(December 17)  DELANTO—Adelanto Planning Commission Chairwoman Lori Yuan has been charged with felony vandalism stemming from a June 26 incident on the campus of Desert Trails Elementary School.
Allegedly, Yuan’s action and that of another parent of a child attending the school, Chrissy Guzman, was prompted by their dissent over the successful parent takeover of Desert Trails Elementary  by a group of parents and their out-of-community supporters using California’s controversial “Parent Trigger” Law.
The Parent Empowerment Act, authored by former state senator Gloria Romero and passed by the legislature in 2010, enables a majority of parents at a school at which students score as low-performers on state academic tests to force a district to implement significant reforms, ranging from replacing the principal and up to half the staff to reopening the school as a charter academy. That process is known by the colloquialism “parent trigger.”
At Desert Trails Elementary School, which falls within  the Adelanto Elementary School District, a significant number of the students there had parents whose first language is not English. For the seven years between 2004 and 2011, Desert Trails students had the lowest scores within the district on state standardized academic tests. The school’s students have also collectively scored in the bottom 10 percent of all California elementary schools. In the school’s 2011 graduating sixth grade class 72 percent of students were not proficient with the English language and 70 percent were not proficient in math. Since 2007 Desert Trails has been classified as a failing school.
Pursuant to the Parent Empowerment Act, a parent union was formed by parents at Desert Trails Elementary in 2011, in large measure at the instigation of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Parent Revolution, which is devoted to challenging the traditional authority of school districts.
On January 12, 2012 the parent union submitted 466 signatures on petitions asking the district to undertake a set of what the parents union maintained would be reforms at the severely underperforming school.
Those petitions, which called upon the district to sack the school’s principal, David Mobley, and surrender to the school’s parents authority in hiring his successor, infuse in the new principal hiring authority for the school’s faculty, reduce class sizes and increase the number of school days and instructional hours, and include more science, history and art in the curriculum, were sufficient to meet the requirements of the Parent Empowerment Act, parent union members believed. The parent union subsequently modified that agenda to request that the school be converted to a charter academy, offering an intensified curriculum.
A group of parents opposed to the parent takeover of the school formed, including Yuan and Guzman, and went to work obtaining rescissions of many of the signatures on the petitions.
In February 2012, the school district, to whom the parent trigger petitions had been entrusted, announced that it had validated the signatures of only 317 of the 466 signatures on the petitions. The Desert Trails Parent Union, represented by a law firm on retainer with Parent Revolution, Los Angeles-based Kirkland & Ellis, demanded a recount and reconsideration of that invalidation of the petition effort. After the district conducted that recount, the board, on March 28, 2012, voted unanimously to give a final rejection to the reconsideration of the parent trigger petitions, finding they fell 20 signatures short of the 321 signatures needed.
In response, Mark Holscher, an attorney with Kirkland & Ellis, filed on behalf of five of the members of the parents union – Doreen Diaz, Kathy Duncan, Teresa Rogers, Olivia Zamarripa and Bartola Del Villar – a petition for a writ of mandate and a complaint in Victorville Superior Court seeking a court order that the district verify the signatures and allow the Parent Trigger process to advance, as well as asking for the  recognition of  the educational rights of students at Desert Trails.
Judge Steve Malone, to whom the case was assigned, restored 97 of the signatures tossed out by the district, ruling that the district did not have the authority or a basis in law to discount signatures that proponents gathered and the district had abused its discretion in doing so. By his ruling Malone raised the number of qualified signatures to well above 50 percent. He ordered the Adelanto Elementary School District to accept the petition as filed by the parent union within 30 days and seek proposals from charter school operators to take over Desert Trails.
The ruling made the Desert Trails Parent Union the first group to successfully enact California’s 2010 Parent Empowerment Act, although the district did not get the reorganization in place in time to charterize the school in the 2012-13 school year.
Subsequently, LaVerne Preparatory Academy was accepted as the operator of Desert Trails, and  beginning in September has been operating the school.
Less than three months prior to that, according to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, Yuan and Guzman caused in excess of $8,000 worth of damage to a classroom at the school by spraying ketchup and mustard on the carpet and walls of the room. Both Yuan and Guzman had served as parent volunteers at the school while it was still under the control of the Adelanto School District and as such, according to the district attorney’s office, had access to several of the school’s classrooms, including the one that had been vandalized.
