MBUSD hopes to begin TK-2 December 8, but teachers urge delay until after holidays
The Manhattan Beach Unified School District intends to welcome some of its youngest students back to part-time, in-person learning on December 8. But many teachers, concerned that parents are not following COVID-19 public health protocols, may not return to classrooms until after the holidays. Superintendent Mike Matthews in his weekly “Monday Message” email last […]
Manhattan Beach to allow outdoor patio dining for diners with to-go orders
Diners with take-out orders from downtown Manhattan Beach restaurants will be allowed to sit at the restaurants’ outside tables, under a plan approved by the City Council.
The Great Hadley Debate: The politics of the pandemic cause a rift in Manhattan Beach
At the very end of a five hour Manhattan Beach City Council meeting on November 17, Councilperson Hildy Stern made a seemingly innocuous motion to add language to the heading on an agenda item for the December 1 meeting. The item was about the council’s reorganization of its mayor and mayor pro tem positions, […]
COVID-19 Cases rise throughout Beach Cities
The Beach Cities this week experienced its largest increase in new COVID-19 since the summer, in keeping with trends throughout Los Angeles. El Segundo increased from 168 cases on November 17 to 182 cases November 24, Hermosa Beach increased from 303 to 327, Manhattan Beach from 465 to 497, Redondo Beach from 764 to […]
LA County Board of Supervisors will discuss health department temporary ban on outdoor dining Tuesday
By Donald Morrison Last week, public health officials announced that Los Angeles County would cease outdoor dining for at least three weeks if the average number of new daily coronavirus cases over a five-day period went over 4,000. As of Sunday, that number was 4,097. Local restaurant owners are rallying to convince the Board of […]
Manhattan Beach schools Local allowed to reopen TK-2, but teachers are concerned about flouting of Public Health guidelines
Parents desperate to have their young children back in classrooms scored an unexpected victory last week when the Manhattan Beach Unified School District’s waiver request was granted by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. The County announced on November 5 that all five MBUSD elementary schools were among the 74 schools whose […]
Franklin catches Fournell in ongoing tally for third Manhattan Beach City Council seat
Five days after election day, Joe Franklin overtook Gretell Fournell by 35 votes in the race for the third and final open Manhattan Beach City Council seat. The Los Angeles County Registrar’s office Monday afternoon released its fifth ballot count since the initial tally on election night, the first count in which the order […]
MBUSD granted waiver to begin in-person kindergarten through second grade instruction
Parents desperate to have their young children back in classrooms scored an unexpected victory Thursday afternoon when the Manhattan Beach Unified School District’s waiver request was granted by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Thursday. Superintendent Mike Matthews, in an email to district parents, announced that the waiver application — which […]
Bill Brand is an unlikely politician, a waterman who became mayor fighting against waterfront development. Now he’s fighting for his life
The little boy was six years old and already had a knack for doing unexpected things in unlikely ways. Bill Brand and his family lived in Dallas, Texas, and spent summers down in their “bay house” outside Galveston. Bill noticed that the giant oil supertankers that passed offshore created waves that would come all […]
Chevron’s Rod Spackman honored by Manhattan Beach City Council
Rod Spackman enjoyed the somewhat complicated title of manager for policy, government, and public affairs at Chevron for 37 years and eight months during his 40-year career with the company. But in so doing, he played a fundamental role in the South Bay community that went beyond his title. Spackman was a champion for […]
Judge rules Manhattan Beach’s short-term rental ban is illegal in coastal zon
Superior Court Judge James Chalfant issued a final judgment last week that the City of Manhattan Beach’s short-term rental ban is in violation of the California Coastal Act and can no longer be enforced by the city. The judgment, issued on August 25, affirmed a proposed judgment Chalfant wrote in July and is effective […]
Manhattan Beach City Council takes in painful history of Bruce’s Beach
An often visibly moved Manhattan Beach City Council took in a full, unvarnished history of Bruce’s Beach Tuesday night, the story of how Willa and Charles Bruce built a seaside dream and real life respite for fellow African Americans in the second and third decades of the last century and then had everything taken from […]
$39 million Peck Reservoir rebuild will begin in October
After nearly a decade of planning, the City of Manhattan Beach will begin a $39 million rebuild of Peck Reservoir, its 63-year-old water storage and filtration facility. The project was unanimously approved by City Council at its August 20 meeting. The Peck Reservoir Replacement Project was originally proposed in 2010 but took a decade […]
Manhattan Beach teens part of team creating music sharing app, Paddle
It began a long seven months ago, back in January, when 19-year-old Sam Nicholson and his friends, Nick Cerofeci and Matthew Dull, pondered the ever-developing world of music apps. Streaming services such as Spotify, Soundcloud, and Apple Music have changed the face of the music industry, with downloads and streams taking the place of units […]
Skechers, a hit on TikTok, donates a million PPE masks
Skechers has a hit on its hands and as a result is putting protective masks on more than a million faces. It all started when a then-unknown Pakastani-American rapper DripReport self-released his debut single via YouTube on January 12. The song, which DripReport wrote, was called “Skechers” and was an ode not only to […]
MBUSD prepares for a new and very different school year
The Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Education has approved a tentative plan that will begin the coming school year with distance learning and potentially phase in classroom teaching if declines in COVID-19 numbers allow. But both distance and classroom learning will be significantly different from last year. Several subcommittees, which involved 109 […]