The L.A. Department of Public Works will hold a community meeting to update the Temescal Canyon Stormwater Project on Thursday, October 1 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Palisades Branch Library community room, 861 Alma Real. The proposed $15.9-million system (funded through Prop O) will be located along Temescal Canyon Road (from south of Bowdoin Street to PCH) and capture rainstorm runoff from October through April. Construction will take about a year and yield three separate underground structures. During a storm, water will first drain into a diversion tank, then into a hydro-separator (which separates pollutants such as trash or oil from the rainwater). The debris would remain in the hydro-separator after the water flows into a 1.25-million-gallon holding tank under the playground picnic area, before traveling to the Hyperion Treatment Center. According to Department of Transportation engineer Mohammad H. Blorfroshan, the project will require road closures, including K-rails and restripping. Work is proposed for Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. This project qualifies for a CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) exemption, which meant that an EIR (Environmental Impact Report) was not required. Because of community outcry, an Initial Study was done and that report is available for review at www.eng.lacity.org/techdocs/emg/Environmental_Review_Doc-uments.htm. A copy is available at the Palisades library, or a copy can be requested by calling Maria Martin at (213) 485-5753. According to Michelle Vargas, a Department of Public Works spokeswoman, ‘With the Initial Study, the City looked into the project further to determine if it may have any significant effect on the environment. The City determined that there are no significant impacts and proposes to adopt a Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND).’ The City’s recommendation to adopt an MND, and all submitted public comments, will be reviewed by the Board of Public Works and the City Council.

In an August 4 business piece, the New York Times cited a report by Forrester Research which claimed that a number of travel-minded customers, frustrated by complex Web sites, have abandoned online booking and re-embraced the services offered by travel agencies.   Shane Paquette, manager of En Route Travel in Pacific Palisades since 1998, verified this trend on Tuesday.   ’People are being bombarded with different rates and specials and trying to sift through everything to find the best deal,’ Paquette said. ‘But it’s not just about getting the best deal. There’s also the experiential value you need when planning a trip. I like to consider us more as professional advisors. We go out, we experience these places. We’re offering services and knowledge and a skill set that the average person does not have.’   In October 2002, the Palisadian-Post profiled En Route Travel at a time when many Americans were still reluctant to travel following the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Paquette and En Route employee Gloria Welles (whose expertise includes hiking and walking vacations) were listed among the country’s 70 top ‘super agents’ in Travel and Leisure magazine, and Paquette was honored in Cond’ Nast Traveler. He also talked enthusiastically about dating a Brazilian law student, whom he would visit in South America, and skiing the slopes of Europe and New Zealand.   In the intervening years, the travel business has been down and up and, at present, down again.   ’It’s definitely a weak time,’ Paquette said, ‘but if you have the money and you feel comfortable, right now is the time because there are so many deals for luxury trips. You can pay 30 or 40 percent less this year for the exact same year a year ago.’   The economic meltdown may also prove more damaging to the industry than 9/11. ‘This is probably worse because that was a psychological blow,’   Paquette explained. ‘We had to give people the confidence to get on a plane again. This is more lasting. It’s more like, Wow! Maybe we should rethink our lifestyle.’   Paquette noted that 2004 through 2008 was a robust time for business. ‘Up until August of last year,’ he said, ‘every year was better than the one before it. For the past six months, it’s been very lean, just like in every industry at the moment.   ’Our business has been affected, but the number of passengers and departures hasn’t been affected much. We just haven’t had the growth that we’ve seen.’ Originally from Montreal, Shane’s mother, Carol Paquette, moved to Pacific Palisades in 1976 and founded En Route in 1984. She still works at her agency, which was located on Via de la Paz for 17 years before moving to its current Sunset address (between Swarthmore and Monument).   Shane graduated from Santa Clara University with a marketing degree in 1995, then spent three years post-college traveling the world.   Carol told the Post, ‘When I opened the agency, he was 12 and going to Corpus Christi. We lived in the Highlands and I opened the agency on Via so he could come over after school. I guess he was exposed to travel all his life. However, I wasn’t expecting him to join the travel business.’   When he returned from his post-college travels, Carol asked her son to help her create a promotional ad, as part of En Route’s affiliation with Virtuoso (a consortium of top U.S. travel agencies). ‘It was supposed to take a month but he never left,’ Carol said. ‘He loves it. And I’m thrilled because he’s young and he’s so much better with the technology than I am. He has also brought in a lot of good people to work for us.’   En Route’s well-traveled team includes Welles, Arlene Fink (a Palisadian who has been at the agency for 18 years) locals Christy Greer and Candy Overland, Amber Ringler, Anna April-Ross, Caitlin Dobson and Terry Bahri. Shane’s sister, Laurie Paquette, works from her South Bay home and specializes in group cruises.   So as we exit summer, where did Palisadians travel?   ’Everywhere,’ Shane Paquette said. ‘Europe, Laos, Tahiti has been popular, so has cruising the Mediterranean, the Balkans, Australia, New Zealand. Vietnam and Cambodia have become popular. Hawaii is always a favorite.’ This fall, he said, ‘We’ve been booking a lot of Santa Barbara, Laguna Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, Napa Valley.’ Family celebrations and multi-generational travel are increasingly popular, said Paquette, noting that ‘cruises are very popular, especially given the dollar’s woes.’ He recently returned from a junket to visit the Ranch at Rock Creek, a Montana destination opening this winter. ‘I also found a phenomenal ski resort called Kicking Horse in British Columbia.’ And speaking of family, whatever became of Paquette’s Brazilian girlfriend? Well, Bianca and Shane, married since 2004, have two boys, Cody, 3, and Nico, 3 months, and reside in Malibu. ‘My wife and I were in Australia in 2005, South Africa last October,’ said Paquette, who, despite settling down, still has places to see. ‘I would like to go to India and Bhutan.’ En Route Travel, 15221 Sunset Blvd. Contact: (310) 459-9955; info@enroutetravel.com.

