BIKE PATROL: Last year, a Buena High...

BIKE PATROL: Last year, a Buena High School student was stabbed during an on-campus fight with another student. With that in mind, Principal Jaime Castellanos and his top administrators set out to tighten security when the Ventura school opened Wednesday (B1). They mounted a couple of bikes and patrolled the campus. . . . “It’s an idea that came from a parent,” Castellanos said, moments after swapping his coat and tie for a T-shirt and shorts. “But it’s a different way of trying to secure the campus.”

BIG DEFENSE: What do you get when you return eight starters to a defense ranked No. 1 in the conference last season? Over at Cal Lutheran, football coach Joe Harper figures you get the nucleus of a pretty good team (C8). . . . “We feel pretty confident with our defense right now,” Harper said. “How could we not with the people we have?” . . . The Thousand Oaks university opens the season next week against Claremont-Mudd, a team the Kingsmen crushed 44-9 in the final game of last season.

USED GOODS: First it was cans and bottles. Then food scraps. Now comes the ultimate in recycling: children’s clothes. . . . Ventura County is home to a growing number of consignment stores (Ventura County Life, Page 8) that take kids’ clothes, sell them at a fraction of the original cost and give you a cut of the sale. . . . “We’re teaching recycling in school, why not teach the reuse of clothing too?” asks Jenny Horst, owner of Kidz Stuff in Thousand Oaks.

WORLD TRADE: Want to test the international marketplace? Come to Oxnard, which has a federally funded program designed to introduce small-business owners to the export trade. . . . The Small Business Development Center of Southern California has run the export program out of Oxnard for more than three years. . . . “We don’t have people just talking about international trade and why it’s a good idea,” said Heather Wicka, program administrator for the center. “We have people talking about how you pick a country. How you pick a product.”