SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2001
FR EE
FREE
Volume 1, Issue 29
Santa Monica Daily Press Serving Santa Monica for the past 34 days
Santa Monica students flunk California physical fitness test 2001 PHYSICAL FITNESS STATE REPORT FOR SANTA MONICA SCHOOLS
BY ANDREW H. FIXMER Special to the Daily Press
100%
90% 80% 70% 60% 50%
Fitness tests included push-ups, sit-ups, running, flexibility and endurance.
40% 30% 20%
17.9%
15.4%
12.1%
10% 5th Grade
7th Grade
9th Grade
Santa Monica students need to shape up, according to state officials. With barely 18 percent of its ninth-grade students considered physically fit, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District still fared better than the rest of the state in a recent test. Only 13 percent of ninth graders in Los Angeles County are considered physically fit. This year’s Santa MonicaMalibu school district score is an improvement over 1999 figures. Those figures — the last scores available — had about 15 percent passing.
PERCENTAGE OF STUDENTS WHO PASSED STATE TEST Del Pastrana/Daily Press
As shown above, local kids didn’t fair very well in a statewide fitness test. Below, students’ passion for fast food may be one reason the state has deemed California kids ‘unfit.’
“We did better than average but that isn’t saying much — the average was horrible.” — JOHN DEASY Superintendent of schools
Tourism officials find new hook By Daily Press staff
Not just a house of cards, Santa Monica’s efforts to lure Californians might now be called a hotel full of them. The “LA Card” program combines the lure of cutrate deals with the exclusivity of an insider game: you have to show up at a participating hotel to get one. Eight of them are in Santa Monica. The card is the latest pot-sweetener from tourism officials aching to lure potential guests to Santa Monica and Los Angeles this winter. It offers deals on everything from 2-for-1 hotel rooms to cut-rate menu offerings. The multi-million dollar regional advertising campaign is aimed at anyone who can get to Santa Monica by car — from Bakersfield, Fresno, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Sacramento and Monterey. The marketing will run in radio, print and advertorials through Jan. 16. The LA Card is supposed to entice visitors to the area between November and February by offering reduced room rates at one of eight participating hotels. They include the newly renovated Georgian Hotel, Hotel Oceana, Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, Le Merigot Beach Hotel & Spa, the Fairmont Miramar See TOURISM, page 3
Educators are not taking visions of heavyweight, flabby youth lightly — they plan to make a series of recommendations at next month’s school board meeting to improve physical fitness. “We did better than average but that isn’t saying much — the average was horrible,” said John Deasy, superintendent of schools. “There’s still a lot of room for improvement.” The test, given to fifth, seventh and ninth graders in 90 See FITNESS, page 3
Peace vigil planned for Monday BY ANDREW H. FIXMER Special to the Daily Press
Tragic teen deaths seem to plague Santa Monica year after year. Last month, Santa Monica High School student Deanna Maran was stabbed to death at a party in West Los Angeles. At the beginning of the school year, a recent Olympic High School graduate was shot in Venice. And last year, three Santa Monica-Malibu Unified high school students died tragically, one from suicide. Now a group of teachers, students, city officials and several community organizations are addressing the community’s losses. A “Community Peace Vigil” has been organized for Monday from 7-8 p.m., which will be a march from St. Anne’s Catholic Church on Colorado Avenue to Douglas Park on Wilshire Boulevard — a procession that will take
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about 20 minutes. “This was a grassroots response — the immediate stimulus was a tragic student death at a party, but it’s not just that,” said Kathy McTaggart, an event organizer. “It’s a response to all the loss we have experienced in this school district over the past few years. “We wanted a way to come together and develop a community understanding of what is behind our problems and develop whole community solutions,” she continued. “The vigil is just the first step.” Initially the idea for the vigil started at a small meeting of high school parents shortly after Maran’s murder. The group wrote letters to many community organizations to help plan and participate in the vigil. After the march reaches Douglas Park, there will be a brief ceremony. The city has organized Big Blue Buses to See VIGIL, page 3
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You’ve got mail First of its kind, Daily Press delivers via e-mail By Daily Press staff
Readers can now get a photographic image of the Santa Monica Daily Press by computer. In an electronic version of home delivery, the Daily Press is sending an “e-dition” through e-mail in a format called “PDF,” which allows readers to see it exactly as they would in print. Subscribers can order the paper by e-mail and browse it for news, ads, photos, comics, and classifieds, just as they would the paper version.
The move is relatively rare amongst daily newspapers, made possible by a combination of the Daily Press’ tabloid size and modern technology. “It’s a photo of the printed version,” said Daily Press Publisher Ross Furukawa. “Readers will see more than just text; they will get well-designed pages including headlines, photos and ads.” Readers of the “edition” need only free software called Acrobat Reader, available online. “Since we hit the streets Nov. 13, many people have asked us for home delivery,” said Daily Press Editor Carolyn Sackariason. “The ‘e-dition’ is useful for See E-DITION, page 3
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