Good morning. It’s Tuesday, and I’m reading about Brandy Melville’s opening weekend downtown. Onto the five Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

Cal Poly Track and Field’s men won the Big West Championships for the second year in a row, and the women’s team placed second to UC Irvine by just 1.5 points. The teams won eight medals total at the meet. The men’s distance runners pulled a lot of the weight, with two athletes responsible for winning all four distance events — in the 1500m race, the Mustangs swept the first four places. Now, the teams await the qualifying times to know who’s going to the NCAA West Regionals.

Oluwalanayo Somotun / Mustang News

2.

PG&E might refund its customers the $43 million that it forced people to pay after a unit of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant unexpectedly shut down for repairs in 2021. The energy company initially sloughed the costs of replacement power onto ratepayers, but two judges are now suggesting that PG&E is responsible for covering the hefty bill since it could have been prevented with proper equipment tests. This was the fourth time the power plant shut down for maintenance in 2020 and 2021. 

Stephanie Zappelli / The Tribune

3.

Students with disabilities in California will now be able to receive state funding to attend religious private schools, thanks to a court settlement yesterday. Since 1993, the state has funded private school for children with disabilities, but only if they are secular. A group of Orthodox Jewish parents sued the state last year after their children’s religious beliefs and practices were compromised at non-Jewish schools. The court ruled that this violated constitutional freedom of religion and the state passed up the chance to appeal the decision.

Bob Egelko / San Francisco Chronicle

4.

Entry-level hiring at tech firms is down 50% since 2019. It has declined in startup companies, but the biggest drop is is Big Tech, where anything less than five years of experience has seen a drop in hiring interest. Experts say that “lean is in” for these companies, most wanting to cut costs and hire people who already know what they’re doing to cut down on training. “It used to be the land of milk and honey, where students had considerable choice,” one professor said. “But that abundance just isn’t there anymore.”

Rya Jetha and Ezra Wallach / The San Francisco Standard

5.

Vets want your pet to have access to cannabis. But regulators are looking at a near-total THC ban for animals, in what the drug’s defenders call a “dangerous” move and a “step backwards.” If the ban were to go into place, some pets would face steep hills to get strong pain relief, pet-geared pot products would decrease and owners could potentially turn to human products that have much higher levels and a much higher risk for overshooting the vet’s dosage. One vet said in the right dose, THC is “very, very beneficial from a medical standpoint.”

Lester Black / SFGate