Morning Report: Barrio Logan School Grapples with Homeless Surge

It’s hard to do homework if you don’t have a home.

Cutting way back on the amount and importance of homework at Perkins K-8 was one thing the Barrio Logan school’s principal Fernando Hernandez did to help deal with a surging homeless student population there. Homeless students make up about 28 percent of the school’s population.

Voice of San Diego’s Maya Srikrishnan took a tour of the school and talked to the Hernandez about approaches the school is taking to help homeless students succeed, and the challenges his school faces.

“In three years, the percentage of homeless students at the Barrio Logan school has shot up from 4 percent of the school’s total enrollment to a peak of 33 percent at one point last academic year, one of the highest homelessness rates of all elementary schools in San Diego Unified,” Srikrishnan reports.

Another Day, More Hep A

While the brunt of the hepatitis A outbreak is centered downtown, several cases has been recorded in the city of El Cajon.

Wednesday, city officials there outlined steps they’ve taken, and plan to take to stop the disease from spreading. The strategy mirrors the one in San Diego and includes hand-washing stations, power-cleaning sidewalks and getting people vaccinated. (City News Service)

• Nearly two dozen cases of hepatitis A have been reported in seven jails throughout San Diego county. A Sheriff’s Department spokesman told Fox 5 that many of the inmates went to jail already infected, but five people did contract the disease while incarcerated.

• The Union-Tribune reported that a cookie convention cited San Diego’s hepatitis A outbreak as the reason it canceled its event at the San Diego Convention Center.

• The CEO of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, which oversees public transportation for much of the region, is scheduled to talk about what they’re doing to help stop the virus from spreading Thursday.

Jeff Sessions: Sanctuary Cities ‘Sad,’ Pot Bad

Attorney General Jeff Sessions was in San Diego Wednesday morning, touting the success of tighter border security while standing in front of 50,550 pounds of cocaine and heroin that the Coast Guard seized from international drug smugglers.

Reporters used the news conference to ask Sessions about his thoughts on sanctuary cities and states — California lawmakers recently passed a “sanctuary state” bill to protect immigrants without legal residency in the U.S., and San Diego is often thought of as a sanctuary city, even though it really isn’t.

KTLA reports that Sessions said he found it “‘sad’ that those jurisdictions refuse to cooperate with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials who are tasked with arresting people in the country illegally.”

Reporters also asked Sessions about legalized marijuana, and the attorney general said federal laws outlawing it would remain even as California and other states legalize it. (CBS Los Angeles)

• Attorney General Xavier Becerra held his press conference Wednesday at Border Field State Park and announced the details of his lawsuit against the Trump administration over the border wall. Here’s the full text of the federal lawsuit. (Los Angeles Times)

• Tomorrow, the Friends of Friendship Park coalition will stage a press conference at Border Field State Park to announce its plans to push Trump to build a “truly binational park” there. The group has a design for the park, and a long history of slowly making the park that’s already there more accessible and friendlier.

Quick News Hits

• A developer who owns a pair of golf courses in Escondido and Poway is aggressively going after the housing projects he wants to build. Parents might recall some members of the San Dieguito Union High School District. And Solana Beach will continue its unpopular red-light camera program. That’s just a sampling of the news included in this week’s North County Report.

•  The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System has seen declining ridership for the past two years, but the public agency hopes increased bus trips to certain neighborhoods and an update to its bus network will help. (KPBS)

• Transit-oriented development, or new development built near public transportation, is widely applauded by architects and urban planners who say it creates walkable, pedestrian-friendly urban centers. But some San Diegans who live near the trolley line that’s being expanded to UC San Diego say the increased density that could be coming to their neighborhoods is no good. (Union-Tribune)

• The U-T detailed Councilmen Chris Ward, Scott Sherman, Mark Kersey and David Alvarez’ new proposal that would allow most home-sharing in San Diego to continue, with a few restrictions and new fees.

• The Chula Vista Bayfront Master Plan was unveiled, revealing the results of a decades-long planning process and a project that’s expected to transform the city’s waterfront. (Union-Tribune)

Kinsee Morlan is engagement editor at Voice of San Diego and author of the Culture Report. Contact her directly at kinsee.morlan@voiceofsandiego.org.