the new case rate of Shasta County.
“We don’t want infections from the community coming back into our schools and creating an increase of outbreaks,” L.A. County public health director Barbara Ferrer said.
Interest is already building in some other counties for elementary school reopenings. Orange County has received at least 50 waiver applications. In Silicon Valley, most of the elementary schools interested in reopening were private schools, said Santa Clara County health officer Dr. Sara Cody.
There are a number of reasons why officials and experts say elementary schools are primed to reopen first.
Younger children are biologically less likely to contract COVID-19
The way the coronavirus enters the body’s cells is by latching itself on a specific kind of protein on the cell — the ACE2 receptor. The only way the virus can start injecting itself into the human body’s cells — to hijack it and start flooding the body with more copies of itself — is by latching itself on the ACE2 receptor proteins.
Younger children less than 10 years old have the fewest ACE2 receptors of any age group; adolescents, however, have more of them than younger children, but fewer than adults.
“Now, that’s a physiologic explanation for why there’s so few cases in children. It’s not like they’re none ... but it’s really underrepresented relative to their population,” said Dr. George Rutherford, epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert at UC San Francisco.
In California, children 5 to 17 make up about 8% of California’s coronavirus cases, despite comprising 17% of the state’s population. And of more than 11,500 Californians who have died after being sick with COVID-19, just one was under the age of 18 — a teenager who lived in the Central Valley.
Based on other studies suggesting younger children are less likely to spread the virus to their families and older children, Rutherford said he suspects kindergarten to third grade students have a lower risk than older children.
There are also some practical reasons why children are less likely to transmit the virus, Bardach said:
Younger children have smaller lungs, which means they emit smaller clouds of virus if they do sneeze or cough;
Because they usually get less severe disease, there’s less coughing in general; and,
Younger children are shorter than adults, meaning the virus-laden respiratory droplets children generate by talking, singing, sneezing or coughing are more likely to drop to the floor than to reach the height of an adult face.
“This suggests some practical advice for elementary and preschool teachers: generally, and especially for kids who may need comforting, keep your head above the child’s and position yourself on their side or towards their back rather than face-to-face,” Bardach said.
In fact, most children actually get infected with COVID-19 from someone in their household, according to studies from Chicago, Australia, China, Greece and Switzerland, Bardach said. It’s almost always the case that it’s an adult in the household who shows symptoms of COVID-19 first, and the child develops the illness afterward.
“We just don’t see transmission much from young children,” Rutherford said.
The difference with high school
High school students are a different matter. Studies showed that evidence of prior COVID-19 infection was much higher among students and teachers at a high school in Oise, France, than at about half a dozen local elementary schools. In fact, the prevalence of antibodies to the coronavirus at the elementary schools was essentially the same as that in the general community, Bardach said.
The reopening of schools in Israel is a clear lesson of how not to reopen schools.
Soon after the reopening after a two-month closure at a combined middle and high school in Jerusalem, the Ministry of Health suspended a mask-wearing policy for three days due to a heat wave, according to a study published in Eurosurveillance. Classes were crowded — with 35 to 38 students per class — and social distancing not possible between students and teachers, and air conditioning was used in the classrooms and the windows were shut.
The result was a mass COVID-19 transmission event. Twenty-five staff members and 153 students eventually tested positive for the coronavirus.
How you reopen also matters
The details of how venues for children reopen also matter. The California Department of Public Health requires schoolchildren in third grade through high school to wear face coverings, unless otherwise exempted, and strongly recommends the wearing of face masks among younger children up through the second grade.
An outbreak at an overnight camp in Georgia is also an example of what not to do.
At this camp, organizers did not require cloth masks for campers nor did they open windows and doors for increased ventilation, and attendees engaged in a variety of activities, including “daily vigorous singing and cheering,” activities that are known to easily spread the coronavirus.
“They sang — which is like the worst thing you can do,” Rutherford said.
At least 260 people at the camp tested positive, according to a study by Georgia and federal health officials.
But in San Francisco, a summer indoor camp for children between kindergarten and eighth grade found a successful way to operate without an outbreak, Bardach said, with the camp implementing masking, physical distancing, good ventilation and dividing up the children into groups that did not mix with one another, reducing the risk of a widespread outbreak.
