“I always considered myself an activist,” said neighbor Brett Garrett, who scaled the tree Tuesday morning. “And I like trees in general, but I didn’t consider myself to be a tree activist until the last week.”

The madrone, thought to have been planted about 10 years ago, looms over a patio at the neighboring Walnut Commons, a cohousing building. It had been slated for removal Tuesday by one of the office building’s tenants — the nonprofit Ecology Action — to make way for an electric bike storage shed.

According to Heather Henricks with Ecology Action, the placement of the shed was in the works for the past year, and the tree’s welfare was considered, but its existence was seen by the nonprofit’s leadership as a possible nuisance to the neighbors.

“We gave considerable thought to the site and whether to remove the tree,” Henricks told the Sentinel. “Until the past week, we were under the impression from Walnut Commons residents that they would welcome the tree’s removal due to complaints about its droppings on their patios and the possibility of thieves using it to climb over the divider between our properties.”

But about a week ago, while on the patio, some Walnut Commons residents overheard the office building’s property manager talking about the tree’s removal. The news spread quickly to other residents, including Garrett, who has lived in the building since it was built nearly 10 years ago, on the block kitty-corner from Santa Cruz City Hall.

“The word spread like wildfire through the building and everyone felt really alarmed about possibly losing this tree,” said Garrett. “It’s right next to our patio and it feels like part of our environment even though it is on their property.”

The neighbors put together a petition opposing the madrone’s removal and nearly every resident of the building signed it —  23 signatures. Garrett said he and his neighbors thought the tree’s removal was being facilitated by Cruzio Internet, another of the building’s tenants, and were surprised to discover that it was Ecology Action. After creating the petition, the residents reached out to the nonprofit.

“In the face of today’s mounting climate crisis, we need passionate environmentalists more than ever,” said Henricks. “We were deeply touched to learn that our neighbors felt a strong connection to the strawberry madrone tree and were moved to request we adjust the plan.”

As of Monday afternoon, the removal was still slated to go ahead.  Garrett, who said his activism is usually centered around environmental issues such as clean energy and transportation, decided that he had to take extreme action. Around 7 a.m. Tuesday, he climbed the tree — inspired in part by Julia Butterfly Hill, who in the late 1990s lived for more than two years in an old-growth redwood tree in Humboldt County to prevent it from being cut down.

“I don’t know how many weeks she spent up in that tree,” said Garrett. “I was prepared to spend a few hours.”

Garrett said that climbing the tree was an empowering experience and as he perched there Tuesday morning he felt peaceful. After about two hours, Ecology Action Chief Operating Officer Chuck Tremper gave him some good news.

“He drove into the parking lot and noticed me in the tree and came over and said that you might want to know the tree is not coming down,” said Garrett. “I was very relieved.”

Garrett mentioned that being an activist doesn’t always mean that one’s actions result in an intended outcome and that he was excited that the neighbors’ efforts saved the tree.

“The usual experience as an activist is that you work on things and bang on walls and nothing ever changes,” said Garrett. “This felt really gratifying to work on this for just a few days with a good cohort of other people and actually save the tree. It shows me that activism is really worthwhile and you can really make a difference.”

After Garrett safely descended the madrone and returned home Tuesday, Tremper sent a message to Walnut Commons residents.

“All of us at Ecology Action have been touched by how many people in our neighborhood have come to love and value the tree — and be moved to protect it. And we want to protect it,” wrote Tremper. “After some late-night brainstorming and penciling, we have found a way to do just that. Although we’ll need to further reduce our parking and make some other adjustments that will add to our team’s workload, we are proposing to move our bike storage building further away from the south lot line so the tree can remain.”

LOS ANGELES — Adding fluoride to drinking water is widely considered a triumph of public health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the cavity-prevention strategy ranks alongside the development of vaccines and the recognition of tobacco’s dangers as signal achievements of the 20th century.

But new evidence from Los Angeles mothers and their preschool-age children suggests community water fluoridation may have a downside.

A study published in JAMA Network Open links prenatal exposure to the mineral with an increased risk of neurobehavioral problems at age 3, including symptoms that characterize autism spectrum disorder. The association was seen among women who consumed fluoride in amounts that are considered typical in Los Angeles and across the country.

