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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
It will be held between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. in the public parking lot north of the Fifth Street boat ramp in downtown Lakeport.
This event is limited to city of Lakeport residents and business owners.
Those dropping off trash and solid waste will be required to provide photo identification and a copy of a current city utility bill.
Participants are asked to follow these guidelines:
• Stay in the vehicle while Lakeport Disposal staff unloads materials.
• Two visits maximum per each address.
Acceptable: Household trash; televisions; appliances (stoves, washers, dryers, dishwashers and water heaters); electronic waste; mattresses; household furniture; unusable clothes, blankets, towels; and similar materials.
Not acceptable: Refrigerators, hot tubs/spas, air conditioners, construction debris, used tires and household hazardous waste.
For more details, please visit the city’s website, www.cityoflakeport.com or its Facebook page, or contact Lakeport Disposal at 707-263-6080.
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- Written by: Jason Pohl
BERKELEY, Calif. — Rates of school discipline fluctuate widely and predictably throughout a school year and increase significantly faster for Black students than for their white counterparts, University of California, Berkeley, researchers have found.
A new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences documents for the first time the “dynamic” nature of student discipline during an academic year.
Daily rates of punishment across all schools in the study ratchet up in the weeks before Thanksgiving break, decline immediately before major vacations and increase rapidly again when classes resume.
Schools with a high degree of racial disparity regarding discipline referrals or suspensions early in the year see discipline rates for Black students increase even faster as the semester continues, researchers found. By November, the Black student discipline rate is 10 times higher than at the beginning of the year. Compared to white students, it’s 50 times higher.
“This work is a game-changer,” said Jason Okonofua, assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, and the study’s principal investigator. “We can predict year-long suspension rates in just the first 21 days of school. That's information that we needed to know. And now we do.”
Okonofua and his colleagues used improved daily discipline-tracking technology to study the snapshots of middle school punishments. Going forward, the granular information they gleaned can help educators keep tabs on escalating school tension. It can even help teachers and school officials ward off potential discipline-causing incidents, much like they modify a lesson plan to overcome a learning gap in the classroom.
“The more information you have, the better decisions you can make,” Okonofua said. “If principals or teachers know by Halloween in any given year these students are facing this very heightened risk of being kicked out of school, or in which schools these students face the highest risk, we can get in there and do something about it, as opposed to letting it fester.
“Because the data shows, it would.”
Long the focus of federal inquiries, policy debate and scholarly interest, school discipline disparities have been well-documented nationwide. Recent research has shown that high school students who are suspended are more than twice as likely to be charged or convicted of a crime and incarcerated as young adults. Brief online coursework for teachers can even increase empathy and reduce suspensions. Yet, the debate is increasing about whether school officials should be quicker to kick students out of class.
While cycles of school tension might seem intuitive, the focus historically has not been on measuring punishment rates in real-time or introducing interventions before incidents occur.
Instead, districts collect data on student discipline and produce year-end reports for state and federal regulators to examine how discipline varies among schools, which ones are more punitive and where to target interventions. While that “static” data provides a summary of what’s gone on throughout the year, it fails to capture the day-to-day realities at school.
To understand this more “dynamic nature” of student discipline, Okonofua and his colleagues assembled four years of data about the daily disciplinary experiences of 46,964 students across 61 middle schools in one of the 10 largest school districts in the country. The district was located in a southern U.S. state and, like an increasing number of organizations, it had implemented a more sophisticated discipline data tracking system.
The results — especially the disparities — were immediately startling.
“It is incredibly important, useful and valuable to know we should do a specific type of intervention at a specific point in the year based on the real-time data. That's where we're going to get the biggest bang for our buck,” Okonofua said. “If we can be more cost-efficient, everybody wins.”
Okonofua’s co-authors — Sean Darling-Hammond of UCLA, Michael Ruiz of UC Berkeley and Jennifer L. Eberhardt of Stanford University — also published a short video that uses beeping tones to illustrate discipline disparities between Black and white students. The anxiety-inducing tones are meant to simulate how stressful school can be when students are witnessing increasing discipline.
Okonofua likened school discipline tracking tools to an athlete’s heart rate monitor at the gym. Rather than simply estimating how hard a workout was, real-time data can be more useful.
“The more data we have, the more we know,” Okonofua said. “And the more we know, the more we can do.”
The study shows how important it is for districts to create systems for teachers to regularly monitor school discipline, he said. Policy leaders should likewise take note as they write policies and dedicate funding meant to curb discipline, alleviate disparities and minimize disruption.
“It's important to think about each data point. That's a whole story,” said Okonofua, reflecting on discipline's lasting effects on both the student in trouble and classmates witnessing the punishment. “I hope we can do as much as possible going forward to just keep in mind that each one of these data points is a whole life.”
Jason Pohl writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The sentencing of an Occidental man for a 2021 murder took an unusual turn on Tuesday after the defendant objected to a portion of his plea agreement that related to a lesser charge.
Nova Maye Deperno, 27, appeared before Judge J. David Markham on Tuesday afternoon for his scheduled sentencing.
He’s charged with the killing of 63-year-old Ronald Meluso of Lucerne, a man with whom he had been staying while working for him.