None of the children were infected with the virus by the end of camp, Bardach said, and even the kindergartners were pretty good — if not perfect — at wearing masks. “The implication from this is it’s possible to follow public health principles ... and it can lead to limited or zero infections.”
But disease transmission levels need to be lowered
Officials, however, have started to come to a consensus that disease levels in hot spot zones still need to be lowered before elementary schools can reopen.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, school reopenings internationally seem to be safe in communities with low coronavirus transmission rates. But when transmission rates are already high, reopening schools may further increase the risk of spreading disease, the CDC said.
L.A. County’s rate of new coronavirus infection is still too high.
In L.A. County, for instance, there have been 29,356 new cases reported in the last 14 days, which translates to a per capita rate of 291 new coronavirus cases for every 100,000 residents in the past two weeks.
L.A. County needs to get that number at 200 new cases per 100,000 residents to start contemplating allowing elementary schools to reopen through the waiver process, according to state rules. And L.A. County will need to get that number to 100 new cases per 100,000 residents for the last 14 days to get off the state’s monitoring list, allowing for the reopening of even more schools.
The experience at one junior high school in Indiana is sobering. A student came into the first day of classes hadn’t yet received the results of a coronavirus test but went to school anyway and was later found to be infected, forcing classmates to be sent home to be quarantined.
“You don’t want that start-stop-start-stop-start-stop kind of thing. That’s why we want to have incidence low in the communities from which these kids come,” Rutherford said.
Also important for the reopening of elementary schools seeking permission to reopen: the support and consultation among staff, unions and parent organizations, said Dr. Erica Pan, the California state epidemiologist.
“We need to get the community prevalence down in order to feel comfortable to reopen schools,” Bardach said. “We should make sure we prioritize reopening schools before reopening bars and restaurants. Reopening schools is a key piece to reopening our economy, allowing parents to return to work.”
Bars and restaurants don’t contribute to the economy at close to the same scale as having schools reopened, Bardach said.
Other risks
It’s understandable why people might be uneasy at the prospect of schools resuming, such as older teachers with underlying conditions.
And there remains the chance, albeit extremely rare, of the COVID-19 related multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, in which a child exposed to the coronavirus can later experience their body parts becoming inflamed.
Bardach considers the inflammatory syndrome extremely rare. And there are treatments for this inflammatory syndrome, which is similar to a syndrome known as Kawasaki disease. “It’s such a lower risk than so many other things you just normally do in our daily lives that I would encourage people to feel less panicky about that particular syndrome,” Bardach said.
Reopening schools must also be vigilant about the risk of adults infecting other adults. An Australian study in the journal Lancet Child and Adolescent Health found that, in school settings, staff members were more than four times as likely to be infected by another employee than a child.
That means that schools should ensure that break rooms have adequate physical distancing and mask-on policies and avoid all in-person staff meetings.
“As we reopen schools, adult-to-adult transmission is where we should really be thinking about how to create ways of staying safe,” Bardach said.


latimes--2020-08-19--Cold-blooded or reformed? Clemency for a killer reopens a family's wounds

As he scrolled through news stories online last month , Dave Goldsworthy came across an article about Gov .
Gavin Newsom ’ s decision to commute the prison sentences of 21 violent felons .
The last name on the governor ’ s list stopped him cold : Thomas Waterbury .
“ How can that be ?
” Goldsworthy asked himself .
Waterbury was supposed to live and die in prison .
Forty years earlier , he had killed his wife as she slept .
The judge left no doubt about his fate : Life in prison without the possibility of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Waterbury had a chance at freedom .
Before dawn on Christmas Eve in 1980 , police were called to a modest stucco home on North Lancewood Avenue in Rialto .
They found Waterbury crouched on the floor , clutching a green cloth to a chest wound .
Saying something about a Mexican intruder , he pointed toward a bedroom , where his wife , Debbie , lay dying , blood streaming down her face from two gunshot wounds .
“ It was horrific .
There was blood splatter on all four walls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Waterbury , Thomas ’ brother , who arrived in the aftermath of the attack and peered through a window .
With no evidence to support his far-fetched claim of an intruder , suspicion quickly fell on Waterbury , then 22 .
Ten months later , a jury convicted him of first-degree murder , finding he had killed his wife , in part to collect her $ 100,000 life insurance policy , then intentionally wounded himself with a gunshot to hide his guilt .