The findings do not show that drinking fluoridated water causes autism or any other behavioral conditions. Nor is it clear whether the relationship between fluoride exposure and the problems seen in the L.A.-area children — a cohort that is predominantly low-income and 80% Latino — would extend to other demographic groups.

However, the results are concerning enough that USC epidemiologist Tracy Bastain said she would advise pregnant people to avoid fluoridated water straight from the tap and drink filtered water instead.

“This exposure can impact the developing fetus,” said Bastain, the study’s senior author. “Eliminating that from drinking water is probably a good practice.”

About 63% of Americans receive fluoridated water through their taps, including 73% of those served by community water systems, according to the CDC. In Los Angeles County, 62% of residents get fluoridated water, the Department of Public Health says.

The data analyzed by Bastain and her colleagues came from participants in an ongoing USC research project called Maternal and Developmental Risks from Environmental and Social Stressors, or MADRES. Women receiving prenatal care from clinics in Central and South Los Angeles that cater to low-income patients with Medi-Cal insurance were invited to join.

Between 2017 and 2020, 229 mothers took a test to measure the concentration of fluoride in their urine during their third trimester of pregnancy. Then, between 2020 and 2023, they completed a 99-question survey to assess their child’s behavior when their sons and daughters were 3 years old.

Among other things, the survey asked mothers whether their children were restless, hyperactive, impatient, clingy or accident-prone. It also asked about specific behaviors, such as resisting bedtime or sleeping alone, chewing on things that aren’t edible, holding their breath, and being overly concerned with neatness or cleanliness.

Some of the questions the mothers answered addressed heath problems with no obvious medical cause, including headaches, cramps, nausea and skin rashes.

Among the 229 children — 116 girls and 113 boys — 35 were found to have a collection of symptoms that put them in the clinical or borderline clinical range for inward-focused problems such as sadness, depression and anxiety. In addition, 23 were in the clinical or borderline clinical range for behaviors directed at others, such as shouting in a classroom or attacking other kids, and 32 were deemed at least borderline clinical for a combination of inward and outward problems.

What interested the researchers was whether there was any correlation between a child’s risk of having clinical or borderline clinical behavioral problems and the amount of fluoride in his or her mother’s urine during pregnancy.

They found that compared to women whose fluoride levels placed them at the 25th percentile — meaning 24% of women in the study had levels lower than theirs — women at the 75th percentile were 83% more likely to have their child score in the “clinical” or “borderline clinical” range for inward and outward problems combined. When the researchers narrowed their focus to children in the clinical range only, that risk increased to 84%, according to the study.

The researchers also found that the same increase in fluoride levels was associated with an 18.5% increase in a child’s symptoms related to autism spectrum disorder, as well as an 11.3% increase in symptoms of anxiety.

The amount of fluoride needed for mothers to go from the 25th to the 75th percentile was 0.68 milligrams per liter. As it happens, that’s nearly identical to the 0.7 mg per liter standard that federal regulators say is optimal for preventing tooth decay.

Bastain said that allowed the researchers to compare what might happen to children in two parallel universes: a typical one where their mothers consumed fluoridated water during pregnancy, and an alternate one where they didn’t.

“You can use it as a proxy for if they lived in a fluoridated community or not,” she said.

What that thought experiment shows is that children in the fluoridated community face a higher level of risk. That said, it’s not clear when that risk becomes high enough to be worrisome.

“We don’t know what the safe threshold is,” Bastain said. “It’s not like you can say that as long as you’re under the 75th percentile, there are no effects.”

The study authors’ concerns about the effects of fluoride on developing brains didn’t come out of nowhere.

The National Toxicology Program — a joint effort of the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration — has been investigating the issue since 2016. In a report last year that reviewed an array of evidence from humans and laboratory animals, a working group concluded “with moderate confidence” that overall fluoride exposure at levels at or above 1.5 mg per liter “is consistently associated with lower IQ in children.”

The working group added that “more studies are needed to fully understand the potential for lower fluoride exposure to affect children’s IQ.”

A 2019 study of hundreds of mothers in Canada — where 39% of residents have fluoridated water — found that a 1-mg increase in daily fluoride intake during pregnancy was associated with a 3.7-point reduction in IQ scores in their 3- and 4-year-old children.