Yuan and Guzman were not alone in opposing the parent trigger effort. Many parents of students at Desert Trails Elementary and within the Adelanto School District as well as observers outside the district considered the drama in the Adelanto School District to be an unseemly spectacle, with agitators in the parent trigger movement seeking to exploit large numbers of parents at Desert Trail Elementary School whose own educational shortcomings, including a lack of facility in the English language, contributed to the poor academic performance of their own children.
The district discovered the vandalism on June 26 and contacted the Adelanto Police Department, which is a subdivision of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. An investigation was conducted.
It has not yet been publicly disclosed how sheriff’s department investigators came to the conclusion that Yuan and Guzman were involved or what evidence exists to support that conclusion. It is unknown, as well, whether there were other suspects considered during that investigation.
On December 2, the district attorney’s office preferred electronically filed PC 594(B)(1) charges, felony vandalism entailing damages of more than $400, against both Yuan and Guzman. The complaint seeks restitution equal to the damage done. They are scheduled for arraignment on January 13 in Victorville Superior Court Department 9.
At press time, Yuan, who serves on the planning commission at the pleasure of the Adelanto City Council, had not been removed from her appointed position.

(January 1)  The county of San Bernardino has struck back at the state of California and its Department of Finance over a ruling the latter made which called for the distribution of the $9 million dollar remainder of a county loan to the county’s redevelopment agency to other governmental agencies in 2012.
That move came after the state shuttered redevelopment agencies throughout the state. The county had not gone along with the diversion of all of the county redevelopment agency’s money because $10 million had been loaned to the county redevelopment agency by the county to redress devastation in the Cedar Glen area of the San Bernardino Mountains in the wake of so called Old Fire in 2003, which destroyed 345 homes.
Following the fire and its devastation, the county created a disaster project area and a disaster recovery plan. The county then loaned the county redevelopment agency $10 million from the county’s general fund to pay for infrastructure improvements.
As the county and the redevelopment agency were working toward the implementation of the plan, the state dissolved  redevelopment agencies statewide and the California Department of Finance blocked the actual initiation of the disaster recovery plan.
In accordance with the 2010 legislation that closed down the state’s redevelopment agencies, the California Department of Finance had jurisdiction in determining how money that remained in the pre-existing redevelopment agency accounts was and is to be disbursed. The California Department of Finance made a determination that all the money in the county redevelopment agency’s accounts, including the $9 million remaining from the county loan, would be allocated to local taxing entities.
The terms of the legislation shutting the redevelopment agencies required that any legal challenge to the California Department of Finance’s determination had to be filed in Sacramento Superior Court.  The county indeed challenged the Department of Finance determination with regard to the Cedar Glen loan, filing suit on February 27, 2013. On May 24, 2013, the judge hearing the case, Sacramento County Superior Court Eugene L. Balonon, held a hearing on the matter. On July 24, Balonon entered a judgment upholding the California Department of Finance.
On December 2, 2013 the successor agency to the county redevelopment agency under protest remitted the unspent county loans.
On December 20, 2013, attorneys for San Bernardino County and the successor agency to the county redevelopment agency – County Counsel Jean-Rene Basle, assistant county counsel Michelle Blakemore, and attorneys Amy Hoyt, J. Leah Castella, Susan Bloch and Nicholas Muscolino with the Oakland office of the Burke, Williams and Sorensen law firm – filed an appeal of Balonon’s ruling with the Third District Court of Appeal. Michael Cohen, in his official capacity as director of the State of California Department of Finance, is named as the respondent.
According to the legal brief filed on December 20, “The Department of Finance’s determination that the $9 million county loan must be allocated to local taxing entities is unconstitutional. The Department of Finance’s determination violates Article XIII Section 25.5(a) of the California Constitution because it changes local agencies’ pro rata shares of property tax revenue. The Department of Finance’s determination violates Article XIII Section 24 because it reallocates the county’s general fund money to other local agencies.”
