The Weekly Newspaper of El Segundo
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 110, No. 34 - August 26, 2021
Inside
This Issue
Certified & Licensed
Professionals.....................11
Classifieds............................4
Community Briefs...............2
Crossword/Sudoku.............4
Entertainment......................3
Legals.............................. 9,10
Obituaries.............................2
Pets......................................12
Real Estate.......................5-7
Sports.............................. 3,11
Weekend
Forecast
Friday
Sunny
78˚/65˚
Saturday
Partly
Cloudy
77˚/64˚
Sunday
Sunny
77˚/65˚
The El Segundo Main Street
Car Show Had a Great Turnout
This past weekend it was fun to see cool cars, great people, and businesses open to the public. It was a nice way to spend the day. Photo courtesy Automobile Driving Museum.
Rival Schools’ PTA Presidents
Find a Way to Collaborate
By Kiersten Vannest
El Segundo is lauded for its high-performing
schools and academic rigor. Last year, with
students at home and a worldwide pandemic,
schools struggled to find their footing amid
virtual classes and lockdowns. Parents,
teachers, administrators, and students had
to pull together in a way they never had
before. PTA Presidents Heather Sutherland
and Ephraim Freed of Center Street School
(CSS) and Richmond Street Elementary (RSS),
respectively, discuss how El Segundo schools
have become more collaborative than ever.
“In previous years,” says Freed, “RSS and
CSS had kind of stuck to themselves, and
PTAs and schools had their own activities
and really didn’t coordinate much.” He goes
on to explain that some would say there is
some sort of ill-begotten rivalry between
the two schools. However, over the last
year, both schools coordinated their efforts,
offering ideas, tips, tricks, and help to each
other. “And I think it made us all the better
for it,” he adds.
Though Freed is new to the PTA, Sutherland
has worked her way up. “We wanted to
make sure that, most of all, the kids, just
because they were Richmond or Center,
weren’t missing out on some of their friends
from the other school,” says Sutherland. She
describes a goal of cohesiveness, allowing
the two schools to take the best ideas from
each other and better themselves together.
Freed and Sutherland had to create a game
plan as it became clear that schools would
not reopen in person.“It started with trying
to do a lot of listening to…parents to try
to figure out what they needed and what
their kids needed and then of course to
teachers and administration. It meant that
we were constantly trying to understand how
Scott Houston Helps Keep the Water
Flowing to El Segundo Residents
By Duane Plank
So, if you are like most people, you do
not spend too much, if any of your daily
time, thinking about water. The colorless
liquid that emerges when you turn the handle
on your kitchen faucet, or start your daily
shower, or drenches your lawn when the
sprinklers are working. Maybe it fills your
backyard pool if you are lucky enough to
have a backyard pool.
We take it for granted that the water
faucets will continue to flow and that the
liquid will always be there, at our beck-andcall.
And even though California is again
in a drought, and wildfires again ravage
Northern California, most of us do not give
flowing water much thought.
Not so with El Segundo resident Scott
Houston, who serves the community, and
surrounding areas, as the Director of the West
Basin Municipal Water District (WBMWD),
a post to which he was elected in November
of 2014 and re-elected in 2018.
Water has been at the top of the El Segundo
news for the past six weeks or so after the
local Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant was
forced to dump seventeen million gallons
of raw sewage into the ocean because of
debris clogging the plant’s screens that are
designed to filter waste. If you happen to
live west of PCH, you have experienced,
daily, what the odious results were. And
in a less obvious and odious story, the
general manager at Houston’s own West
Basin Municipal Water District was canned
parents were thinking about things and what
questions they had,” Freed explains. He
describes himself and Sutherland as “avenues
of information,” keeping up to date on the
schools and their plans, as well as the parents
and their needs.
“We had to think about everybody,” says
Sutherland, “We had to think about the
parents, the teachers, the kids… How can
we show support? How can we be conscious
of not overloading?” She gives an example
of school assemblies. Schools wanted to
make the year as close to a normal year as
possible, including school-wide assemblies,
talks, and activities. Sutherland and Freed,
however, also needed to be aware of how
much stress this might put on parents and
students having to attend virtually. It was a
delicate balance between consistency and not
overloading the students. In the end, students
were provided with virtual assemblies, with
concerns of parents taken into consideration.
Sutherland and Freed, being parents
themselves (Sutherland with four students
in the El Segundo School system and Freed
with two), wanted to make the most out of
their positions and get help and information
where it was needed the most.
At the start of both of their PTA journeys,
neither of the two expected to be President.
When Sutherland wanted to get involved
and help out at her kid’s school, she wanted
anything but leadership. She hoped to do
See PTA Presidents, page 8
See Scott Houston, page 9