And among hundreds of pregnant women in Mexico, a 0.5-mg-per-liter increase in urinary fluoride went along with a 2.5-point drop in IQ scores for their 6- to 12-year-old children, researchers reported in 2017.

Bastain and her colleagues write their study is the first they are aware of that examines the link between prenatal fluoride exposure and neurobehavioral outcomes in children in the United States. The results are sure to be controversial, Bastain said, but there’s a straightforward way for pregnant people to reduce the possible risk.

“It’s a pretty easy intervention to get one of those tabletop plastic pitchers” that filter out metals, she said. “Most of them do a pretty good job of filtering out fluoride.”

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The pain: The typical California house for sale now costs more than $900,000.

The source: My trusty spreadsheet looked at the California Association of Realtors report, which says the statewide median price for an existing single-family house reached $904,210 in April. It was a first for the median, which gained 5.8% in a month and 11% in a year.

The pinch

It was only March 2022 when the median crossed the $800,000 for the first time.

There’s a steep price to California’s record pricing – a broad lack of affordability. The association reported the number of California homebuyers in April was below 300,000 for the 19th consecutive month. Homebuying in the state has averaged 402,000 sales a month since 1990.

Note that a house hunter seeking a California house hunter needed a $208,000 household income to qualify to buy the median-priced residence of $814,000 in 2024’s first quarter, a previous study by the association said.

Pressure points

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane, looking at $100,000 thresholds since this price yardstick first crossed the $200,000 mark in March 1991, at the end of that era’s housing bubble.

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By the way, that month’s 9.5% average 30-year mortgage rate, with a 20% down payment, created a payment of $1,345 a month for a buyer spending the threshold price.

$300,000 first crossed in March 2002: Yes, it took 11 years for the next landmark price to fall, as the 1990s were not kind to California’s economy or its housing market. Home sales averaged 377,000 a month in this period. The month’s 7% rate created a monthly payment of $1,598 at this threshold – up 19% from what a buyer theoretically paid when $200,000 was first topped.

$400,000 in August 2003: The early 2000s economic boom translated to a $100,000 climb in a record-fast 17 months. History tells us the upswing was a hint of trouble ahead. Home sales soared to 514,000 monthly. The month’s 6.3% rate created a monthly payment of $1,972 – up 23% from the previous threshold.

$500,000 in April 2005: In 20 months, another benchmark was topped. This was the peak of the easy-money days, creating a massive bubble that burst into the Great Recession. Home sales got even hotter to 572,000 a month. The month’s 5.9% rate created a monthly payment of $2,362 – up 20% from the previous threshold.

$600,000 in May 2018: The ensuing housing debacle meant it took 13 years for the next $100,000 barrier to be crossed. Sales cooled to 415,000 in this tumultuous period. The month’s 4.6% rate created a monthly payment of $2,458 – up 4% from the previous threshold.

$700,000 in August 2020: The pandemic’s push for more living space created momentum for the next barrier to fall in 27 months. Sales dipped to 387,000 amid coronavirus economic challenges. The month’s 2.9% rate created a monthly payment of $2,343 – a drop of 5% from the previous threshold.

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$800,000 in March 2022: Historically cheap mortgage rates helped to inflate prices passed this $100,000 barrier in only 19 months. The buying pace quickened, too, to 454,000 a month. The month’s 4.2% rate created a monthly payment of $3,119 – up 33% from the previous threshold.

$900,000 in April 2024: The limited number of qualified house hunters have battled over a thin inventory of homes listed for sale as rates hit highs not seen in 20-plus years. As a result, sales have averaged a meek 280,000 a month in this 25-month period. The month’s 7% rate created a monthly payment of $4,785 – up 53% from the previous threshold.

Quotable

Sadly, this was the Realtors’ headline on the April report: “Spring homebuying season kicks off with encouraging start.”

I’m not sure many house hunters would agree.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com

LOS ANGELES — In November 2017, days after her daughter Mallory Smith died from a drug-resistant infection at the age of 25, Diane Shader Smith typed a password into Mallory’s laptop.