The brief further states, “This case involves the county’s efforts to construct infrastructure that would provide basic services – water, roadways, and fire protection – to the residents of Cedar Glen, a community devastated by a catastrophic wildfire in 2003. The Department of Finance has thwarted those efforts through an arbitrary and capricious determination that a $10 million loan that the county made in 2005 from its general fund to the county redevelopment agency to finance the infrastructure improvements and that remains largely unspent cannot be used for its intended purposes and instead must be distributed to local taxing entities. This determination delivers a one two punch to the county: the county urgently needs the funds to complete the improvements to protect the community from the next wildfire. It will only recover those funds, if at all, over a protracted period. Meanwhile, the Department of Finance has given a windfall to other local taxing entities that have no entitlement to money from the county’s general fund. The loans are enforceable obligations that must be spent in accordance with the loan agreement and repaid to the county. The reallocation is plainly inequitable because it gives the other taxing entities a windfall of county general funds to which they have no claim whatsoever. The loan is needed to undertake the improvements that are required before most property owners can rebuild the homes destroyed in the Old Fire since most roads are now unusable and without a dependable water system owners do not want to take a chance at building  without fire service protection.”
The brief maintains “It is unjust for the Department of Finance and taxing entities to receive the unspent $9 million from the county loan. The county accumulated the vast majority of the $10 million loan from its own property tax revenue and local sales and use taxes  In its zeal to implement the [redevelopment agency] dissolution law, the Department of Finance has gone too far. It has ordered the transfer of county general fund money that the county loaned to the county redevelopment agency years earlier to finance sorely needed fire, water and road improvements for an area devastated by wild fires.”
As of press time, Cohen had not been in his office for two consecutive days and was not available for comment.

(January 2) Rancho Cucamonga Councilman Marc Steinorth has declared himself a candidate in the anticipated contest to succeed Mike Morrell as assemblyman in the  40th District.
Morrell has not departed from the position he first captured in the lower chamber of the state legislature in 2010. The 40th Assembly District stretches in an arc from Rancho Cucamonga on its western end through unincorporated portions of San Bernardino County along the foothills to a portion of the city of San Bernardino, the city of Highland, and into Redlands and Loma Linda.
Morrell has declared his intention to vie to replace State Senator Bill Emmerson in a special election to be held later this year. Emmerson resigned from his post as state senator in the 23rd Senatorial District effective December 1.
Four others are competing with Morrell –  Yucaipa Valley Water District Board Member Lonni Granlund, a Republican; Calimesa Councilman Jeff Hewett, a Libertarian; San Jacinto City Councilwoman Crystal Ruiz, a Republican; and Ameenah Fuller, a Rancho Cucamonga Democrat who unsuccessfully sought election in the 25th State Senate District in 2012.
Given his incumbency in the Assembly and his superior fundraising capability, Morrell is considered the odds-on favorite to prevail in the race in the 23rd, in which 41 percent of the voters are registered as Republicans and 34 percent are affiliated with the Democratic Party.
Steinorth, who was elected to the Rancho Cucamonga City Council 2012, is an active Republican. In the 40th Assembly District, 38.3 percent of the voters are registered Democrats and 36.7 percent are registered with the GOP.
With the slight Democratic registration advantage and Morrell’s narrow 1,018 vote victory over Democrat Russ Warner in November 2012, the 40th  is considered one of the most targeted legislative districts in the state.
Steinorth believes he can energize the 40th District’s voters in the same way he did with voters in Rancho Cucamonga two years ago.
“I bring to the table 20 years of private sector business experience,” said Steinorth, who runs an advertising and marketing firm in Rancho Cucamonga, Atlas Buying Group. “In addition to understanding the daily challenge of running a small business, I also have public sector experience on the city council. I have seen the impact of the state government’s action on the business community. I am equally aware of what many in the private sector and in the general public do not realize, which is the degree to which local governments are challenged by having to deal with mandates by the state, every bit as much as small businesses must deal with mandates by the state. I am convinced that the state government does not have enough private sector business representation. It is easy to say you want to go to Sacramento and create jobs. That is the mantra we have heard for the last four or five years from our politicians. What is different about my candidacy is I have actual experience in helping to create and grow businesses.”
Steinorth said that to be effective as an advocate for the private sector within the context of serving in government, one has to be prepared to tirelessly promote the application of common sense to the regulatory function of government. . Steinorth addressed the impact of state mandates on local government.
“AB 109, the public safety realignment or prison realignment to reduce prison overcrowding was not intended to be a threat to my family’s safety but that is the end result,” Steinorth said. “The state has simply ignored the prison overcrowding problem for more than 20 years.  This most recent emergency is really nothing more than an example of poor planning by our legislative leaders.
