Sandy Banks - latimes.com

Here's a teacher I'd want for my children

Sandy Banks — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:32:00 -0700

Kaylie Gomez, a rookie teacher in a South L.A. neighborhood, imparts skills that don't show up on achievement tests.

I don't know what her students' test scores are like, or what her principal thinks. But I do know that if I had a child in third grade, I'd want someone like Kaylie Gomez to teach her.

Still feeling that garden glow

Sandy Banks — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:23:00 -0700

A faded clipping of a prize-winning head of lettuce reminds a columnist just how much she missed gardening. For her, the process is as rewarding as the product.

The faded newspaper clipping shows a small girl with a wide smile, holding a gigantic head of lettuce. The girl is me, in 1964. The lettuce was a prize-winning product of my first elementary school garden.

Children's welfare demands a fix in institutional incompetence

Sandy Banks — Fri, 7 Jun 2013 19:06:00 -0700

The death of 8-year-old Gabriel Hernandez underscores the need to make employees of the L.A. County foster care system accountable for their mistakes.

I'm tired of hearing "culture change" held out as a fix for idiocy.

Friends, relatives of suicide victims are bound in grief

Sandy Banks — Mon, 3 Jun 2013 19:26:00 -0700

At a potluck for survivors, tears are shed, food is shared and stories are told of how people cope with the stigma and isolation they've endured.

Hope was the theme of the day, but unremitting pain was the backdrop when friends and family members of suicide victims gathered in a Culver City park on Saturday for their annual summer potluck.

For the graduate, a lack of pomp, but plenty to be proud of

Sandy Banks — Fri, 31 May 2013 17:04:00 -0700

A no-frills 'ceremony' launches the determined scholar into a hostile job market, but the value of a hard-earned college degree far transcends money.

I stuffed my purse with tissues for my trip to San Francisco last week. I expected to be a teary mess as I watched my youngest child walk the stage at her college graduation.

Troubled youths deserve more effective discipline than suspension

Sandy Banks — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:27:00 -0700

There is no simple fix for disruptive behavior, but we owe it to struggling students to focus on ways to keep them in the classroom, not shut out of it.

The limits on student suspensions approved by the Los Angeles Unified school board this week may burnish the district's progressive credentials, putting L.A. in the forefront of a national shift away from zero-tolerance policies that ban kids from campus for minor offenses.

Program with tiny budget makes huge difference for pets, owners

Sandy Banks — Sat, 11 May 2013 07:00:00 -0700

Intervention effort uses volunteers and creativity to help keep animals that would have ended up in the South L.A. shelter with their families instead

The teenager showed up in a panic on Thursday, cradling a wounded puppy in arms spattered with blood. A stray dog had attacked his 2-month-old pit bull on a walk near their South Los Angeles home. The city animal shelter nearby was the only place he knew to go.

A plan to make the morning-after pill a moot point

Sandy Banks — Tue, 7 May 2013 04:09:00 -0700

If parents took more responsibility and paid more attention to their kids, perhaps the debate about the contraceptive Plan B would become unnecessary.

It's a new front in the long-running battle over reproductive rights, playing out this time as a clash between politics and science.

Greuel's campaign of 'gotchas' conveys desperation

Sandy Banks — Sat, 4 May 2013 01:14:00 -0700

The race has sunk into pettiness and mud-slinging on both sides, but her big-money backers seem to have set the ugly tone.

It's beginning to look like there's nothing Wendy Greuel wouldn't do to become the next mayor of Los Angeles.

Mayor leaves L.A. in better shape than he found it

Sandy Banks — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:56:00 -0700

Charisma counts, and even though many promises went unfulfilled, the mayor's outsize confidence in his own vision paid off in tangible ways.

I couldn't have imagined saying this a few years ago, but I wish Antonio Villaraigosa could run again for mayor of Los Angeles.