latimes.com/news/local/la-me-blue-angels-20110331,0,3289359.story
Where Blue Angels get their wings
The Blue Angels, the Navy's air show stars, train their recruits each winter in El Centro, a heaven-sent boost for the hard-luck town.
By Mike Anton, Los Angeles Times
March 31, 2011
Reporting from El Centro, Calif. -- Minutes to show time and Ray Wainscott listens to cockpit chatter from a scanner dangling from his neck. He stands next to an irrigation ditch and trains his camera's long lens on the gleaming blue fighter jets on the tarmac.
"When they come over, they'll be so close the shock literally goes right through your chest," said Wainscott, 66, a retiree from the Seattle area who has spent six winters here in the low desert of Imperial County. "I came here for the weather. But this is the frosting on the cake."
He is among about three dozen people standing a Frisbee toss from the end of Runway 3-0 at the Naval Air Facility El Centro, an isolated base surrounded by some of California's richest farmland and poorest people.
There are retirees who've come for a bargain rivaling an early bird special. Longtime locals who associate sonic thunder with winter. Groupies who've seen the Blue Angels perform so many times they swear they can tell when the U.S. Navy's flight demonstration squadron is having an off day.
Some 8 million people watched the Florida-based Blue Angels perform their aerial ballet at air shows last year. They're an American cultural icon born of the jet age and still an effective public relations and military recruitment tool.
But each winter for the last 44 years, the Blue Angels have retreated to El Centro and the training ground where new team members integrate with second-year veterans to perfect their performance. For 10 weeks, they put on show after show over the Imperial Valley.
"The noise it scares the bejesus out of you!" said Ken Bentley, 68, a retired California Highway Patrol officer. He and his wife, Lou, are veterans of this scene and come prepared with binoculars and lawn chairs.
"It beats fighting the crowds at a commercial air show. Besides, you could never get this close to the action."
At least twice a day, six days a week from January to March, six F/A-18 Hornets shear the sky with barrel-roll breaks, diamond dirty loops, sneak passes, half-Cuban eights and the fleur-de-lis.
At a distance, they resemble a synchronized flock of delicate shore birds. Overhead, the blitzkrieg of high-decibel growls and screeches is an ice pick through the eardrum.
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latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0331-community-colleges-20110331,0,7036490.story
California community colleges to slash enrollment, classes
With state budget talks halted, the 112-campus system faces an $800-million cut in funding for the coming school year. The system may have to enroll 400,000 fewer students. Chancellor Jack Scott calls the situation a tragedy for students.
By Carla Rivera, Los Angeles Times
March 31, 2011
Facing a state funding cut of up to 10%, California's community colleges will enroll 400,000 fewer students next fall and slash thousands of classes to contend with budget shortfalls that threaten to reshape their mission, officials said Wednesday.
The dire prognosis was in response to the breakdown in budget talks in Sacramento and the likelihood that the state's 112 community colleges will be asked to absorb an $800-million funding reduction for the coming school year double the amount suggested in Gov. Jerry Brown's current budget proposal.
As it now stands, the budget plan would raise community college student fees from $26 to $36 per unit. The fees may go even higher if a budget compromise is not reached.
During a telephone news briefing, California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott said the funding cuts, under either scenario, would be a tragedy for students and a deep blow to the state's economy.
"Students seeking to transfer to Cal State and the University of California will be denied access, those students unable to get into Cal State and UC and who desperately need to get into a community college will be denied, as well as those who are out of work and are coming to us for retraining," Scott said. "We will do the best we can, but we will not be serving the needs of students or meeting our education goals."
Under the best-case scenario, Long Beach City College will cut 222 course sections this fall, turn away 1,000 full-time students who can't get classes and lose more than 30 staff positions, President Eloy Oakley said. He and several other community college leaders joined Scott for the telephone briefing.
"Given the scenario now before us, we will reduce our enrollment back to 1999-2000 levels, which is a significant defunding, particularly at a time when demand at Long Beach City College has never been greater," Oakley said.
About 18,000 students will be unable to enroll this fall at four Sacramento-area colleges in the Los Rios Community College District and more would be turned away if the larger funding reduction is imposed, Chancellor Brice W. Harris said.
"This is a statewide crisis, and increasingly we're going to see our bright young folks leaving the state to get an education," Harris said.
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