Her daughter gave it to her before undergoing double-lung transplant surgery, with instructions to share any writing that could help others if she didn’t survive.

The transplant was successful, but Burkholderia cepacia — an antibiotic-resistant bacterial strain that first colonized her system when she was 12 — took hold. After a lifetime with cystic fibrosis, and 13 years battling an unconquerable infection, Mallory’s body could take no more.

In the haze of grief and pain, Shader Smith found herself looking through 2,500 pages of a journal her daughter had kept since high school. It chronicled Mallory’s hopes and triumphs as an ebullient, athletic student at Beverly Hills High School and Stanford University, and her private despair as bacteria ravaged her systems and sapped her considerable strength.

In the years since, the journal has become a source of solace for Shader Smith as she has traveled the globe speaking about the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance. It is also now the inspiration for two new projects she hopes will spark greater understanding of the public health crisis that ended her daughter’s life prematurely and could claim millions more.

On Tuesday, Random House published “Diary of a Dying Girl,” a selection of Mallory’s journal entries. The same day saw the launch of the Global AMR Diary, a website collecting the worldwide stories of people battling pathogens that can’t be defeated by our current pharmaceutical arsenal.

An estimated 35,000 people die in the U.S. each year from drug-resistant infections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Worldwide, antimicrobial resistance kills an estimated 1.27 million people directly every year and contributes to the deaths of millions more.

Despite the mounting toll — and the prospect of an eventual surge in superbug fatalities — the development of new antibiotics has stagnated.

Shader Smith is acutely aware of what we stand to lose when medicine can no longer save us.

“I don’t want to live in a post-antibiotic world,” Shader Smith said. “Until people understand what’s at stake, they’re not going to care. My daughter died from this. So I care deeply.”

Over the last 50 years, opportunistic pathogens have evolved defenses faster than humans can develop drugs to combat them.

Misuse of antibiotics has played a large part in this imbalance. Bugs that survive antibiotic exposure pass on their resistant traits, leading to hardier strains.

Crucial as they are, antibiotics don’t have the same financial incentives for developers that other drugs do. They aren’t meant to be taken over the long term, as are medications for chronic conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure. The most powerful ones have to be used as rarely as possible, to give bacteria fewer opportunities to develop resistances.

“The public does not understand [the] scope of the problem. Antimicrobial resistance truly is one of the leading public health threats of our time,” said Emily Wheeler, director of infectious disease policy at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. “The pipeline for antibiotics today is already inadequate to address the threats that we know about, without even considering the continuous evolution of these bugs as the years go on.”

Despite the global nature of the threat, Shader Smith said, the response from public health officials is curiously disjointed.

For one, no one can agree on a single name for the problem, she said. Different agencies address the issue with an “alphabet soup” of acronyms: the World Health Organization uses AMR as shorthand for antimicrobial resistance, while the CDC prefers AR. Medical journals, doctors and the media refer alternately to multidrug resistance (MDR), drug-resistant infections (DRI) and superbugs.

“It doesn’t matter what you call it. We just have to all call it the same thing,” said Shader Smith, who works as a publicist and marketing consultant.

Since Mallory’s death, Shader Smith has made it her mission to get the people and organizations working on antimicrobial resistance to talk to one another. For the Global AMR Diary, she enlisted the help of a dozen agencies working on the issue, including the CDC, WHO, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (the European Union’s equivalent of the CDC), the Biotechnology Innovation Organization and others.

Antimicrobial resistance can “feel abstract given the scale of the problem,” said John Alter, head of external affairs of the AMR Action Fund, one of the organizations involved with the project. “To know there are millions of families at this very moment going through struggles similar to what Mallory experienced is simply unacceptable,” he said.

“Not only does this firsthand experience help others who might be going through something similar, but it also reminds those tasked with creating solutions and care who they are working for. They aren’t just test tubes or charts,” said Thomas Heymann, chief executive of Sepsis Alliance, another contributor.

The stories in the online diary are often harrowing. A 25-year-old pharmacist in Athens had to put her cancer treatment on hold when an extremely resistant strain of Klebsiella attacked. A veterinarian in Kenya suffered permanent disability after contracting resistant bacteria after hip surgery. Around the world, routine outpatient procedures and illnesses have rapidly become life-threatening when opportunistic bugs take hold.

