Educators

A $48-million community college campus with panoramic ocean views is slated to open next month in Newport Beach. Coastline Community College is hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 2 p.m. Oct. 3 for its new 3.4-acre campus at 1515 Monrovia Ave. College leaders, Coast Community College District board members, district Chancellor Andrew C. Jones and Newport Beach city officials are expected to attend. "We are anxious to unveil the building to our new neighbors in Newport Beach, and our faculty, staff and students are looking forward to utilizing all of the features of this state-of-the-art, green campus when we open for classes there in January 2013," Coastline President Loretta P. Adrian said in a prepared statement.

UC Irvine's Department of Education is now recognized as a school within the college. The UC Board of Regents approved the designation requested by the department July 18. "In some ways, the change was really what they call a simple name change," said education department Chairwoman Deborah Vandell. "We had in many ways already functioned as a school. " The department, housing both graduate and undergraduate degree programs, will not require any additional funding to make the switch to a full-fledged school, Vandell said.

UC Irvine will open its first clinical building since 1988 with the completion of the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute. The institute aims to provide educational programs, technologies and patient health solutions to aide visual wellness and performance. With the foundation of the building nearly done, supporters and employees celebrated Tuesday with a "topping-off" ceremony. The clinic itself will open next summer. The ceremony, led by James Mazzo, president of Abbott Medical Optics Inc., honored Gavin Herbert, Roger's Gardens owner, for his contributions, and informed attendees on what to expect from the new institute.

The field of candidates for three Costa Mesa City Council seats grew by one Tuesday, with local marketing entrepreneur Harold Weitzberg entering the race. A registered Democrat seeking the nonpartisan seat, Weitzberg, 63, has lived in Costa Mesa since 1983, published children's books, run children's TV programming and done marketing for 1990s childhood staples like the Olsen twins and R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps" book series. "Electing the same people over and over again will give us the same disastrous inaction and missteps we have been experiencing over the last three terms of office," he said in a news release.

How far should we go to save public education? So far as to name a school gym after a corporate sponsor? Let business interests influence textbook content? Put cigarette and junk food ads on the sides of school buses? If you think these ideas sound far-fetched, think again. As school budgets continue to be squeezed, districts are increasingly tempted to allow an insidious march of corporate marketers onto campus. Bearing gifts of needed school supplies, enrichment programs and outright cash, these businesses come in do-gooder guise, but that pretense does little to camouflage their aims of manipulating the buying decisions of kids and their parents.

A Newport-Mesa Unified School District classified employee will be honored by the county Board of Education. Support Services and Security employee Connie Bassler is a finalist in the fifth annual Classified School Employees of the Year. She will be recognized at the board's meeting Thursday morning. Bassler is a finalist along with Karen Hulbert and David McGovern of the Westminster School District; Robert Redondo of the La Habra City School District; Dionne Gibson of the Los Alamitos Unified School District; and Long Le of the Laguna Beach Unified School District.

Administrators at some Newport-Mesa schools that fail to meet federal standards have come up with some compelling ideas to try to turn things around. There's just one problem: They all cost money. Last week, the school board voted to allocate $1.1 million to one such program, which calls for additional instructional time to help the 11 schools in the so-called Program Improvement category boost student test scores. The move requires some financial acrobatics, since the money must come out of the district's existing budget — what Deputy Supt.

An Orange County extended-learning nonprofit added five new members to its board, including Laguna Beach resident Donnie Crevier. Santa Ana-based THINK Together brought together professionals in dental, technology and retail food to its leadership board. Crevier is the name behind Santa Ana-based Crevier BMW, the largest volume BMW center in the nation and was honored by Time Magazine for being a quality dealer and for its community service. "We need to continue to evolve the board of directors so that it can govern, guide and help to adequately resource the organization as it scales up, while at the same time remaining connected to the communities that we serve," THINK board Chairman Fran Inman said in a prepared statement.

With a fishing pole in hand and the remains of a "compost cupcake" on her face, 5-year-old Avalon Freyder dipped her line into the pseudo pool of mini rubber ducks and trivia questions for a game intended to teach children about the environment. For the kindergartner, she said taking care of the planet is important "because you don't want to get the Earth dirty. " Protecting the environment was the subject of Davis Magnet School's first Eco-Education Night on Thursday meant to "bring our community together and raise awareness of the eco-education that is going on at Davis," said Lisa Manfredi, the Parent Teacher Assn.'s Green Team and Learning Garden chairwoman.

For ideas on how to live green, residents need look no farther than Davis Magnet School. The Costa Mesa K-6 campus is hosting its first Eco-Education Night from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday in the multipurpose room, 1050 Arlington Drive. The event will feature a talk by Evan Marks, founder and director of The Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano; a reading by author Derek Sabori of his book "Lu and the Earth Bug Crew"; and presentations by the schools' EcoScholars and Green Team.