Category: Education

By Sydney Brammer / LomaBeat  / Sep 12, 2025
 
Following the tragic accident of Point Loma Nazarene University student, Dakota Briley, an auction with over 300 items, including hotel stays to surfboards signed by professional surfers, went through Monday, Sept. 15, to raise money for his rehabilitation funds.

Nearly three months ago, Briley was hit by an 18-year-old driver while on the side of the road in Haleiwa, HI. Crushed between two cars, Briley’s spine, skull and lower body were critically injured.

After spending 58 days in the Queens Medical Center in downtown Honolulu, mostly in a coma, Briley was transferred to Craig Hospital in Colorado, where they believe his rehabilitation needs will be better met, said Erin Lau, his sister.

Since the accident, Briley has awakened from his coma, undergone 11 surgeries, can hold conversations,

by Ernie McCray

Today there’s a move,
spearheaded
by a dictator-like-president,
to hide truths
in our schools,
an idea beyond ridiculous
since truths
are basic
to learning,
something made clear to me
when I began teaching sixth grade
in the 60’s,
at a school
where many of the students
lived in naval housing,
their dads off fighting in Vietnam,
leaving them to wonder what was really going on,

by Mike McCarthy / Times of San Diego / Sept. 17, 2025

Point Loma High celebrated its centennial with a gala on Sept. 13, marking a major milestone for the school’s long and decorated history. More than a thousand alumni and guests gathered at the Port Pavilion on the Broadway Pier for the festive event.

Several older alumni were given special recognition, including Eileen Finley McCarthy, who was presented as the school’s oldest living alumna. She will turn 104 on Oct. 25.

McCarthy was born in 1921 and raised in Point Loma. Her parents and older brother immigrated from Canada and settled in Ocean Beach in 1918. McCarthy’s early life was dedicated to dance and the performing arts. Attending public school was usually not an option at that time. The opportunity to be at Point Loma High “for two wonderful years (1935-37), was one of the best times of my life,” she said.

As a young girl and then a teenager, McCarthy was well-known in San Diego as an actress on the radio.  During the Depression, this type of work was well-received and well-paid. The money was used to pay for her expenses as a ballerina, her first and real love. McCarthy was also the principal dancer for the San Diego Starlight Ballet.

By Gillian Mohney / SFGate / Sep 15, 2025 

Officials at UC Berkeley have sent over a hundred names of students and staff to federal officials, who are looking into allegations of antisemitism as part of an ongoing federal investigation.

The names of 160 students, faculty and staff were sent to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights after the office demanded documents related to complaints of antisemitism and discrimination at the university.

[See below for “Backlash”]

“The UC systemwide Office of the General Counsel (OGC), in compliance with its legal obligations to cooperate with the agency, directed UC Berkeley to provide those documents to the federal agency,” Janet Gilmore, the senior director of strategic communications at UC Berkeley, said in an emailed statement. “Numerous documents were provided over recent months to OCR, including the names of individuals in those reports.”

Gilmore added that the individuals were notified last week if they were named in the documents sent to the federal investigators.

By Jan Hintzman / Special to the OB Rag

In our community’s relentless nine-year struggle to restore access to the College-Rolando Branch Library, we are no stranger to city two-facedness. Our case was strong. When opportunities arose, the City needed to recover necessary library parking. The opportunities arose, but the city did not rise to help us!

The City had built generous library parking on part of the church property next door. In the deal, the City made a formal commitment to our community to purchase that property for a park, should it come up for sale, given that our older communities were built without public amenities.

The library was our jewel, the only major city investment on the horizon. And it came with promises for more. But instead of more, we got less. The property was in fact offered for sale to the City, and the City refused to purchase it.

Thus, the library lost its main driveway and most of its parking….and an astute investor scooped up the opportunity.  His plan was to convert the property, having a land use potential of Low/Medium Residential and General Commercial with Residential, into a profitable student housing project.  And ultimately he did, with the cooperation of the city and at the expense of the library.

by Scott Hopkins / Pen. Beacon – Times of San Diego / Sept. 2, 2025

It was a time of rapid growth in San Diego. The little seaside community was home to 74,683 people in 1920, and that total would double to 147,897 by the end of the decade. The city was already home to a pair of high schools. Russ School, later named San Diego High School, opened in 1892, and La Jolla High School opened to the north in 1922.

HASTINGS’ FOLLY

Edgar F. Hastings, a member of the Board of Education, believed that a new high school was needed in a slowly developing community situated between San Diego Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Fellow board members strongly disagreed with Hastings, saying the proposed location was too far from town.

But Hastings persisted, even after his fellow board members termed the proposed new school “Hastings’ Folly.”

