News

KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – Children in the Kelseyville Unified School District are lending a hand to the community of Paradise as it begins its recovery from the devastating November Camp fire.

When the students at Kelseyville Elementary returned to school, after having an extra week off during Thanksgiving break due to smoke conditions from the Camp fire, they were ready to hit the playground running and give back to the Paradise Unified School District.

The Kelseyville Elementary PTO ran a two-week long Pennies for Paradise coin fundraiser in 24 classrooms.

The students at Kelseyville Elementary know what it’s like to be affected by wildfires.

The 2015 Valley fire forced the students to start school late. They also have been impacted by the 2015 Rocky and Jerusalem fires, and the 2016 Clayton Fire in 2016.

Last year’s Mendocino Complex also delayed the start of schools in local districts.

Teachers, students and parents came together to support the Paradise Unified School District.

Together the Kelseyville Elementary raised $2,400 and $95 in gift cards.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – A special Lakeport Unified School District Board meeting that had been called to discuss the transition regarding the district superintendent’s position has been rescheduled, the district reported.

Originally set for Saturday afternoon, the special board meeting has now been moved to 4 p.m. Monday, Jan. 14, according to Tami Carley, the district superintendent’s secretary.

The Monday meeting is meant to discuss the transitional team the board wants to establish in the process to choose a new superintendent.

Carley said the special board meeting had to be rescheduled “due to a lack of available board members for a quorum.”

She said the agenda will be posted on the district’s Web site 24 hours in advance of the meeting.

Board member Jennifer Hanson separately reported on social media that a regular board meeting will take place at 5 p.m. Monday.

At that point it’s expected that the meeting location will be confirmed. Normally, the meetings are held at the district office 2508 Howard Ave., but this week’s meeting had a large audience that spilled out the front lobby.

At that meeting on Wednesday the board majority voted to terminate the contract with Superintendent April Leiferman.

That was followed on Thursday by the resignation of Board member Lori Holmes.

Hanson stated on Facebook that Holmes’ resignation led to the need to reschedule the meeting from Saturday to Monday.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – At the annual organization meeting held on Dec. 20, new officers were elected for the Yuba Community College District Board of Trustees.

At the Jan. 10 regular meeting of the governing board, a newly elected trustee was sworn into office.

“I would like to offer my hearty appreciation to these trustees who have assumed critical governance responsibilities. Our board members are truly dedicated servants of their communities providing countless hours in leadership for our colleges and students. I am humbled to serve with such civic-minded community leaders who have committed to becoming a 'best-in-class' Governing Board," said Chancellor Douglas B. Houston.

Dr. Jesse Ortiz – who represents Trustee Area 5, which includes a portion of Yolo County that includes the city of Woodland and the Woodland Unified School District – was sworn in by his wife of 41 years.

Dr. Ortiz retired in 2018 as the superintendent of Yolo County Office of Education where he had served since 2014.

He has a bachelor’s degree from San Jose State University and a master’s degree from Sacramento State University. His Educational Leadership Doctorate degree is from Brigham Young University. Trustee Ortiz was a Guidance Counselor at Woodland Community College for 20 years.

Trustee Richard Teagarden was re-elected to YCCD Trustee Area 1 and was elected as President of the YCCD Board of Trustees. Trustee Area 1 includes a portion of Yuba County and includes Marysville Joint Unified School District, was elected as the President of the Board.

Teagarden retired in 2010 as the superintendent of Yuba County Office of Education where he had served since 1994. Prior to that appointment, Teagarden was a principal and teacher in the Marysville Joint Unified School District.

He is a graduate of Marysville High School and Yuba College; his undergraduate degree and his master’s degree in public school administration is from North Texas State University.

Trustee David Wheeler was re-elected to YCCD Trustee Area 3 and was elected as vice president of the YCCD Board of Trustees. Trustee Area 3 includes a portion of Sutter County including Nuestro, Franklin, Brittan, Meridian, and Winship Elementary School District, Live Oak Unified School District and Yuba City Unified School District.