“As the state funneled money toward other priorities, our local court system, has received $600 million less in funding,” he continued. “In dealing with that in the only way she can, our county’s presiding judge, Marsha Slough, is reducing services to the point where we no longer have the full service court system we enjoyed. The Rancho Cucamonga Courthouse is now going to be devoted entirely to criminal cases. The Fontana Courthouse will handle civil and traffic cases. Most of the civil cases and some of the criminal cases will be handled out of the San Bernardino Courthouse. This is a tremendous challenge beyond being an inconvenience to our population in this county. You have residents, especially ones in the far reaches of our county, out in the desert communities who will have to travel four hours one way to get to court. A Rancho Cucamonga resident who for one reason or another does not have access to a car and must use public transportation to get to court in San Bernardino will need to spend upwards of two hours travelling one way to court. That is the result of decisions made at the state level where the impact on us is tremendous.”
Steinorth did not shrink from expressing himself as a dyed-in-the-wool Republican.  He said the numbers are against his party statewide, but that the principles and values the GOP embraces are sorely needed in Sacramento. He said he believes many voters are beginning to see that the Democratic supermajority in the state capital is contrary to balanced governance.
“I see the pendulum starting to shift,” he said. “[State Republican Leader] Jim Brulte is leading us. The Republican Party has to pick up two seats to break the two-thirds majority Democratic control in Sacramento. Single party control has not proven to be a healthy process of governing. Divided government, with its checks and balances, was how the system was designed to function. As Republicans we need to hold onto the 40th. I think my candidacy can be the start of a dialogue about all this. We can start the change right here.”
He has a familiarity with the district that extends beyond Rancho Cucamonga, Steinorth said.
“The way the 40th is configured, it contains roughly  three-fourths of Rancho Cucamonga,” he said. “It stretches to cover San Bernardino and Highland Loma Linda and Redlands. When I was a kid, I lived in San Bernardino and went to elementary school there. I attended  St. Thomas Aguinas High School in San Bernardino my freshman year before my family moved to Ramstein AFB in Germany while my father was in the military. When I was attending college at U.C. Riverside, I bought my first house in Highland. One of the first businesses I started was in Highland.”
Steinorth now hopes to take his long developed roots in the community, experience in private business, and service on the city council to Sacramento to represent the people of the Inland Empire in the Assembly.

(January 2) 2013 closed out and 2014 embarked with a spate of murderous mayhem across San Bernardino County. From approximately mid-day on December 30 to just after 1 a.m. January 1, there were at least six homicides, one suicide and one attempted murder in the cities of San Bernardino, Highland, Chino and Fontana. Five of those involved murders by close family members.
At about 8:30 p.m. Monday December 30, Fontana police officers were summoned to a residence in the 7300 block of Palmetto Avenue, where they discovered the bodies of Ramon Miranda, 38, and Silvia Miranda, 34, and their son Ramon Jr., 12, and daughter Rayna, 10.
Investigators had been alerted to the situation by Silvia Miranda’s 16-year-old son, who did not live with his mother and stepfather and half-brother and half-sister. The 16-year-old had discovered the bodies after he came to the house that day after being unable to reach his mother by phone.
Investigators believe that all four died at the hand of Ramon Miranda. A handgun was found at the scene. Silvia Miranda and the two children sustained multiple gunshot wounds, and Ramon Miranda expired from a single gunshot wound to the head, according to Fontana Police.
No motive in the suicide murders has been established.
Around 9 p.m. on December 31, Robert Sanchez and another unidentified man were wounded in a hail of gunfire near the 2800 block of Benson Avenue in Chino, proximate to Chino High School. Officers responding to a call found Sanchez and the other man prone in an alley with multiple gunshot wounds. Both were transported to Chino Valley Medical Center, where Sanchez, 28, was pronounced dead.
The other man remains in critical condition at press time.
The Chino Police Department has released photos of what are described as three suspects. Those photos were taken from a security camera at a nearby business at a time just prior to the shootings. The three men in the photos are described by police as adult Hispanics who were said to have fled  on foot northbound on Benson Avenue.
Detectives  investigating the case appealed to  anyone with information regarding the shootings to  contact the Chino Police Department at 909-628-1234.
At about the same time that Sanchez was gun down, an as-yet unidentified 38-year old man in San Bernardino narrowly escaped with his life when he was confronted by 22-year-old Jose Lopez outside the Stater Bros. grocery store at 977 W. Kendall Ave in North San Bernardino.
