To avoid the brouhaha that roiled last year’s controversial Palisades Charter High School admission process, Paul Revere Charter Middle School eighth grade parents were asked to attend an informational meeting November 7. Eleven officials from the two schools and the LAUSD clarified PaliHi’s admission policy and answered questions from a near-capacity audience in the Revere auditorium. After introductions from Revere Principal Art Copper, PaliHi Executive Director Amy Held explained that students at Revere are not automatically guaranteed admission to the high school. High demand as well as state and federal guidelines have dictated a strict admission policy. Parents were told that students who wish to attend PaliHi must fill out an application, which is due by March 3. ‘Please use the online admission form, if you have access to a computer,’ said Margaret Evans, assistant principal in charge of admission. The Web site is www.palihigh.org and the application is on the top right of the screen. Preference in admissions is first given to residents (Pacific Palisades, Topanga and parts of Brentwood), then to siblings of continuing students and family members of staff. After that, preference goes to traveling program students from 14 sending schools, then to Revere students who have not fallen into any of the above categories. If room is still available, the remaining seats go to Revere magnet applicants (who are not residents or from the sending areas) and non-Revere applicants. Held is projecting 650 spaces for incoming freshmen. Currently Revere has 585 eighth graders in the charter program and 124 in the magnet program. She emphasized that last year PaliHi was able to accommodate all Revere students who wanted to attend and that her staff is hopeful it can do the same in 2008. If more students apply this year than there are spaces, Revere students who aren’t residents, don’t have a continuing sibling or aren’t traveling students will have their names put into a lottery. A five-member panel fielded questions from the audience. Q. What happens if someone new moves into the neighborhood during the summer? Will there be space for them at PaliHi? A. Seats are set aside for new families who move in. Q. My mom works for a family and their daughter goes to private school. Can I take her spot? A. No. Q. Are residents absolutely guaranteed a spot? A. No one is guaranteed a spot’if 7,000 residents suddenly applied, there wouldn’t be room. Most likely, residents will have a space, but must fill out an application. Q. Will a resident be bumped to satisfy an integration pattern? A. No. Q. Should I apply to both the magnet and charter program? A. Yes, but if you get into both, you will be put into the magnet program, which has the same classes as the charter and includes transportation. Q. Is there an admission test to get in? A. No. All accepted students are tested in math, science and reading in order to place them in the appropriate classes. The test will be given April 26 at the high school. Q. What will happen to the kids who went to Kenter Elementary, then Revere, but their designated high school is University High? A. There are 11 students in that category this year and officials are working to make sure they can attend PaliHi in order to stay with the groups of kids they’ve been going to school with since elementary school. Lainey Rogers, director of operations for LAUSD Local District 3, said that the district is working with Revere’s student population to ‘make sure that Revere’s numbers align themselves so that people can go to PaliHi if they want.’ Questions about the magnet program should be directed to (213) 241-4177. For charter and general admission questions, call Margaret Evans at (310) 230-7277 or e-mail mevans@palihigh.org or e-mail Amy Held at aheld@palihi.org.

Saturday Event Seeks Participants for Bone Marrow Registry

In the 1950’s TV drama ‘The Millionaire,’ a regular everyday person was given $1 million tax-free by the wealthy (but never seen) John Beresford Tipton, through his representative Michael Anthony. Although Palisades Palisades resident Ed Sachse didn’t come into $1 million, he did receive five million stem cells from an anonymous donor, which saved his life. In 2002, Sachse, who at 41 had a successful real estate business, a wife and two kids, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma’a disease that had killed his father at 45. He began a three-year odyssey of chemotherapy and his own stem-cell transplantation, with little success. Weak and living on blood transfusions, Sachse learned that his only hope would be another stem-cell transplantation. Working with the City of Hope and the National Marrow Donor Program, Sachse found an exact genetic match living on the other side of the country in 2004. After another two years, Ed finally realized that he wasn’t getting better and decided to go ahead with the second transplantation. This Saturday, November 17 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sachse’s son Jake, a junior at Crossroads School, and a group of 40 high school students are holding a bone-marrow drive in the community room at Crossroads (corner of 18th and Olympic.) They hope to add hundreds of people (ages 18-60) to the Bone Marrow National Registry in a 10-minute procedure, which entails a mouth swab sample and a short questionnaire. In a speech last April at the PhaseOneFoundation event, which funds clinical trials and underwrites cancer research, Sachse recalled his journey with special attention to his donor, his angel. ‘This complete stranger gave me the most incredible gift of life,’ he said. ‘Hope.’ It was this speech that inspired Jake to launch the ‘Be an Angel + Save a Life’ Bone Marrow Drive with the help of high school students from Crossroads, as well as Wildwood, Brentwood, Beverly, Archer and Windward to register potential stem-cell donors in the National Marrow Donor Program. ‘I basically felt lucky enough to have a father, ‘ Jake told the Palisadian-Post. ‘This drive started as a community service project just to get my hours for school. I got a few friends to help, but when people heard about it they wanted to contribute. ‘ Not only is Jake hoping to add 500 potential stem-cell donors to the registry, but he and his friends have also raised $ 40,000 so far from corporate sponsors like Pharmaca and Robeks, as well as real estate companies and the entertainment industry. Individuals who would like to contribute may also make a donation by going to www.BeAnAngelSaveALife.org. The money helps to cover the $50 per person cost of adding donors to the national registry. Before Sachse’s second transplantation a few years ago, his daughter Erin contributed her own efforts to his recovery by raising $24,000 in a couple of months for her bat mitzvah, which she contributed to the City of Hope. ‘She walked into Dr. Steve Forman’s office (my oncologist) with an envelope stuffed with checks, cash and coins and gave it to him,’ Sachse recalled. For Sachse, now 46, Saturday will be especially poignant, as he will meet for the first time his personal angel, Sandra Samaniego, a 38-year-old woman from Alexandria, Virginia. Samaniego underwent a blood stem-cell procedure, wherein the blood-forming cells are separated from the blood through a needle in one arm, with the remaining blood returned to the donor through the other arm. Her donation yielded five million cells in a four-hour period. After a mutually agreed upon year waiting period, the Sachses got in touch with the donor. ‘When we talked to her, my husband was thanking her, but she was thanking us,’ Julie Sachse, Ed’s wife, told the Palisadian-Post.’ ‘She told us this was the most incredible thing in her life!’ Ed says he’s a lucky man, with many angels in his life’his donor, doctor and family, who in turn have been similarly touched. ‘When I started this, I didn’t know what a stem cell drive was,’ Jake said. ‘I hadn’t researched it, but through this process, I learned what my dad went through. It turned into this huge organization that might lead to another drive. Everybody wants to be able to be an angel to help save a life.’