Mallory was 12 when her doctor called to confirm that her cultures were positive for an extremely resistant strain of cepacia, a form of bacteria found widely in soil and water. The pathogen can be deadly to people with underlying conditions such as cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that impairs the cells’ ability to effectively flush mucus from the lungs and other body systems.

Life expectancies for people with cystic fibrosis have grown since Mallory’s diagnosis in 1995, with many people of them living into their 40s and beyond. The cepacia curtailed that possibility for her.

“This is all we’re ever going to have,” Mallory wrote in June 2011, at the end of her freshman year at Stanford, “so if you’re not actively pursuing happiness then you’re insane. And I don’t think I would have this perspective if I didn’t have resistant bacteria that will likely kill me.”

Mallory’s intuition that her journal could be valuable to others was prescient. “People can easily understand and relate to actual experiences,” said Michael Craig, director of the CDC’s Antimicrobial Resistance Coordination and Strategy Unit. “The Global AMR Diary takes this approach and expands on it with a global lens — increasing the potential to get these critical messages to more people around the world.”

An earlier version of Mallory’s diaries was published in 2019 as “Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life.” The new book includes entries that Shader Smith said she wasn’t ready to grapple with in the immediate aftermath of Mallory’s passing: ones addressing depression and private despair, concerns about relationships and body image issues complicated by chronic illness.

It also includes a coda about phage therapy, a promising advance against AMR.

As cepacia overwhelmed Mallory’s system in the weeks after her transplant, her family secured an experimental dose of phage therapy. Widely used to treat infection before the advent of antibiotics, phages are viruses that destroy specific bacteria. The treatment arrived too late to save Mallory’s life, Shader Smith writes in a last chapter of the book, but her autopsy revealed that the phages had started to work as intended.

The systems that bring new drugs to patients move slowly, Shader Smith said, and “Mallory might have been saved if they had moved faster.” Her mission now is to make sure that they do.

“Mallory died six years ago. Six years is a long time, day in and day out,” she said. “And I’ve never taken my foot off the pedal.”

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Tesla Inc. must face a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging that it misled consumers about its cars’ self-driving capabilities, a fresh setback for the electric-car maker just as Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has staked the company’s future on autonomy.

Tesla has been accused of overstating in 2016 that all its upcoming cars would have the “hardware needed for full self-driving capability” and would be able to drive themselves from Los Angeles to New York City by the end of 2017.

“If Tesla meant to convey that its hardware was sufficient to reach high or full automation,” the complaint “plainly alleges sufficient falsity,” U.S. District Judge Rita Lin wrote in an order Wednesday.

Musk declared in April that Tesla is “going balls to the wall for autonomy” while committing the car maker to a next-generation, self-driving vehicle concept called the robotaxi. The billionaire entrepreneur has talked a big game about autonomy for over a decade, and has persuaded customers to pay thousands of dollars for its Full Self-Driving, or FSD, feature. The name is a misnomer — FSD requires constant supervision and doesn’t render vehicles autonomous — but Musk has repeatedly predicted it’s on the verge of measuring up to the branding.

Meanwhile, the company faces federal probes into whether defects in its Autopilot driver-assistance feature have contributed to fatal crashes, as well as regulatory investigations and lawsuits over claims that it has over-hyped its progress toward hands-free driving. Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a probe into whether the EV maker’s recall of more than 2 million cars months earlier adequately addressed Autopilot safety risks.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

California resident Thomas LoSavio, who filed the complaint, says he bought a new Tesla in 2017 and paid an extra $8,000 for FSD. He alleged that statements by Tesla and Musk led him to believe that his car would have self-driving technology within a “reasonably short period.” But by 2022, Tesla hadn’t produced “anything even remotely approaching a fully self-driving car,” according to his complaint.

LoSavio brought the complaint on behalf of anyone who bought or leased a new Tesla vehicle with Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot or FSD since 2016.

Without ruling on the merits of his claims, the judge said LoSavio sufficiently alleged certain 2016 statements were misleading, such as all “Tesla vehicles produced in our factory now have full self-driving hardware” and that the cars would be able to drive themselves cross country “by the end of next year without the need for a single touch.”

