UPDATE (Friday, Aug. 15, 9:45 a.m.): The Fremont, Calif., school board voted 3-2 Wednesday night to not use Your Health Today in ninth grade health classes and will instead use the same textbook as last year. School superintendent Jim Morris continues to hope publisher McGraw-Hill will modify the book so that it eventually can be used in the Fremont schools.

PALO ALTO, Calif.—Rain soaked the plush Stanford University campus on a Friday afternoon as sweaty athletes filtered in and out of Jimmy V’s Sports Café. Inside, Jim Stump, 70, showed himself to be as much a fixture as the signed and framed football jerseys of university legends. Wearing a crisp, black polo with the Stanford logo, he was having his typical poached egg and coffee at a corner table looking out on a bustling Campus Drive.

Lacey Buchanan, 26, lay behind a screen on a stiff delivery bed waiting for that first glimpse. To her relief, she heard her son’s initial cry after his C-section birth. But then her husband, Chris, disappeared with their baby and a host of medical staff. Nine hours later, a doctor finally asked Lacey, “Do you want to see your baby?”

A longtime Santa Clara, Calif., employee was reprimanded last month after a co-worker overheard her critiquing Obamacare’s problematic rollout during a break-time chat. 

Last week at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif., 120 homeschoolers launched rockets, created solar etchings, and mixed moon sand. From a second story deck, they dropped “lunar landing modules” made with shoeboxes and bubble wrap enclosing raw eggs.

“I got a little flack about the egg drop from our facility director, who had to power wash dried egg off the pavement. But it was worth it,” said Jessica Ruskin, 44, the museum's education director.

Concerned parents and teachers have launched a petition drive to qualify a ballot measure that would repeal California’s controversial “co-ed bathroom” law, which requires schools to make accommodations for K-12 transgendered students.  

Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill in August, making the state the first in the nation to allow students to choose bathrooms, showers, locker rooms, and sports teams based on their “perceived” gender identity rather than their biological gender. 

On most weekday mornings 1-year-old William Niles wakes to his mother’s smile. His mother, Kristen Holt, 32, changes and feeds him before leaving for her job managing a clothing boutique. Instead of being rushed to day care, though, William spends early mornings in the family room where his grandfather plays guitar and sings worship songs. He routinely goes with his grandma to water the deck plants and then across the grassy backyard to pet the neighbor’s sheep.