STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
The Central Union High School District and the El Centro Elementary School District intend to “stand fast” on an original plan to unify the district along existing boundary lines.
This was confirmed last night in a resolution jointly and unanimously passed.
The action was taken in anticipation of a Jan. 4 public hearing at McCabe School in which a newly proposed plan for the district will be heard. The plan, among other things, would remove the Westside School District — and its sizeable assessed valuation but relatively few children — from the CUHS district.
The resolution reaffirms the two districts’ unwillingness to accept anything less than the original boundaries and plan proposed b the County Committee on School District organization Jan. 22, 1965, and approved by the state Board of Education on March 12, 1965.
40 years ago
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday again refused to do anything to comply with a new state juvenile justice law even though representatives of both local legislators told them it is almost impossible now for the law’s Jan. 1 effective date to be extended six months.
The controversial new law may, among other things, lower the population of the count’s new juvenile hall.
One official says runaways, for example, may be turned out in the street.
A week ago, the board had asked both local legislators to do what they could to postpone the effective date of the new law until June 30.
This would give the county time to budget for the provisions of the law, which are expected to be extremely costly.
30 years ago
Three hockey players from San Diego suffered moderate and major injuries Tuesday when the car they were riding in crashed into a rocky embankment alongside Interstate 8 and overturned, the California Highway Patrol said today.
CHP Officer Scott McNaughton said Anthony Reid, 18, of Poway, and Kenneth Kasinak, 19, and Joseph Swan, 19, both of San Diego, were injured when their compact car went out of control on I-8 about 11 a.m.
The three men were identified as hockey players, on their way home from Arizona when the accident occurred.
McNaughton said Reid was driving west when he apparently fell asleep near the Mountain Springs Road offramp.
The vehicle drifted onto the shoulder of the freeway, then up a slight incline and crashed into a boulder, before overturning.
20 years ago
Nearly a half century in the making, El Centro attorney Raymond Ayala Cota realized the accomplishment of a lifetime Friday when his wife, Norma, and three daughters adorned him with a long black robe.
Now he is Municipal Court Judge Raymond Ayala Cota.
“Wow. What a feeling,” Cota, 49, told a crowd of perhaps 150 gathered in Superior Court Department 2, for his formal swearing-in ceremony.
“I naturally want to thank everyone for their support. I look around and there’s hardly a face I don’t recognize. You don’t know how much that means to me to see you all here.”
The crowed included many members of Cota’s family, his fellow judges, attorneys with and against whom he has practiced for two decades and other public officials and well wishers.