Something strange went on at Patrick’s Roadhouse on September 13. From 6 to about 10 p.m., owner Silvio Moreira, and restaurant manager Cherry Gustafson were seen hard at work servicing a houseful of diners. But normally, the Santa Monica Canyon restaurant is not opened for dinner. So what gives? These diners were not your usual lunch bunch. Some 40 members of GHOULA (that’s Ghost Hunters of Urban Los Angeles), a group that’s been meeting on the 13th of every month at various locations citywide, had selected Patrick’s Roadhouse as their September destination because the establishment, according to lore, is supposedly haunted. Founded in 2008 by Hollywood residents Richard Carradine and Lisa Strouss, both in their 30s, GHOULA averages about 25 ghost-minded guzzlers at its monthly ‘Spirits with Spirits’ gatherings. The drinking is secondary, really, as is the science. Carradine noted that GHOULA is not a paranormal band of ghost-busters, but a social group. And these casual mixers provide a back-door way to learn about venerable City of Angels locales. ‘Ghost stories are, in essence, a great way to look back in time,’ Carradine said. Moreira told the Palisadian-Post why he was game to receive and entertain the GHOULA crowd on that Sunday night. ‘It’s something new, something different,’ Moreira said. ‘Rich was very nice and I thought I’d provide a space and a home for the this kind of realm.’ Moreira, before owning Patrick’s, worked at the restaurant for original owner Bill Fischler for 19 years. ‘They wanted to close it down following his death,’ Moreira said. ‘But they resisted and I took it over.’ He remembers working for Fischler, an eccentric, larger-than-life character, who some claim still haunts the popular brunch destination. (According to lore, one Patrick’s chef quit his job years ago because he was supposedly spooked by the ghost of Fischler eyeballing him.) ‘He was such a big presence,’ Moreira said. ‘He filled this place with antiques. It was a second chance at life for him. He was in his 50s when he took it over. He had chutzpah.’ Upon taking the reins of Patrick’s, Moreira refurbished the restaurant’s interior and exterior. The case of the large mural of a woman on the side of the building’s exterior might be kind of cosmic, if not supernatural. Right as Moreira was about to hire an artist to repaint it, the original artist, a man in his 70s who went by the nom de plume ‘Silvani,’ ‘came out of nowhere,’ Moreira said. ‘He was like a nomad, living in a camper. He came back just at the right time. Like divine intervention.’ Silvani repainted the mural in a few days. The reason GHOULA is meeting at Patrick’s is because of member Michele Yu had read about it in a book called ‘A Bottle of Boos: A Guide to America’s Most Haunted Bars & Taverns’ by Robert and Anne Wlodarski. ‘It was super to find a group of people who were also excited about ghosts,’ said Yu, an Alhambra resident, as members dined on Patrick’s burgers and fries, and spirits supplied by GHOULA. Yu brought friends Cindy Chao, Anthony Deptula and fianc’ Tina Kapousis. The group is interested in the occult and they even have a ouija-board team. ‘The best part is when we get special access to places, not just researching it online,’ Chao added. ‘Richard is very knowledgeable and has a lot of interesting stories I had never heard of.’ ‘What’s great about Rich is that he’s curious about places,’ Yu said. ‘He’s not trying to debunk or ghost-bust. It’s not confrontational.’ First-time participants Cesar Haro of Inglewood and Jim Wheelock of Hollywood attended the Patrick’s meeting. Haro came because ‘I was interested in the paranormal and life after death and what’s beyond death. There’s so much evidence out there that there’s got to be something else.’ Haro added that there are probably ‘so many sunken ships’ in the Pacific Ocean just outside Patrick’s windows that ‘there are probably a lot of ghosts who have passed through here.’ A mug in hand, Wheelock had a totally different reason for attending: ‘Boredom.’ First-timers Hazel Daulo of San Fernando Valley attended with Katey Khajhany. Daulo was curious about the group because she believed she’s had ‘a couple’ brushes with the supernatural. ‘I work at a hospital,’ she said. ‘I’ve had some lights in the bathroom go off.’ ‘I’m kind of curious about the paranormal,’ Khajhany said. ‘I’ve seen some supernatural shows like ‘Ghost Hunters’ [on SyFy].’ ‘I’d like to come back again,’ she said, taking in Patrick’s funky d’cor. ‘It’s a pretty neat place.’ The formation of GHOULA began as something of a fluke. Strouss and Carradine had been collaborating on online webisodes focused on visiting haunted places and they needed some kind of official-sounding, pseudo-scientific organization to back the series. And so, they conjured up the GHOULA acronym and the ‘pseudo-group,’ Strouss said, ‘ended up being more successful. Strouss, with daughter Olive, 2, in tow, noted that Carradine had originally tried ‘a zombie mini-golf event but that didn’t click. ‘This is more fun, to meet people and go all over L.A. I love the energy of the group. People come with so many ghost stories. Even people I know who I thought were complete skeptics or atheists.’ Count Wheelock among those wary of apparitions. ‘If they do exist, I’m not likely the one who would see them,’ he admitted. Since the first meeting, Carradine’s wife has been supportive of her husband’s monthly endeavor. ‘My husband’s not a talkative guy,’ said Angela Carradine. ‘It’s great to witness his personality morph into someone who is very chatty.’ ‘There are no real groups like this in L.A.,’ said Lee Barron, a collaborator on the webisodes who attended Patrick’s with fianc’ Lisa Ryder. A psychic once determined that Barron had a psychic link to the supernatural. ‘That was the last thing I wanted to hear,’ said Barron, who had always received strange, unexplainable impulses from certain places he’s visited. ‘I like ghosts but I also like the people,’ said a frequent attendee, artist Amy Hagemeier. Craig Owens brought his K-II meter, a portable detector that gauges electromagnetic currents, to Patrick’s, while Ken Ramos and Melissa Pleckham (musicians in the rock band Shiloe) were toying with an arguably hipper and more state-of-the-art gizmo: a ghost-detecting application on their iPhone. At one point, it should be noted, both devices went off at once. Ramos said he was happy ‘to find a ghost group in L.A.,’ even if it’s kind of a ghost-lite affair. ‘It’s nice to hear stories and meet people who like ghosts.’ Pleckham, on the other hand, would welcome some hardcore ghost-busting. ‘I would be down if we had the special equipment,’ she said. ‘I want to do a lockdown of a place and stay there till the next morning.’ Previous GHOULA outings had produced their own strange energy. Take June 13. Strouss said that she and Angela Carradine, while touring the Queen Mary in Long Beach, somehow wound up with black grease on their hands. They could not figure out what it was they had touched. It was only afterwards that they learned of a story about a deceased ship hand who supposedly haunted the Queen Mary by leaving engine-room grease behind. ‘My favorite meeting took place [in February] at Union Station,’ Hagemeier said. ‘It was a small group. We kind of explored and went to the mysterious 13th track.’ According to Carradine, when he inquired with the manager of one place about ghost stories, the person panicked and warned his staff not to talk to him. At Carlito’s Way Cocktails in Van Nuys, the site of last December’s trip, GHOULA learned that the bar was where parts of the doomed 1983 John Landis movie ‘The Twilight Zone’ was filmed, which included Vic Morrow’s last scenes before his untimely death during an on-set mishap inside a studio hangar. On January’s jaunt to the famed Hollywood watering hole Musso & Frank’s, the restaurant was inaccessible. ‘It was closed because a water main on Hollywood Boulevard had broken,’ Angela Carradine recalled. ‘So we went across the street and that place was closed. Then we went to Boardner’s and that was closed, too.’ GHOULA wound up at Mel’s Diner, where a fascinated Steve Cohen, owner of Village Pizzeria in Hollywood, met the group and joined them for a meal. GHOULA learned of his fixation with the number 13. According to Cohen, the unlucky numeral (tattooed on his left wrist) has popped up often in his life. Too often. Keep in mind that, this being GHOULA, the evening took place on the 13th. Sure enough, when Cohen got his restaurant bill, the total was $12.13. Owens has been attending meetings for half a year now. His favorite has been a visit to a former mortuary in Pasadena, now a restaurant called Eden Grill. ‘I was doing research of haunted places as well when I came across the GHOULA Web site,’ he said. ‘When I met Rich, we shared and exchanged information. We do that in between meetings.’ Such input from the membership has helped Carradine determine GHOULA’s monthly destinations. Toward the evening’s end at Patrick’s, as Strouss left the event with Olive, Owens demonstrated his K-II meter in the back room. He showed how putting the meter next to electrical appliances could trigger a reaction for the K-II. Mysteriously, the device started to light up and buzz off the charts as he held it toward the middle of the room, where there was no evident electricity emanating. ‘See! It’s going off again,’ Owens said. ‘This means there’s electricity in the air and something might be trying to manifest itself in some way or another.’ At that very moment, a reporter felt a vibration ripping through his pocket. It was his cell phone with a distress call from Strouss from the parking lot across the street (which was a direct line from the back room). She said she had left her car lights on during the gathering and her battery had gone dead. The timing was amazing. Could this be just a mundane coincidence, or had a poltergeist just rip through Patrick’s and make a beeline for Strouss’ car outside? Which begged the larger question: Is Patrick’s, in fact, haunted? ‘I wouldn’t call it ‘haunted,” Moreira said, smiling, ‘but [Fischler]’s definitely still guarding it, making sure it’s protected.’ Whether or not a ghost was present inside Patrick’s, one thing’s for certain: There was definitely a ghost in Santa Monica that night. A short drive away, in fact, within the Aero Theatre, where, at the same time as the GHOULA meeting, the American Cinematheque was screening the 1966 Don Knotts comedy, ‘The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.’ Coincidence? Visit http://www.ghoula.org.