First elected to the board in 2010, Wheeler is a graduate of Yuba City High School, has an associate’s degree from Yuba College, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from San Francisco State University in Theater Arts.

From 1976 until his retirement in 2010, Trustee Wheeler was professor of theatre arts and film studies at Yuba College. During his tenure he directed more than 125 major productions, and received numerous awards including the first Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Award for Excellence in Theatre Education.

Susan Alves was elected as clerk of the YCCD Board of Trustees. She represents Trustee Area 6, which includes a portion of Yolo County (Woodland Unified School District) and a portion of Colusa County (Colusa, Pierce Joint, and Esparto Unified School District).

She was appointed to the Yuba Community College District Board of Trustees in October. Her current term expires in December 2020.

Alves retired in 2018 from public education where she served in the Woodland Joint Unified School District for 22 years; 13 years as a teacher and nine years as an elementary school principal.

She attended Woodland Community College; her undergraduate degree is from Chico State University and she attended Sacramento State University where she earned a Multiple Subject Teacher Credential and an Administrative Services Credential.

Other members of the YCCD Board of Trustees are Brent Hastey, Michael Pasquale, and V. Richard Savarese.

The Yuba Community College District spans eight counties and nearly 4,192 square miles of territory in rural, north-central California. Yuba College and Woodland Community College, offer degrees, certificates and transfer curricula at college campuses in Marysville and Woodland, educational centers in Clearlake and Yuba City, and through outreach operations in Williams and on Beale Air Force Base.

The two colleges in Yolo County and Yuba County and the campuses in Clearlake, Colusa, and Sutter Counties, serve 13,000 students across the northern Sacramento Valley.

For more information about YCCD, visit http://yccd.edu .

In second marriages, it is common to find gifts to stepchildren, especially when the stepparent raised the stepchild during their minority and/or the stepparent has no other children of their own.

It is much less common, however, to find the parents of the stepparent naming the same stepchild as an alternative beneficiary to their own child; it is more natural that they would name another child or close family relative.

What effect does divorce – between a stepparent and the parent of a stepchild – have upon testamentary transfers from the stepparent or the stepparent’s own parents to a former stepchild?

California law is very clear with respect to gifts made to an ex-spouse.

Under section 922 of California’s Probate Code all bequests by a decedent to his or her former spouse – contained in a testamentary instrument (i.e., a will, a trust or a death beneficiary form, such as for a life insurance policy) while the couple was still married – are treated as though the surviving ex-spouse had predeceased the decedent: the former spouse fails to inherit, as would the former spouse’s own issue if the gift to the ex-spouse is, “by right of representation”.

So long as the status of the marriage was resolved by court order prior to the deceased spouse’s death, a surviving ex-spouse cannot claim any gifts made under the decedent’s will, trust or as a designated death beneficiary to any life insurance, annuity, or retirement account.

Exceptions exist, however, when the gift to an ex-spouse is reaffirmed after the divorce and also when the original document specifically provides that the gift should survives a future divorce.

When marital dissolution proceedings were still ongoing when a spouse died, the court may sometimes retain jurisdiction to enter a nunc pro tunc (retroactive) court order. That is, if either a status only judgment, as to the termination of the marriage has been entered, or the dissolution case was fully submitted – i.e., just awaiting a decision – then the family court retains jurisdiction.

California’s Probate Code, however, is silent about whether gifts to stepchildren are nullified by the divorce when the gift instrument was signed by the stepparent prior to the divorce from the stepchild’s parent.

California case law offers guidance as to how gifts to former stepchildren are treated. In Estate of Hermon (1995), 39 Cal. App. 4th, 1525, 1531, the Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, opined that, "… when a testator provides for his spouse's children, he normally intends to exclude children of an ex-spouse after dissolution, unless a contrary intention is indicated elsewhere in his will. (Underlining added).”

Then in Estate of Jones (2004), 122 Cal. App. 4th, 326, the Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, reiterated the foregoing rule but said the Court could look beyond the instrument also and consider evidence of the deceased stepparent’s ongoing relationship with the stepchild after the divorce to see if the deceased former stepparent would likely have wanted the gift to the former stepchild.