While Lin allowed some negligence and fraud claims to proceed, she dismissed other claims. Her ruling lets pretrial fact-finding move forward. A decision on whether the case qualifies for class-action status will come later.

The case is In re Tesla Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Litigation, 22-cv-05240, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

BY MIKHAIL ZINSHTEYN | CalMatters

Nathan Reyes lives with his family five minutes from Cal State Los Angeles, where he’s paying close to nothing to earn a bachelor’s degree that typically lands graduates a salary of $62,000 within five years of completing college.

He’s one of hundreds of thousands of California low-income students who attend colleges that, because they’re affordable enough, cost the equivalent of a few months of a typical salary that students earn within a few years of graduation.

A new report today compares California’s colleges by analyzing how long it would take low- and moderate-income students to recoup the money they spent to earn a college credential. It shows that many community colleges, Cal States and University of California campuses — all public campuses — have better returns on investment than most nonprofit private colleges and for-profit institutions.

Reyes’ only expenses are car upkeep, gas, a few books and helping his family with some housing costs. The third-year student didn’t need to take out loans.

RELATED: FAFSA relief? Dept. of Education launches $50 million program to boost lagging federal student aid applications

“I feel very lucky,” Reyes, a communications major, said. “In high school, I was always stressing about, ‘Oh, man, I’m gonna have a whole bunch of debt racked up after college’. And now that I’m in my third year, I don’t have to worry about any of that.”

Reyes, who’s 20 years old, receives state grants to cover all his tuition and federal aid for other academic and living expenses. He also works for a state volunteer program that pays students a stipend.

Report calculates time it takes to recoup cost of degree

The report was commissioned by College Futures Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes college completion. The report merges several concepts into one number:

• The net price of a college degree after all financial aid is calculated
• The typical earnings 10 years after a student first enrolls in a school
• How much higher those wages are compared to what young adults earn with just a high school diploma.

It defines low- and moderate-income households as those earning below $75,000 annually.

The data, all from the federal government, show that the time it takes to recoup the net costs of earning a degree at Cal State San Bernardino is less than three months. That’s because low-income students there incur about $5,000 in out-of-pocket expenses if they finish in four years. Within a few years they earn about $53,000 a year — double what young adults with only a high school diploma make.

At Cal State Los Angeles, the time to recoup the net costs of earning a bachelor’s is also less than three months of a typical post-college annual salary.

“​​This is really a first-of-its kind look,” said the report’s author, Michael Itzkowitz, who headed the federal government’s first consumer tool for comparing college costs under the Obama administration. The approach is a mathematical way of demonstrating which colleges confer economic value to students beyond what a high school diploma would.

A CalMatters analysis of Iztkowitz’s data found that the average time needed for a student to recoup their net costs is about two years at public institutions and a little over three years at nonprofit private colleges in California.

Some of those private campuses are as affordable as a Cal State, UC or community college after factoring in financial aid. Stanford University costs low-income students nothing. However, only 4% of students who apply are admitted, while all but three Cal States admit more than 70% of the students who apply. Most undergraduates in California attend a public institution.

Pitzer, Pomona and the University of Southern California and several other highly selective nonprofit private colleges cost students less than a year’s worth of the typical salary they’ll earn within a few years of completing their degree.

Return on investment varies by college

While some for-profit colleges have strong returns on investment, most do not.

And that doesn’t even account for the 22 for-profit institutions that show no return on investment, meaning students from those schools earned no more than what a young adult with just a high school diploma makes. In the report, 24 campuses in total, or 8% of all California colleges, showed no return on investment, including two small nonprofit private colleges.

“There are for-profit institutions that can offer an affordable education and good employment outcomes and they’re recognized within the data,” Itzkowitz said. “But what we also see is that there are a disproportionate amount that show more worrisome outcomes for students in comparison to other sectors.”

Most California for-profit colleges, however, predominantly issue certificates, which are shorter-term credentials that don’t regularly lead to the economic gains associated with bachelor’s degrees.

At 79% of California institutions in the report, low and moderate-income students typically recoup their costs in five years or less. For nearly a third of campuses, it was less than a year.