An appeals court upheld the conviction and the judge ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t often see a crime that is calculated over such a long period of time and so cold-bloodedly executed , ” San Bernardino Deputy Dist .
Atty .
Raymond Haight III said at the trial .
Debbie ’ s family figured Waterbury ’ s punishment was etched in stone .
No parole , they assumed , meant just that .
And in the vast majority of cases , it would have .
But in California , as in many other states , governors have the power to erase or amend prison sentences in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , inmates flood the governor ’ s office with requests for clemency .
A fortunate few see their wishes filled .
But there are rules to how the governor must wield this immense power — rules meant to protect victims and their families .
Before a decision on Waterbury was to be made , state law required that the San Bernardino district attorney ’ s office make an effort to notify Debbie ’ s relatives and give them an opportunity to be heard .
That didn ’ t happen .
Though San Bernardino @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an email from state officials in October 2019 , notifying him the governor was considering Waterbury ’ s case , a series of bureaucratic fumbles followed .
No one contacted the family .
“ I dropped the ball on this , ” Anderson said in an interview .
Debbie ’ s parents have passed away .
But a sister , brother , niece and various other relatives still live with the memory of her murder .
If any of them had had the chance to weigh in , they likely would have told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for clemency was another ploy by an untrustworthy man .
“ Very deceitful , ” Goldsworthy , who is married to Debbie ’ s sister , said of Waterbury .
They may have mentioned how , for all the time he was married to Debbie , Waterbury was living a double life with another woman ; how , court records show , he had introduced this mistress to neighbors as his wife and promised her that the house he shared with Debbie would belong to her by Christmas .
They would have mentioned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Someone in the family also might have told the governor about a long-held suspicion that , months before he succeeded , Waterbury had made another attempt on her life .
One day in February 1980 , as Debbie returned from lunch to a dark , warehouse-like office where she worked in downtown Los Angeles , a man wearing a ski mask stabbed her near the heart .
The assailant was never caught .
Goldsworthy recalled that Debbie never accused Waterbury of the attack , but still opted to stay at her parents ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ released from the hospital .
And if they had been given the chance to speak up , the family would have had an unexpected ally : Waterbury ’ s own brother .
“ No way in hell should he be let out , ” Terry Waterbury said .
“ He ’ s a complete liar , manipulator , sociopath.
” Terry Waterbury ’ s low opinion of his older brother stretches back to their childhood .
A particular “ eye-opener ” came when the boys were about 12 and 13 .
At a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can of camp stove fuel and hurled it at Terry , who suffered serious burns .
Terry vividly remembers his brother watching him as he burned .
“ Get the hot dogs , ” Thomas said .
“ Terry ’ s going good.
” But the governor heard none of this .
Instead , Newsom and parole board officials knew only what they saw in Waterbury ’ s clean prison record and in his application .
Newsom ’ s office declined to provide copies of those documents or to make anyone available for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his reasoning for commuting Waterbury ’ s sentence in a statement released at the time of his clemency decisions .
The governor believed he had found a man who had met Jesus Christ and energetically practiced his faith behind bars .
Although serving a sentence that offered no hope for release , Waterbury had “ dedicated himself to his rehabilitation , ” Newsom wrote .
Newsom pointed to the Bible classes Waterbury taught and other volunteer work he performed with ministry groups .
There was the master ’ s degree he earned in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his appointment as provost at the School of Ministry at Mule Creek State Prison .
Perhaps most important , Newsom concluded Waterbury had “ expressed sincere remorse ” for the murder .
“ This act of clemency for Mr. Waterbury does not minimize or forgive his conduct or the harm it caused , ” Newsom wrote .
“ It does recognize the work he has done since to transform himself.
” Debbie ’ s family members see it differently .
To them , Waterbury is the same manipulative , self-serving man he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chance to be heard .
Waterbury must appear before the state ’ s parole board , which will make the final decision on whether he should go free .
In response to an interview request , Waterbury tried unsuccessfully to call a Times reporter .
Subsequent attempts to reach Waterbury were unsuccessful .
He asked two friends who know him from his time in prison to speak on his behalf .
They said they believed Waterbury ’ s transformation is real .
The state prison system does not keep statistics on how frequently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are denied parole .
“ It has happened , ” said Kate Chatfield , a senior advisor at the Justice Collaborative , a nonprofit group .
Waterbury ’ s parole hearing , set for Jan. 7 , will be conducted over video conference .