Without evidence of an ongoing relationship, however, the Court in Estate of Jones presumed that the deceased former stepparent did not intend to provide for the children of his ex-spouse.

There is no case law speaking to gifts by grandparents to their children’s former stepchildren (“stepgrandchildren”). Nonetheless, the foregoing analysis would logically appear to be relevant to such gifts.

Uncertainties regarding gifts to former stepchildren, or former step grandchildren, are best addressed by the person who is making the gift, while still alive, proactively updating his or estate planning documents. Even during a pending divorce, a stepparent can still make, or revise, a will.

The stepgrandparents have no restriction on updating their estate planning documents, while their child’s own divorce is pending, and so are free to address all gifts made by them to their son’s own stepchildren prior to the conclusion of the divorce.

Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235. His Web site is www.DennisFordhamLaw.com.

Astronomers using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have discovered the brightest quasar ever seen in the early Universe — the light received from the object started its journey when the Universe was only about a billion years old.

Quasars are the extremely bright nuclei of active galaxies. The powerful glow of a quasar is created by a supermassive black hole which is surrounded by an accretion disc. Gas falling toward the black hole releases incredible amounts of energy, which can be observed over all wavelengths.

The newly discovered quasar, catalogued as J043947.08+163415.7, is no exception to this; its brightness is equivalent to about 600 trillion Suns and the supermassive black hole powering it is several hundred million times as massive as our Sun.

“That’s something we have been looking for for a long time,” said lead author Xiaohui Fan (University of Arizona, USA). “We don’t expect to find many quasars brighter than that in the whole observable Universe!”

Despite its brightness Hubble was able to spot it only because its appearance was strongly affected by strong gravitational lensing. A dim galaxy is located right between the quasar and Earth, bending the light from the quasar and making it appear three times as large and 50 times as bright as it would be without the effect of gravitational lensing.

Even still, the lens and the lensed quasar are extremely compact and unresolved in images from optical ground-based telescopes. Only Hubble’s sharp vision allowed it to resolve the system.

The data show not only that the supermassive black hole is accreting matter at an extremely high rate but also that the quasar may be producing up to 10 000 stars per year.

“Its properties and its distance make it a prime candidate to investigate the evolution of distant quasars and the role supermassive black holes in their centres had on star formation,” explains co-author Fabian Walter (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany), illustrating why this discovery is so important.

Quasars similar to J043947.08+163415.7 existed during the period of reionization of the young Universe, when radiation from young galaxies and quasars reheated the obscuring hydrogen that had cooled off just 400 000 years after the Big Bang; the Universe reverted from being neutral to once again being an ionised plasma.

However, it is still not known for certain which objects provided the reionizing photons. Energetic objects such as this newly discovered quasar could help to solve this mystery.

For that reason the team is gathering as much data on J043947.08+163415.7 as possible. Currently they are analysing a detailed 20-hour spectrum from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, which will allow them to identify the chemical composition and temperatures of intergalactic gas in the early Universe.

The team is also using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and hopes to also observe the quasar with the upcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

With these telescopes they will be able to look in the vicinity of the supermassive black hole and directly measure the influence of its gravity on the surrounding gas and star formation.
Notes

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

The results were presented at the 233rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society and will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The international team of astronomers in this study consists of Xiaohui Fan (University of Arizona, USA), Feige Wang (University of California, USA), Jinyi Yang (University of Arizona, USA), Charles R. Keeton (Rutgers University, USA), Minghao Yue (University of Arizona, USA), Ann Zabludoff (University of Arizona, USA), Fuyan Bian (ESO, Chile), Marco Bonaglia (Arcetri Observatory, Italy), Iskren Y. Georgiev (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany), Joseph F. Hennawi (University of California, USA), Jiangtao Li (University of Michigan, USA), Jiangtao Li (University of Michigan, USA), Ian D. McGreer (University of Arizona, USA), Rohan Naidu (Center for Astrophysics, USA), Fabio Pacucci (Yale University, USA), Sebastian Rabien (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany), David Thompson (Large Binocular Telescope Observatory), Bram Venemans (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany), Fabian Walter (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany), Ran Wang (Peking University, China), Xue-Bing Wu (Peking University, China).