According to police, Lopez was driving a red Chevrolet Suburban and fired upon the victim multiple times before driving off. Shortly thereafter, a Cal State San Bernardino police officer spotted the Suburban and pulled Lopez over. A weapon was found in the vehicle. Witnesses subsequently identified him as the shooter. He was arrested and charged with attempted murder and is being held at Central Detention Center in San Bernardino on $1 million bail.
Less than two hours after 2014 had commenced, a 26-year-old woman was found dead with upper body trauma in Highland after police were notified of a disturbance in the area. .
The sheriff’s department was called at 1:54 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 1, and told of an incident in the 7000 block of Elm Avenue. Upon arrival, deputies discovered 26-year-old Tysha Carrell dead from upper-body trauma.
The sheriff’s homicide division is investigating her death.
In San Bernardino, Jordan Sartorio phoned  police Wednesday morning to inform them he had cut his own wrist after killing his wife and daughter.
Sartorio, 42, had gotten into an argument with his ex-wife, Miraflor Sartorio, 51, and then used a knife to stab her multiple times. The commotion roused the one-time couple’s 6-year-old daughter, Jira. Jordan Sartorio then stabbed her to death before seeking to kill himself by slashing his own wrist.
Sartorio was alive when at 5:40 a.m. police arrived at the home located in the 300 block of West 29th Street, and he was transported to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center for medical treatment.

San Bernardino, Calif., December 21, 2013 – On Saturday December 21th, the first bald eagle count of the winter was conducted by local Federal and State biologists and volunteers around several lakes in the southern California.
A grand total of 11 eagles (7 adults and 4 juveniles) were observed at the lake areas during the 1- hour count.  Six eagles (2 adults, 4 juveniles) were observed in the Big Bear/Baldwin Lake area; 2 adult eagles at Lake Arrowhead; 2 adult eagles at Silverwood Lake; and 1 adult eagle at Lake Perris.  Juvenile eagles are distinguished by a brown head and tail; adults are recognized by the famous white head and tail – it takes 4-5 years to acquire full adult coloration.  Juvenile eagles are the same size as the adults.
Approximately 99 observers participated in the 1-hour eagle census (41 at Big Bear area, 6 at Lake Arrowhead, 30 at Silverwood Lake, and 22 at Lake Perris.  The count coordinators from the Forest Service and State Recreation Areas would like to thank those volunteers for their dedication in getting up early and participating in the eagle census.  The success of the eagle counts are entirely dependent on the volunteers!
The remaining bald eagle counts for this winter are scheduled for the following Saturday mornings:  January 11, February 8, and March 8.  No experience is needed.  Signing up ahead of time is unnecessary. Those participating can  just show up at the designated time and location, dressed warmly, with binoculars and a watch.
·       Big Bear Lake area volunteers will meet at 8:00 a.m. at the Forest Service’s Big Bear Discovery Center on North Shore Drive for orientation. Contact Drew Farr (dpfarr@fs.fed.us or 909-382-2816) for more information.  Please call 909-382-2832 for cancellation due to winter weather conditions – an outgoing message will be left by 6:30 am on the morning of the count if it has to be cancelled.  Contact the Discovery Center (909-382-2790) for information about Eagle Celebrations.  There will also be a free slideshow about bald eagles at 11:00.
Lake Arrowhead/Lake Gregory volunteers will meet at 8:00 a.m. at the Skyforest Ranger Station for orientation. Contact Drew Farr (dpfarr or 909-382-2816) for more information.  Please call 909-382-2832 for cancellation due to winter weather conditions – an outgoing message will be left by 6:30 am on the morning of the count if it has to be cancelled.
· Silverwood Lake State Recreation Area volunteers should plan to meet at the Visitor Center at 8:00 a.m. for orientation.  Contact Kathy Williams or Mark Wright for more information about volunteering or taking an eagle tour (760-389-2303 between 8:00 and 4:00; or email: khwilliams@parks.ca.gov).
·       Lake Hemet volunteers should plan on meeting at the Lake Hemet Grocery Store at 8:30 a.m. for orientation.  Contact Anne Poopatanapong (apoopatanapong@fs.fed.us or 909-382-2935) for more information.
· Lake Perris State Recreation Area volunteers should plan to meet at the Lake Perris Regional Indian Museum at 8:00 for orientation.  Contact the office for more information at 951-940-5600.
See websites for additional information about the San Bernardino National Forest (http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sanbernardino/) and the California State Recreation Areas (www.parks.ca.gov).