Debbie ’ s family plans to recount what they never were able to tell the governor about Waterbury — how there were signs of trouble from the beginning .
The wedding of Debbie Bailey and Thomas Waterbury was held on the lawn outside the Huntington Library in San Marino @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dresses and twirled parasols , remembered Debbie ’ s sister , Kathy Goldsworthy .
And although Debbie looked the part — she wore a lace dress and a veil — her sister detected something more than wedding day jitters .
It was a sense of trepidation .
“ It was like she wasn ’ t real sure , ” she recalled .
Kathy asked her husband , Dave , to check on her sister .
As he looked for her , Dave caught a glimpse of Waterbury smoking pot with some of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ You got ta be kidding me , man .
This is your wedding , ’ ” Dave said .
He found Debbie and pulled her aside .
“ I told her , ‘ You know , my truck is right here .
If you want to leave right now , you don ’ t have to stay here , ’ ” Dave said .
Debbie demurred , assuring Dave her marriage would succeed .
Still , Dave sensed hesitation .
The groom ’ s brother tried to dissuade Debbie as well .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ their honeymoon , Terry approached her .
“ I told Debbie that she ’ s the best thing that ever happened to him , and he ’ s the worst thing that will ever happen to you , ” Terry recalled .
“ Sixteen months later , he proved me right.
” In January 1981 , as he awaited his murder trial , Waterbury wrote a letter dotted with spelling errors to his dead wife ’ s parents .
His words curved around a skeletal-looking plant design on the left margin of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t know how or why you could believe I could have hurt Debbie in anyway , as you both know how much I loved her , ” he wrote .
“ Yes , we had our problem ’ s like most couples , but we loved each other too much to let anything come between us .
I almost lost her last February , and that devestated me , ” he wrote , referring to the stabbing .
“ I have been wanting to call you both but , every time I try @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I just end up crying & go to pieces.
” The letter included a bombshell : After trying for months , Waterbury wrote , Debbie had finally gotten pregnant .
He said they had planned to reveal the secret on Christmas Day .
“ But like everything in my life it was taken away from me.
” Dave Goldsworthy kept the letter after Debbie ’ s parents died .
“ She wasn ’ t pregnant , ” he said , pointing to the autopsy by the coroner as proof .
“ It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ January , it will be up to the parole board to decide whether Waterbury is a changed man .
If he is set free , he plans to move first to LIFEHouse , a reentry group home in Placerville , near Sacramento , run by Jesus Our Boss , said Alicia Sinsley Reuscher , the nonprofit group ’ s executive director .
To Debbie ’ s family , his return to the outside world would restart a story they thought had already been written .
Over the decades , the fury and sorrow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dimmed into a dull ache .
Photos of Waterbury were burned long ago .
Somewhere along the way , he faded into being just a terrible memory and an inmate number : C38792 .
They took comfort in knowing he was locked away .
His story , which became Debbie ’ s story , had been too outrageous .
Too painful .
But now , come January , there will be another chapter .

Debbie Bailey is buried next to her parents at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. Visiting the graves, from left, are Debbie’s brother-in-law Dave Goldsworthy, sister Kathy Goldsworthy, niece Patricia Goldsworthy-Bishop and brother Jeff Bailey.
As he scrolled through news stories online last month, Dave Goldsworthy came across an article about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to commute the prison sentences of 21 violent felons.
The last name on the governor’s list stopped him cold: Thomas Waterbury.
“How can that be?” Goldsworthy asked himself.
Waterbury was supposed to live and die in prison. Forty years earlier, he had killed his wife as she slept. The judge left no doubt about his fate: Life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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But now, without warning, Waterbury had a chance at freedom.
::
Before dawn on Christmas Eve in 1980, police were called to a modest stucco home on North Lancewood Avenue in Rialto. They found Waterbury crouched on the floor, clutching a green cloth to a chest wound. Saying something about a Mexican intruder, he pointed toward a bedroom, where his wife, Debbie, lay dying, blood streaming down her face from two gunshot wounds.
Thomas Waterbury, in a 1986 prison photo, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing his wife, Debbie. Gov. Gavin Newsom has commuted his sentence. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
“It was horrific. There was blood splatter on all four walls and the ceiling,” recalled Terry Waterbury, Thomas’ brother, who arrived in the aftermath of the attack and peered through a window.