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The morning following a heated Lakeport Unified School Board meeting in which the superintendent was released from her contract, the board member who was the dissenting vote in that decision tendered her resignation.

Board member Lori Holmes told Lake County News that she notified Lake County Superintendent of Schools Brock Falkenberg on Thursday morning that she was leaving the board.

Separately, Lakeport Unified Board Chair Dan Buffalo told Lake County News that they received an email about Holmes’ resignation on Thursday morning, and that he confirmed Falkenberg had been notified.

Holmes is the senior board member in time served, having been first elected in the fall of 2011.

Last month, Buffalo, Carly Alvord and Jennifer Hanson – who had been elected in November in a united campaign effort – took office. Since then, they have participated in two regularly scheduled meetings, in addition to a special meeting called Dec. 27, when the district was closed and both Holmes and Superintendent April Leiferman were on vacation.

Holmes, who was in Mexico on a family vacation, had nonetheless managed to call in and participate in the Dec. 27 meeting, during which the board majority voted to hire its own attorney to advise it on its relationship with Leiferman. Holmes had disagreed with that action, pointing out that the board had access to legal help that had been paid for already.

Then at the board’s meeting on Wednesday night, Alvord, Buffalo and Hanson overruled Holmes and voted to terminate Leiferman’s contract without cause, as Lake County News has reported. Board member Phil Kirby abstained.

Leiferman, hired in May 2017, has a three-year contract that stipulates that she must be paid a year’s salary totaling $154,234 and health and welfare benefits not to exceed $14,500 each year.

Much of the impetus for the decision to end Leiferman’s contract appears to stem from the previous board’s October decision to remove Terrace Middle School Principal Rachel Paarsch from her position. Paarsch was then transferred to a teaching position she refused, and she said she is suing the district.

Paarsch’s removal by the board was based on a formal district investigation led by Leiferman that found many instances of serious misconduct — including issues with job performance and personal behavior — reported by numerous witnesses, according to a copy of the document obtained by Lake County News.

Paarsch, who has denied the allegations, is the daughter of Kirby and a longtime friend of Alvord, and was present for the Wednesday night announcement of Leiferman’s contract termination.

Holmes had told the other board members after the termination decision on Wednesday that she didn’t agree with them, and that Leiferman’s intent had always been focused on what was best for children.

She also told them that they were moving really fast, that she found it scary and that they were spooking district staff. Holmes also had told them that their decision to hold the special closed session on Dec. 27 was a bad move.

Holmes said on Thursday that since the three new board members took office, they didn’t meet with Leiferman and actually rebuffed her requests to sit down with them to discuss district business, which Holmes said made it difficult for Leiferman to do her job.

On Thursday, Holmes took swift action herself, deciding to step aside. “It was just time for me to go.”

In her resignation letter, which she shared with Lake County News, Holmes wrote:

“After 8 years, it is with great reluctance that I resign my position as a member of the Lakeport Unified School Board. Serving the people of this wonderful school district has been one of the greatest honors of my life. Over the years, I have met so many capable and committed employees – superintendents, administrators, department heads, certificated and classified staff – who put the children they teach, support, and care for at the center of their work. I thank them for their service to our community.

“As a board member, I have taken seriously my legal obligations. A school board is designed to have independent-thinking individuals meet at open public meetings and use board policies and laws to do what is in the best interest of the students. Until recently, that has been the established practice of the Lakeport board. Now, however, I believe critical decisions have been made recklessly that do not serve the best interests of this district. Because I do not share the new board's vision, I believe it is time for me to step down.

“I wish the new board success. The future of our students depends upon on their ability to do what is best for the district.”

She told Lake County News that the new board needs to slow down and listen, and to meet with the district’s administrative team, and the teachers’ and classified employees’ unions.

“I want them to succeed. I feel like the district depends on them succeeding, but I’m just sick about what I’m seeing,” she said.

The board has called a special meeting at 2 p.m. Saturday at the district office to discuss its superintendent recruitment and transition.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.