Meluso was reported missing in August 2021. His remains were found near Bartlett Springs in northern Lake County on Jan. 14, 2022, a day after authorities arrested Deperno in Occidental on several felony charges.
Deperno’s attorney, Kevin Davenport, had reached a plea agreement with the District Attorney’s Office which gives Deperno 25 years to life for Meluso’s death, with another 10 years for an enhancement for use of a gun.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff said during the hearing that the plea agreement was reached three months ago.
In addition to the murder case, the plea agreement covered an assault with a deadly weapon case in which authorities said Deperno pointed a gun at a young woman’s head. That aspect of the plea was for three years in prison to be served concurrently with the murder case, meaning he won’t have any additional time.
Not included in the plea are other felony cases filed against Deperno involving several victims from July 2020 to February 2021. They include vandalism, assault with a firearm, threats, felony evading and negligent discharge of a firearm. In that latter case, Hinchcliff said it involved Deperno — who had told some of the victims he was with the Mexican mafia — shooting into a home.
As the sentencing hearing began, Deperno raised objections to the plea agreement — not to the portion relating to the murder but to the case involving the threat against the young woman.
“I feel I took this deal under false pretenses, actually,” said Deperno, who maintained that it’s a “completely fabricated incident.”
When Markham said to Davenport that it sounded like his client wanted to withdraw his plea, a surprised Davenport said it was for “reasons I don’t understand.”
Deperno insisted he didn’t do the crime. Davenport said he had advised Deperno thoroughly about the plea agreement, spending several hours with him in going over it during the course of one day.
When Deperno continued to try to interrupt Davenport, Davenport turned to him and said, “I have to make a record here.” Markham also told Deperno to stop interrupting.
“This is about justice. This is supposed to be about upholding the law,” said Deperno, who claimed the woman accusing him of the crime is known for lying.
He said he’s not willing to accept that plea and have it on his conscience.
Regarding the homicide, Deperno said mistakes were made leading to loss of life. “I feel very deeply for that and I’m sorry.”
He added regarding the murder case, “I’m trying to move forward and make peace in my soul and my person with this,” but he wasn’t willing to accept the charges for the other case.
Hinchcliff said that was the first time he had heard of there being an issue. He said Meluso’s family had come, some from a distance, for the sentencing.
He said he and Davenport had worked for four to five hours on the agreement and that it was clear that Deperno had pleaded voluntarily to it.
Markham called in Tom Feimer, one of the administrators of Lake Indigent Defense, the county’s indigent defense contractor, to ask for another attorney to appoint to discuss with Deperno his concerns about the assault with a deadly weapon plea.
Attorney Ed Savin declined, telling the court that he’s “drowning in cases” and that, politically, there are so many problems with the system that he’s been told by legal counsel that he can decline assignments under the contract if he doesn’t have the time and energy. His reference to the political situation appeared to be a reference to the county’s current issues with the indigent defense contract and plans to end it in favor of a public defender’s office.
Markham then appointed attorney Angelina Potter, another defense attorney, and set a new hearing for 3 p.m. May 2.
At that time, there will either be a hearing to withdraw Deperno’s plea or to reschedule the sentencing.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Hinchcliff, who has spent decades as a prosecutor, said after the derailed sentencing hearing.
Depending on the outcome of the May 2 hearing, Hinchcliff said Deperno’s sentencing could be pushed out for months.
“We’ll see what happens,” and try to do what’s in the best interests of everyone, he said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The council will meet at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 20, in the council chambers at Clearlake City Hall, 14050 Olympic Drive.
The meeting will be broadcast live on the city's YouTube channel or the Lake County PEGTV YouTube Channel. Community members also can participate via Zoom or can attend in person.
The agenda can be found here.
Comments and questions can be submitted in writing for City Council consideration by sending them to City Clerk Melissa Swanson at
To give the council adequate time to review your questions and comments, please submit your written comments before 4 p.m. Thursday, April 20.
Each public comment emailed to the city clerk will be read aloud by the mayor or a member of staff for up to three minutes or will be displayed on a screen. Public comment emails and town hall public comment submissions that are received after the beginning of the meeting will not be included in the record.
At the start of the meeting, the council will host a swearing-in of Chelsea Banks as Clearlake Police’s new records and communications supervisor.
Police Chief Tim Hobbs will give a presentation on the Clearlake Police Department Safety Education Loan Forgiveness Program.
There also will be a presentation of April's adoptable dogs and the quarterly update on the Recreation and Events Division.
On the meeting's consent agenda — items that are considered routine in nature and usually adopted on a single vote — are warrants; approval of Resolution Number 2023-18, approving a temporary road closure for the Soap Box Derby race; minutes of the March 15 Lake County Vector Control District Board meeting; adoption of the second amendment to the Adams Ashby consultant contract; adoption of Resolution 2023-20 committing to maintain new gateway monuments at each entryway into the city of Clearlake; and consideration of Resolution 2023-19 adopting the fourth amendment to fiscal year 2022-23 Budget (Resolution 2022-44) adjusting appropriations and revenues.
Following the open portion of the meeting, the council will hold a closed session to discuss negotiations with the Clearlake Middle Management Association and a case of anticipated litigation.
Email Elizabeth Larson at