With no evidence to support his far-fetched claim of an intruder, suspicion quickly fell on Waterbury, then 22. Ten months later, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder, finding he had killed his wife, in part to collect her $100,000 life insurance policy, then intentionally wounded himself with a gunshot to hide his guilt. An appeals court upheld the conviction and the judge’s sentence.
“You don’t often see a crime that is calculated over such a long period of time and so cold-bloodedly executed,” San Bernardino Deputy Dist. Atty. Raymond Haight III said at the trial.
Debbie’s family figured Waterbury’s punishment was etched in stone. No parole, they assumed, meant just that.
And in the vast majority of cases, it would have. But in California, as in many other states, governors have the power to erase or amend prison sentences in the name of mercy. Each year, inmates flood the governor’s office with requests for clemency. A fortunate few see their wishes filled.
But there are rules to how the governor must wield this immense power — rules meant to protect victims and their families. Before a decision on Waterbury was to be made, state law required that the San Bernardino district attorney’s office make an effort to notify Debbie’s relatives and give them an opportunity to be heard.
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That didn’t happen. Though San Bernardino Dist. Atty. Jason Anderson received an email from state officials in October 2019, notifying him the governor was considering Waterbury’s case, a series of bureaucratic fumbles followed. No one contacted the family.
“I dropped the ball on this,” Anderson said in an interview.
Dave Goldsworthy, left, Kathy Goldsworthy and Patricia Goldsworthy-Bishop. They were not given the opportunity to weigh in on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to commute Thomas Waterbury’s prison sentence. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Debbie’s parents have passed away. But a sister, brother, niece and various other relatives still live with the memory of her murder. If any of them had had the chance to weigh in, they likely would have told the governor how Waterbury’s plea for clemency was another ploy by an untrustworthy man. “Very deceitful,” Goldsworthy, who is married to Debbie’s sister, said of Waterbury.
They may have mentioned how, for all the time he was married to Debbie, Waterbury was living a double life with another woman; how, court records show, he had introduced this mistress to neighbors as his wife and promised her that the house he shared with Debbie would belong to her by Christmas. They would have mentioned the engagement ring he bought her.
Someone in the family also might have told the governor about a long-held suspicion that, months before he succeeded, Waterbury had made another attempt on her life. One day in February 1980, as Debbie returned from lunch to a dark, warehouse-like office where she worked in downtown Los Angeles, a man wearing a ski mask stabbed her near the heart.
“No way in hell should he be let out. He’s a complete liar, manipulator, sociopath.” — Terry Waterbury, on brother Thomas Waterbury
The assailant was never caught. Goldsworthy recalled that Debbie never accused Waterbury of the attack, but still opted to stay at her parents’ house for several months after she was released from the hospital.
And if they had been given the chance to speak up, the family would have had an unexpected ally: Waterbury’s own brother.
“No way in hell should he be let out,” Terry Waterbury said. “He’s a complete liar, manipulator, sociopath.”
Terry Waterbury’s low opinion of his older brother stretches back to their childhood. A particular “eye-opener” came when the boys were about 12 and 13. At a backyard barbecue, Thomas intentionally ignited a can of camp stove fuel and hurled it at Terry, who suffered serious burns.
Terry vividly remembers his brother watching him as he burned. “Get the hot dogs,” Thomas said. “Terry’s going good.”
But the governor heard none of this. Instead, Newsom and parole board officials knew only what they saw in Waterbury’s clean prison record and in his application. Newsom’s office declined to provide copies of those documents or to make anyone available for an interview, but Newsom spelled out his reasoning for commuting Waterbury’s sentence in a statement released at the time of his clemency decisions.
Debbie Bailey’s grave in Glendale. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
The governor believed he had found a man who had met Jesus Christ and energetically practiced his faith behind bars. Although serving a sentence that offered no hope for release, Waterbury had “dedicated himself to his rehabilitation,” Newsom wrote.
Newsom pointed to the Bible classes Waterbury taught and other volunteer work he performed with ministry groups. There was the master’s degree he earned in ministry, and, in 2013, his appointment as provost at the School of Ministry at Mule Creek State Prison.
Perhaps most important, Newsom concluded Waterbury had “expressed sincere remorse” for the murder.
