2000 The year in review

January 18-31

Jan. 18

PALMDALE - During a December outing with her children, upset Palmdale mother Natalie Kidman said she witnessed something she believes one should never encounter in a children's library - pornography.

On that December day, Kidman, with her 2- and 4-yearold children in tow, went to the library to check out books to read to her children. Once there, Kidman says she discovered a woman in the Palmdale Youth Library looking at what she described as pornographic photographs on the Internet.

EDWARDS AFB - More contamination - fuels used by the Air Force Flight Test Center in decades past - was found in the aquifer under Edwards Air Force Base, but was not believed to pose a health threat.

LANCASTER - It looked as if Linda Spink, Antelope Valley College's president, is back from the brink. For the moment, anyway. With her contract under close scrutiny since the November election and the addition of a new trustee, Spink's future appeared precarious.

Jan. 19

LOS ANGELES - SR Technics America Ltd. finalized its lease with Los Angeles World Airports on Tuesday, edging closer to opening a much-anticipated aircraft maintenance, repair and modification hub at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale.

Jan. 20

LANCASTER - Members of the Antelope Valley Model Railroad Club mourned the loss of model trains, valued at up to $10,000, which apparently were stolen from the group's headquarters during the New Year's weekend.

Antelope Valley leaders don't take lightly what they see as an attempt to delay for two years the widening of State Route 138 east of Palmdale.

The State Department of Transportation had committed to seek bids for widening a section of twolane Highway 138 between Longview Road and State Route 18 by April 2001. But, Lancaster Mayor Frank Roberts said, Caltrans recently announced it won't seek proposals for the work until April 2003.

Jan. 21

LANCASTER - After first saying enrollment figures were soaring, Antelope Valley College officials admitted figures for the first semester weren't nearly as high as first announced. The college announced Wednesday that it is projecting a 4.5% enrollment increase by the end of the year.

LANCASTER - California State University, Bakersfield, can finally call the Antelope Valley home. CSUB unveiled its 11,000square-foot building on the Antelope Valley College campus Thursday. The unveiling was a high-tech event for the Antelope Valley and Bakersfield communities, with the entire Bakersfield campus present via live interactive television.

Jan. 22

LANCASTER - Antelope Valley's illegal dumping watchers have been busy. The Illegal Dumping Enforcement Program, launched Oct. 29, added a hotline and increased surveillance to the dumping police's arsenal. The new tools already have netted 24 reports of people leaving trash in unauthorized areas.

LANCASTER - At the close of business Friday, the Antelope Valley had six municipal courtrooms and six superior courtrooms. At the opening of business Monday, it will have 12 superior courtrooms, in accordance with a Jan. 14 vote by Los Angeles County judges to unify the county's twobranch court system.

LANCASTER - Look at these pictures from the life of NASA test pilot Marta Bohn-Meyer:

Little Marta up the mast of the family sailboat to avoid her pestering siblings; serious Marta in her Brownie uniform; teenage Marta flight-checking a small plane she's about to fly from Long Island; academic Marta in a wind tunnel at NASA Langley; smiling Marta after her first jet ride; hero Marta as she stands in front of the SR-71 she just flew to 80,000 feet at three times the speed of sound.

Jan. 23

LANCASTER - Herb Nero, the contentious, confrontational and politically conservative Antelope Valley talk show host, took his program to a national audience. The Herb Nero Show, which airs nightly on KPAL-TV, Channel 23 for Antelope Valley Jones Intercable subscribers, will begin national syndication Feb. 7 on the American Independent Network.

Jan. 24

LANCASTER - Infrastructure improvements needed for Lancaster Community Hospital to comply with state earthquakesafety standards will delay construction of a long-planned obstetrics ward.

Construction of the ward has been discussed since at least 1990, when former Chief Executive Officer Steve Schmidt said such a facility would help LCH meet the growing demand for health care in the Antelope Valley.

LANCASTER - The Antelope Valley Union High School District is again changing its policy on who qualifies as a valedictorian. In April, the board voted 4-1 to revise its policy on selecting valedictorians, allowing for so-called "weighted" grade point averages above 4.0 to be considered.

Jan. 25

PALMDALE - Students in the Palmdale School District soon may have longer school days - and longer vacations.Faced with severe overcrowding at its elementary school campuses, the Palmdale School District's board of trustees will consider reducing the number of instructional days in favor of longer school hours.

LITTLEROCK - Sheriff's deputies investigated two apparently racially motivated crimes one week after Valley residents gathered to hear messages of unity on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

"I am really disappointed by this," said Darren Parker of the Antelope Valley Hate Crime Task Force. "It appears that every time we try to show unity, the hate mongers in this city feel they have to retaliate."

Jan. 26

LANCASTER - Quartz Hill High School was the only Valley high school ranked above average for student performance by the state Department of Education.

PALMDALE - Sandy Corrales' political and community supporters planned to march on City Hall tonight - a show of support for Corrales' appointment to the council ranks.

Jan. 27

PALMDALE - A seat left vacant by jailed former City Councilman Kevin Carney will be filled by public election, his remaining colleagues decided Wednesday. Despite a small army of placard-bearing supporters who supported the appointment of runner-up candidate Sandy Corrales, council members Shelley Sorsabal, Mike Dispenza, Rod Penner and Mayor Jim Ledford voted unanimously to leave the vacancy open until November.

PALMDALE - The Valley's westside schools dramatically outscored eastside and core-neighborhood schools in student performance results released this week by the state.

Jan. 28

AGUA DULCE - If you've told your creditors one too many times that "the check is in the mail," maybe they will still believe that the check burned when the mail truck crashed and caught fire on the freeway.

U.S. Postal Service officials say it will take about a week to sort through the charred and soggy scraps of mail pulled from a truck that did just that on the Antelope Valley Freeway early Thursday morning.

PALMDALE - Lockheed Martin Corp. will eliminate 2,800 jobs nationwide during the next 12 to 18 months to cut costs in its aircraft and space businesses. The streamlining reflects a waning demand in those markets, the company announced. Officials hope the change will save the company $200 million a year.

Jan. 29

MOJAVE - Like many other school districts across the Valley and the state, Mojave also rated poorly in recently released ratings from the state. Of the Mojave Unified School District's five schools, only two were able to achieve average rankings in the Department of Education's recently released Academic Performance Index.

PALMDALE - Antelope Valley job seekers had the wind sucked out of their sails Thursday when the area's largest private employer, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, announced it is cutting hundreds of jobs. Now, it seems that a Swiss-based aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul company won't hire as many people as it originally claimed when it announced last month that Palmdale will be its new North American hub.

Jan. 30

ACTON - A former Vasquez High School teacher said the school's chemistry and physics classes are a farce because students are receiving lab credits - even though the school has no lab. Teacher Barbara Jones submitted her letter of resignation Friday, saying she could no longer continue with the "sham" of offering laboratory sciences when there is no lab at the school for students to use.

Jan. 31

PALMDALE - One of the nation's largest master-planned community developers had its sights set on the Antelope Valley. Having already developed the town of Valencia, The Newhall Land and Farming Co. is looking this way for new ground to turn.

Uploaded December 18, 2000