The Morongo Unified School District Board of Education will consider a variety of issues tonight ranging from textbooks to teachers. Reporter David Haldane has the detailsâŚ
Advanced Placement biology students in the Morongo Unified School District may have a new hero after tonightâs Board of Education meeting. She is Henrietta Lacks, a poor black tobacco farmer whose cellsâtaken without her knowledge in 1951âbecame one of most important tools in modern medicine, critical in developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping and other seeming medical miracles.
Now the board wants to buy 30 copies of her biography, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, described as âa riveting story of the collision between ethics, race and medicine.â
Other agenda items include purchasing several new district vehicles, re-roofing the boyâs locker room at Yucca Valley High School and declaring May 10 as the Day of the Teacher.
Tonightâs meeting gets underway 7 p.m. at the Morongo Valley Elementary School on Hess Blvd.