“This act of clemency for Mr. Waterbury does not minimize or forgive his conduct or the harm it caused,” Newsom wrote. “It does recognize the work he has done since to transform himself.”
In 2013, Thomas Waterbury was appointed provost at the School of Ministry at Mule Creek State Prison. Gov. Gavin Newsom concluded that Waterbury had “expressed sincere remorse.” (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
Debbie’s family members see it differently. To them, Waterbury is the same manipulative, self-serving man he was at 22.
They still have a chance to be heard. Waterbury must appear before the state’s parole board, which will make the final decision on whether he should go free.
In response to an interview request, Waterbury tried unsuccessfully to call a Times reporter. Subsequent attempts to reach Waterbury were unsuccessful. He asked two friends who know him from his time in prison to speak on his behalf. They said they believed Waterbury’s transformation is real.
The state prison system does not keep statistics on how frequently inmates who receive clemency from the governor are denied parole. “It has happened,” said Kate Chatfield, a senior advisor at the Justice Collaborative, a nonprofit group.
Waterbury’s parole hearing, set for Jan. 7, will be conducted over video conference. Debbie’s family plans to recount what they never were able to tell the governor about Waterbury — how there were signs of trouble from the beginning.
::
The wedding of Debbie Bailey and Thomas Waterbury was held on the lawn outside the Huntington Library in San Marino in August 1979.
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Bridesmaids wore lavender dresses and twirled parasols, remembered Debbie’s sister, Kathy Goldsworthy. And although Debbie looked the part — she wore a lace dress and a veil — her sister detected something more than wedding day jitters. It was a sense of trepidation. “It was like she wasn’t real sure,” she recalled.
Kathy asked her husband, Dave, to check on her sister. As he looked for her, Dave caught a glimpse of Waterbury smoking pot with some of his groomsmen. “I was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me, man. This is your wedding,’” Dave said.
He found Debbie and pulled her aside.
“I told her, ‘You know, my truck is right here. If you want to leave right now, you don’t have to stay here,’” Dave said. Debbie demurred, assuring Dave her marriage would succeed. Still, Dave sensed hesitation.
The groom’s brother tried to dissuade Debbie as well. Before the young couple drove off for their honeymoon, Terry approached her.
“I told Debbie that she’s the best thing that ever happened to him, and he’s the worst thing that will ever happen to you,” Terry recalled. “Sixteen months later, he proved me right.”
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“I have been wanting to call you both but, every time I try to tell what realy happen that night I just end up crying & go to pieces.” — Thomas Waterbury, in a 1981 letter to his slain wife’s parents
In January 1981, as he awaited his murder trial, Waterbury wrote a letter dotted with spelling errors to his dead wife’s parents. His words curved around a skeletal-looking plant design on the left margin of the page.
“I honestly don’t know how or why you could believe I could have hurt Debbie in anyway, as you both know how much I loved her,” he wrote.
“Yes, we had our problem’s like most couples, but we loved each other too much to let anything come between us. I almost lost her last February, and that devestated me,” he wrote, referring to the stabbing.
“I have been wanting to call you both but, every time I try to tell what realy happen that night I just end up crying & go to pieces.”
A letter that Thomas Waterbury wrote in 1981 to the parents of his slain wife, Debbie. He was convicted of her murder. (Los Angeles Times)
The letter included a bombshell: After trying for months, Waterbury wrote, Debbie had finally gotten pregnant. He said they had planned to reveal the secret on Christmas Day.
“But like everything in my life it was taken away from me.”
Dave Goldsworthy kept the letter after Debbie’s parents died.
“She wasn’t pregnant,” he said, pointing to the autopsy by the coroner as proof. “It was all just smoke and mirrors.”
In January, it will be up to the parole board to decide whether Waterbury is a changed man.
If he is set free, he plans to move first to LIFEHouse, a reentry group home in Placerville, near Sacramento, run by Jesus Our Boss, said Alicia Sinsley Reuscher, the nonprofit group’s executive director.
To Debbie’s family, his return to the outside world would restart a story they thought had already been written.
Over the decades, the fury and sorrow they felt about Debbie’s death dimmed into a dull ache. Photos of Waterbury were burned long ago. Somewhere along the way, he faded into being just a terrible memory and an inmate number: C38792.
They took comfort in knowing he was locked away. His story, which became Debbie’s story, had been too outrageous. Too painful.
But now, come January, there will be another chapter.