Pacific Coast Highway will be the site of various lane and road closures for city and state projects over a two-year period beginning next spring. At a November 5 PCH Task Force meeting, organized by State Senator Sheila Kuehl, officials representing Santa Monica, Los Angeles and Caltrans presented seven projects that will have an impact on the highway from the McClure Tunnel to Cross Creek Road in Malibu. The first project to affect Pacific Palisades and Malibu commuters is the resurfacing of PCH by Caltrans starting in the spring, with completion planned before summer. According to Sameer Haddadeen, chief of the Caltrans office of traffic investigation, the project could possibly start a month or two earlier, so that it can be finished before summer. Normally, construction on southbound lanes occurs between 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on northbound lanes from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., but construction could occur from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. After hearing about other projects scheduled for PCH, Haddadeen said, ‘The segment between McClure Tunnel and Temescal Canyon Road may be delayed until the other work is done.’ Next summer, Santa Monica plans to drill hydraugers (pipes) into the Santa Monica bluffs adjacent to PCH to drain the water that is accumulating behind the bluff face. In 1998 a portion of the bluff sloughed off, spilling tons of dirt across the highway, but no one was injured. The hydrauger construction is scheduled to take 12 months to complete. One lane of northbound PCH traffic will be closed during that time. The $30-million Annenberg Community Beach Club, located at 415 PCH, the site of the old Marion Davies estate in Santa Monica, is currently under construction and when completed will include a swimming pool, a pool house with locker rooms, a snack bar, community meeting rooms and a beach playground, as well as a parking lot with 277 spaces. A traffic signal at that site met with early opposition and is still under review, but Caltrans operations have approved the light and are waiting for the design approval from their office. ‘My understanding is that it’s on its way to being approved, but it has not officially been signed off on,’ said Laurie Newman in Senator Kuehl’s office. The light is scheduled for installation in early 2008. When the site is fully open to the public in early 2009, reservations will be required and the prospect of increased traffic has planners looking at shuttles or other alternatives. A Los Angeles city project that will maintain electric reliability by building a new duct system for the existing line is slated to begin in April 2008. The old system has reached capacity and the purpose is to upgrade the system. The project will run from Kenter Canyon to San Vicente to Seventh Street, West Channel Road onto PCH to Sunset Boulevard. The PCH portion of the project will take about six months. ‘The PCH portion will be scheduled in conjunction with various other agencies and officials in order to have minimum impact,’ LADWP spokesperson Carol Tucker told the Palisadian-Post Wednesday morning. The California Incline project, which will replace the 1930s hillside bridge that connects PCH to Santa Monica, has been in the news because of worries about traffic impact on adjacent streets and in Santa Monica Canyon. The bridge will be upgraded to meet seismic standards as well as being widened. The project is expected to begin in summer/fall 2009 and finish a year later. While the Incline project is under way, Santa Monica will also improve the bridge that connects Ocean Avenue with the pier. Plans include widening and seismically fitting the structure. With Proposition O money, upgrades to the low-flow diversion pumps at Bay Club Drive, Temescal Canyon, Palisades Park and Santa Monica Canyon, as well as the recently completed Marquez pump, will begin in the fall of 2009 and take about a year to complete. The purpose is to collect dry-weather surface runoff year-round, rather than just April through October, thus improving water quality in Santa Monica Bay. The low-flow pump upgrades will cause little impact on traffic, but upon completion, a new 60-inch sewer pipe will be laid under PCH. After the presentations, a woman from Malibu asked, ‘Are there any alternative routes going to be available for Malibu residents. People in Pacific Palisades will hate us, because we’ll get off at Sunset and the roads will be packed.’ Under Kuehl’s leadership, the different city agencies and Caltrans have formed PCH Partners to discuss the logistics of how to move traffic during construction, but no definite was answer given to the woman. ‘There’s going to be so much going on at the same time that the engineers need to talk to each other and make sure there aren’t other projects scheduled for Allenford or San Vicente Boulevard during this time,’ said Barry Kurtz, a transportation engineer for L.A. County Beaches and Harbors Department. Kurtz, a resident, later shared his personal opinion with the Post. ‘It will two years of misery for people in the Palisades who rely on Sunset,’ he said.