And, on Sept. 8, 1925, Point Loma Junior-Senior High School opened.

Pete Ross was named as the school’s first principal, and the school’s stadium bears his name today.

Ross oversaw a staff of 30 teachers who drove their Model Ts to the campus that had no homes around it. They parked their cars in a staff parking lot along Zola Street before walking onto the new campus built in Spanish Revival architecture with three-story buildings featuring curved archways and wrought iron.

Those teachers were expected to deliver a rich and challenging curriculum to each of the 386 students in grades 7 through 12 who arrived on the first day of school. After all, those teachers were making $90 per month, according to federal records.

by Ernie McCray

There’s a dear friend of mine,
Jacquenese A. Barnes Price,
Jacque for short,
who will soon be an inductee
in the Hall of Fame
at Tucson High,
an honor she comes by honestly
because she was prepared naturally
for such esteem
by a mother
who stands as an iconic
Black social and political activist
in Tucson’s history,
a woman we kids used to call
“Miss Freddie,”

By Ray Huard/ San Diego Business Journal / August 26, 2025

As Point Loma Nazarene University looks toward its future, the university is working with Studio E Architects to map out a way to best accommodate the physical changes that come with a changing education program.

“Like all institutions of higher learning, they are evolving. They’ve been adding all kinds of programs and they’re transitioning programs,” said Eric Naslund, Studio E principal.

Jeff Bolster, vice president for university services, said that it’s been at least 20 years since the university took a strategic look at how the university might grow.

“We just felt like it was time for the professional kind of help of kind of looking into what are our strengths and opportunities are on the campus,” Bolster said.

Limited Footprint to Build On
The challenge is that the university’s 90-acre main campus on Point Loma has no extra land on which to expand.

“We can’t grow up or out. We have to grow within the footprint that we have,” Bolster said. “We certainly are planning for growth and looking for growth, but that kind of growth can’t happen on the Point Loma campus.”

ALL DETAILS ARE INSIDE

Come Labor Day in San Diego County, September 1, there are 6 planned protests against the Trump regime, titled “Workers Over Billionaires.”

They’re in downtown San Diego, Chula Vista, La Jolla, Mira Mesa, Carlsbad and Escondido. (All details are herein.)

Downtown San Diego

It begins at 10am and runs to 12 noon at the Waterfront Park at 1600 Pacific Hwy. (That’s San Diego CA 92101)

About this event (Each event — except Escondido — starts at the same time, 10am, has the same demands and script, so we’re running just the downtown San Diego details, but with more info about each of the events.)

There are actually two events, one sponsored by the coalition that organized the No Kings event at Waterfront Park. The other, at the same place and time, is sponsored by San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council, No Kings and a host of other groups we list below.

Here’s their script:

This Labor Day we will continue to stand strong, fighting for public schools over private profits, healthcare over hedge funds, shared prosperity over corporate politics.

Working people built this nation and we know how to take care of each other. We won’t back down—we will never stop fighting for our families and the rights and freedoms that ensure access to opportunity and a better life for all Americans. The billionaire’s time is up.

On September 1st we will continue the movement we launched together on May 1st, standing in solidarity with all our communities under attack and fighting for real wins for all our people.

By Abbie Black / CBS8 / August 15, 2025

What appears to be pristine water in San Diego Bay is hiding a disturbing secret beneath the surface.

University of San Diego graduate students working with a local company have discovered alarming levels of heavy metals, microplastics and invasive species in Mission Bay and San Diego Bay using innovative cleanup booms made from recycled materials.

The partnership, called 24/7 Blue, pairs USD students with San Diego-based Earthwise Sorbents to test sustainable cleanup technology that could serve as a model for ports and marinas nationwide.

“It’s unbelievable the amount of material that we are picking up,” said Dr. Michel Boudrias, who chairs USD’s sustainability task force. “We’re picking up 30 times the amount of heavy metals that are typically out there.”

The 5-pound, 10-foot booms are placed in local waters for two to three months before being replaced. When flipped over, the seemingly clean-looking devices reveal the extent of contamination lurking in San Diego’s waterways.

By Mary Cairns / President, Ocean Beach Friends of the Library and Co-Chair, Expansion Committee

Good news on the activities for the Ocean Beach Library expansion project!

As of last week, the project is continuing to move along with minimal delays. The city has the necessary funds, and is now going through the process to get to the final selected firm for the work.

In March the Request for Qualifications went out and were due in May. The City selected the top three firms to move forward with Request for Proposals (contract language will be finalized in September) and interview process to determine the final design-build firm. A January 2026 contract award is anticipated.