All three Pacific Palisades elementary schools attained Academic Performance Index scores in the 900s and Paul Revere Middle School and Palisades Charter High School significantly increased their scores, according to results released by the California Department of Education.   API is a state standard that measures every public school’s progress from year to year, and it is based on test results from the Standardized Testing and Reporting program (STAR) and the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE). API scores range from 200 to 1,000, with the goal that all schools statewide reach 800.   ’We’re really happy that the whole [charter] complex is now in the 900s,’ said Palisades Elementary Principal Joan Ingle in reference to the local elementary schools, plus Topanga and Kenter Canyon. ‘All the schools did really well.’   The Department of Education also released the No Child Left Behind’s Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) report. Marquez, Canyon and Palisades elementary schools made AYP; however, Palisades High and Paul Revere fell short of the national standard.   AYP looks at the same standardized tests as API but requires that a certain percentage of students in each subgroup (every ethnic group, students with disabilities, English learners and socio-economically disadvantaged students) score proficient or above in math and English. Middle schools must have 46 percent of students in each subgroup score proficient or above in English and 47.5 percent in math, while high schools must have 44.5 percent in English and 43.5 percent in math.   At Paul Revere, the African Americans, Hispanics, socio-economically disadvantaged, English learners and students with disabilities subgroups did not make the threshold. The African Americans and English learners subgroups missed the mark at PaliHi.   ’These will obviously be areas of focus for the coming year,’ said PaliHi Executive Director Amy Dresser-Held.