For many students, the ultimate costs of a degree will be higher than the data published today. That’s because they need more than two years to earn an associate degree or beyond four years to earn a bachelor’s, assuming they graduate at all. The longer they chase a degree, the less time they spend in the workforce earning the higher salaries that come with a college credential. Also, the federal net price data has limits: It only calculates what full-time freshmen pay. Students attending part time will experience different annual costs.

But the basic trend remains the same: State and federal financial aid at public campuses plus typical salaries that far exceed the wages for those with a high school diploma make college worth the investment.

Itzkowitz plans to produce a follow-up report that measures the return on investment by major. His organization, the HEA Group, produced an analysis of typical wages by major last year. Some majors lead to higher wages than others, which can skew school-wide results.

The data in today’s report show variation within public universities, too, even in the same city. UCLA’s net price-to-earnings ratio is about seven months and its students tend to earn more than those from Cal State LA after graduating. But the typical cost of a degree after four years for low-income students is roughly $31,000 — far higher than the $5,500 at Cal State LA, which is 20 miles away.

“I wanted to go to UCLA, but it was too expensive for me,” Reyes said. “I did get accepted.”

Like he did at Cal State LA, he would have probably qualified for the Cal Grant, which waives tuition at public universities. But the distance from home would have forced him to either live in a UCLA dorm or commute about two hours daily between home and the crosstown campus. Housing, not tuition, is usually the largest expense for students at public universities. Borrowing money was out of the question for him.

So was a long drive to UCLA. “If I ended up missing a class or something, I’d beat myself up over it,” he said.

For the record: College Futures is a funder of CalMatters. Our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.

The 76-year-old action star revealed the surprise health news on an episode of Arnold’s Pump Club podcast.

“Last Monday, I had surgery to become a little bit more of a machine: I got a pacemaker,” the “Terminator” star announced.

“First of all, I want you to know I’m doing great! I had my surgery on Monday and by Friday, I was already at a big environmental event with my friend and fellow fitness crusader Jane Fonda,” he said. “Nobody would ever have thought I started the week with a surgery.

“I want to thank my whole team at the Cleveland Clinic. All of the doctors and nurses took amazing care of me and made the surgery as painless as possible,” he added.

Schwarzenegger underwent surgery to replace his pulmonic and aortic valves in 1997. He had follow-up surgeries for new replacement valves in 2018 and 2020, according to Deadline.

He said on the podcast he’d developed an irregular heartbeat and monitored it closely.

“I stayed in touch with my medical team and visited in person at least once a year to get a full check-up and see how my heart was doing,” he said. “That’s life with a genetic heart issue. But you won’t hear me complaining.”

He explained he had the pacemaker installed shortly after a checkup earlier this month in which his doctor said he’d need it if he wanted to be healthy enough to act in upcoming projects.

“I can’t do my serious training in the gym for a while, but I will be 100% ready,” Schwarzenegger said.

“I want you to know you aren’t alone. And if you’re putting something off out of fear, I hope I inspire you to listen to your doctors and take care of yourself,” he advised listeners.

SANTA CRUZ — The Boardwalk’s historic wooden roller coaster the Giant Dipper will celebrate its 100th year in operation this May and the milestone will be marked with some special events and celebrations that include a fireworks celebration.

“The Giant Dipper is one of the most iconic and recognized landmarks in all of Santa Cruz,” said Kris Reyes, Boardwalk spokesperson. “This classic wooden roller coaster has thrilled over 66 million riders during the past 100 years and we are excited to celebrate the Boardwalk’s crown jewel with an amazing fireworks show in May and other fun events throughout the year.”

The renowned roller coaster has been thrilling riders in its original location since May 17, 1924. The structure is the fourth oldest coaster in the country and one of the oldest in the world, and in 1987 both the Giant Dipper and the Boardwalk’s carousel were made historic landmarks by the National Park Service.

The Giant Dipper is not only locally famous as the historic ride has been seen in numerous television commercials, shows and movies such as “Us,” “Bumblebee,” “Dangerous Minds,” “Sudden Impact,” and of course the 1980s cult classic “The Lost Boys.”