MARQUEZ ELEMENTARY

Marquez Charter Elementary showed the most improvement, increasing its API score by 31 points to 906.   ’Every year, we look at the test scores as a group, looking at trends, as well as individual achievement of each student,’ Principal Phillip Hollis said. ‘We look for areas in need of improvement, then teachers do exactly what they need to do.’   Hollis thinks that hiring an extra teacher in the upper grades to lower class size contributed to the success. He also cited expansion of the CATCH program (Caring Adults Teaching Children How) to third, fourth and fifth graders. More than 40 at-risk children participated in the program, receiving individualized mentoring from adult volunteers from the Palisades community. The Marquez Digital Edge technology program, where students use laptops in the classroom daily as opposed to 45 minutes a week in a computer lab, also gave teachers the opportunity to pilot new programs. This school year, Hollis and his teaching staff hope to build on the API and AYP scores by maintaining the CATCH program and continuing to target instruction to meet the unique needs of each student.

CANYON ELEMENTARY

Canyon Charter Elementary scored the highest API score of the schools with 952, which is 17 points higher than last year. ‘I am walking into a dream,’ said Joyce Dara, the school’s new principal. ‘Clearly, the teachers are meeting the needs of all students.’ Dara, who replaced Carol Henderson, also attributes the school’s success to parental involvement. Parents actively participate in the Booster Club and on the school’s governing board. ‘It’s a collaborative effort,’ she said.

PALISADES ELEMENTARY

Palisades Charter Elementary improved its API score by 29 points to 928. ‘We examined the test data closely and looked for the children at risk,’ Ingle said, adding that teachers then targeted specific students with the goal of helping them reach the next level. Ingle said she is delighted because two children who were scoring below the basic skill level improved their scores to proficient and advanced. ‘We want to catch children and not let them fall between the cracks,’ she said.

PAUL REVERE

Paul Revere Principal Fern Somoza is exceptionally proud of the teachers for their efforts to improve the school’s API score by 15 points to 848.   ’Our teachers continued to teach under difficult and trying times,’ Somoza said. Seventeen teachers received notice last spring that they could be laid off because of budget constraints. In the end, two teachers were laid off and replaced by other Los Angeles Unified School District teachers with more seniority. LAUSD laid off teachers based on seniority, which caused reshuffling across the district.   Somoza also acknowledged the students for the higher score: ‘The kids came prepared [for the testing] and they knew they had to do their best.’   All of the Revere subgroups (which are minority, economically disadvantaged and special education students) improved. The African Americans and students with disabilities improved the most, both increasing their scores by 25 points. African Americans scored 739 and students with disabilities, 594. Somoza said Revere is starting an intervention program for seventh graders to make up classes they failed in the sixth grade. The school has also added clubs such as guitar, movie screenwriting and horticulture for the students to participate in during lunchtime. Revere scored higher than Emerson Middle School in Westwood, Palms Middle School in Los Angeles, and John Adams Middle School in Santa Monica, but fell below Santa Monica’s Lincoln Middle School, which scored 882.