To celebrate the historic structure’s centennial, the Boardwalk has received the go-ahead to put on a once-in-a-lifetime, 100th Anniversary Fireworks Celebration at 9 p.m., May 18. In addition to the display, the first 200 riders on the Giant Dipper that day will receive a commemorative 100th anniversary pin.

The Boardwalk will all commemorate the occasion with “Dipper Days,” which will allow patrons to ride the iconic coaster for just $1 every Wednesday from May 29 to Aug. 7. On Aug. 17, or National Rollercoaster Day, the first 100 Giant Dipper riders will receive a Boardwalk souvenir cup.

For local artists, young and old, A fan art contest centered around the Giant Dipper will take place from May 17 to Aug. 16. The contest welcomes artworks from all mediums such as paintings, drawings, photos or Dipper-inspired sculptures. Prizes include swag, Boardwalk cards and ride wristbands.

For information, visit beachboardwalk.com.

A few readers thought I was a tad harsh in a recent column that noted California had the nation’s slowest job growth in 2023.

Yes, adding any number of jobs isn’t bad – but 154,000 new workers equals only 0.9% growth in a hot US job market that grew 2%. That hiring pace – as measured on a percentage-point basis – ranked No. 51 among the states and the District of Columbia.

We often forget that California is by far the nation’s largest job market with 17.8 million workers. My trusty spreadsheet tells me the Golden State has ranked No. 1 since 1972. The second-biggest job market in the US is Texas at 13.9 million workers. Florida is No. 3 at 9.7 million.

But my readers’ argument that California’s size would make it hard to be among the fastest growing on a percentage-point basis is a stretch. Texas (3.3% more jobs in 2023) and Florida (up 3.4%) ranked in 2023’s top three for percentage growth along with Nevada (up 3.4%).

Look, there are various ways to measure economic progress.

Remember, percentage-point growth shows us the relative scale of hiring trends on the overall California job market as well as against other states. Still, let’s look at California ranked by the number of new jobs created – not the 2023 percentage gain.

My trusty spreadsheet tells me that those 154,000 California hires last year were topped by only three states – Texas (449,600), Florida (316,600), and New York (195,000).

However, California having lofty spots on this kind of job-creation scorecard is nothing newsy. California ranked No. 1 or No. 2 for total new jobs in 11 of the past 12 years (let’s forget coronavirus-chilled 2020’s last-place finish).

And historically speaking, over the past 52 years as the largest job market, California’s count of new workers led the nation 27 times and ranked second 10 times.

Or look how modest last year’s hiring was this way: 154,000 new jobs was 27% below California’s average year since 1972.

High rankings often equal high expectations. And in 2023, California’s job market missed its high bar.

Locally speaking

Where were those 154,000 California jobs created last year? Largely to the south, when looking at state data tracking 29 employment hubs …

1. San Diego: 21,000 new jobs bringing its total to 1.56 million (California’s No. 4 employment center).

2. Inland Empire: 19,800 jobs added to 1.69 million (No. 3).

3. Sacramento: 18,200 jobs added to 1.09 million (No. 8).

4. Orange County: 17,000 jobs added to 1.7 million (No. 2).

5. Los Angeles: 13,400 jobs added to 4.59 million (No. 1).

6. Oakland: 10,300 jobs added to 1.2 million (No. 5).

7. Fresno: 8,500 jobs added to 392,900 (No. 9).

8. San Jose: 4,200 jobs added to 1.16 million (No. 7).

9. Bakersfield: 4,200 jobs added to 294,000 (No. 11).

10. Modesto: 3,500 jobs added to 194,600 (No. 14).

And there was a clear last place – San Francisco. It lost 11,400 jobs last year, shrinking to 1.17 million, the state’s No. 6 job market. It was the only job losers among 29 markets tracked.

By the way, if you’re looking for top job growth on a percentage basis, tiny El Centro led California in 2023 with 3.2% more workers. But that’s only 1,800 new jobs, bringing the agriculture-rich border town’s employment to 59,000.

— Junior Mendoza, a San Jose resident who was filling up his vehicle with gasoline on Tuesday at a Safeway Fuel Station. Consumer prices rose 2.4% in the Bay Area last month compared to February 2023, with electric utility prices up 29.8%. Prices overall are up 13.4% from February 2021.