PALISADES HIGH

Palisades Charter High School made gains in its API score, improving by 21 points to 818. ‘This significantly exceeds the average increase for high schools in California and is particularly noteworthy since making big gains is harder to do the closer you are to the top,’ Dresser-Held said. ‘The results are directly attributable to the outstanding efforts of our staff and our phenomenal students and families.’   Last year, African Americans were the only subgroup not to make gains in 2007-08, so the school launched the Village Nation program to focus on boosting their success rate. ‘It clearly had an impact with the African American subgroup’s API score jumping 20 points [to 704],’ Dresser-Held said. To achieve the overall higher results, school leaders strengthened professional learning communities, where teachers of the same subject area work together on instruction. They also evaluated all the school’s educational programs. The Hispanic students improved by 28 points to 762, the Asians by 31 points to 896, whites by 23 points to 879 and socio-economically disadvantaged students by 14 points to 762.   ’We still have a sizable achievement gap, and we know what we need to focus on going forward,’ Dresser-Held said. Granada Hills Charter High School, which is larger than PaliHi but has similar demographics, posted a higher score of 843. Nearby University High, Santa Monica High and Venice High (all with diverse populations) had lower scores.

Five years after announcing her retirement from school administration, Marcia Haskin hasn’t actually retired. The 66-year-old has continued to work in education, and she just returned to the helm at Palisades Charter High School for a second stint as interim principal. ‘I was really thrilled when I was asked if I was available,’ said Haskin, a Marina del Rey resident. ‘I have never felt about a school the way I feel about this one. It’s just a joy to work here; I feel like it’s a fit. When I come here, I don’t feel like I’m working.’ Haskin, who retired in 2004 after 38 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District, was principal of Palms Middle School for three years and the director of secondary services for LAUSD for two years. In that role, she supervised principals at five schools. Shortly after announcing her retirement, Haskin began working at Loyola Marymount University, supervising new teachers in the process of getting their credentials. In 2007, PaliHi’s board asked her to serve as principal on an interim basis, while the school searched to replace Gloria Martinez. The board then hired Escondido Union High School District administrator Martin Griffin, who left after only one year. Unable to find a replacement this summer, the board voted unanimously to ask Haskin back. ‘Marcia brings an incredible level of enthusiasm and experience to the job,’ Board Chair Rene Rodman said. ‘The fact that she knows Pali is a tremendous asset.’ Haskin, who works Mondays through Thursdays, may be at the school as little as one semester. However, she is available through the end of the school year if needed. ‘The board has not yet discussed go-forward plans for the principal position and will revisit this at an upcoming meeting,’ Rodman said. In order for Haskin to receive her retirement benefits, she earns half the annual salary of a high school principal. On average, a high school principal earns $100,000. Her job is to resolve conflicts between students, teachers and parents, as well as to evaluate teachers in the classroom. The school has a director of instruction, Richard Thomas, who assists with curriculum and supervising teachers. In Haskin’s year away from PaliHi, she enjoyed spending time with her husband Mark, daughter Jennifer Friedlander of Manhattan Beach, and three grandchildren: Ashlyn, 7, Blythe, 5, and Madeline, 2. She also bowled and played golf. ‘I did all the things retirees do,’ she said, chuckling. ‘But I have always had my heart in my career.’ That is why last year she spent two days a week at Crenshaw High School mentoring two new assistant principals and implementing LAUSD and the Ojai Foundation’s council program, which she describes as ‘a process of communication where people sit in a circle, listening and speaking from the heart.’ ‘It’s a wonderful way to communicate and hear people’s stories,’ Haskin said, noting the program is for students, staff and parents. Haskin, who was first introduced to council at Palms Middle School, also started the program at PaliHi prior to leaving in the spring of 2008. PaliHi parent Harriet Zaretsky’s 17-year-old son, Dillon Henry, had died in an automobile accident on Sunset Boulevard in July 2007, and she had asked administrators how she could honor her son’s memory. Haskin suggested she contribute to this program, so Zaretsky paid for a group of about 25 students, teachers and counselors to attend training at the Ojai Foundation in summer 2008. ‘A few councils were held last year, but it did not permeate beyond that [initial] group,’ Haskin said. Her goal this fall is to expand the program school-wide. On August 31 and September 1, 24 teachers received council training on campus. Haskin then led the first council circle for faculty on September 14. In addition to council, Haskin plans to train and mentor the administration team on evaluating instruction in the classroom. She wants to give teachers interested in leadership roles the tools they need to pursue them. Plus, she would like to assist with the selection of the permanent principal. Haskin said she’s glad to be working as a principal again. ‘I like solving problems and making a situation better for someone, a team or an institution,’ she said. ‘I just fly from that; I’m on cloud nine.’