Kids are slipping through the cracks in the Claremont Unified School District, Lynette Lucas asserted at the Thursday, March 7 school board meeting.
“You have the power to save a community of children that is essentially dying,” she told the school board during a public hearing for the Embracing the Whole Child Arts and Technology Academy.
An earlier petition filed by Ms. Lucas, executive director of the Oxnard-based Embracing the Whole Child Foundation (EWCF), and EWCF president Julie Thompson was rejected in June of 2012.
If it had to happen to any production, this is the one. With the opening of the newly renovated Don Fruechte Theatre for Performing Arts delayed until March 22, the Claremont High School Theatre Department’s “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” opens tonight in the Multipurpose Room at Sycamore Elementary School.
It’s a fitting setting for a show based on the vicissitudes of a group of misfit spelling bee contestants.
“We’re very fortunate. ‘Medea’ wouldn’t have worked here,” said CHS Theatre Director Krista Elhai, referring to her students’ upcoming production of the classic Greek play. COURIER photo/Steven Felschundneff
Claremont Graduate University has announced the winner of the 2013 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.
Poet and essayist Marianne Boruch has taken the $100,000 prize, one of the largest poetry awards in the United States, for her 2011 poetry collection The Book of Hours.
The award is given each year to a poet who is past the beginning stages of his or her career but who has yet to reach its pinnacle.
“We are delighted to honor these poets and celebrate their achievements,” Wendy Martin, director of the Tufts Poetry Awards, said.
Seven local students and 5 student groups were honored on Wednesday as the winners of the city’s 23rd annual Making a Change contest. Through the competition, local elementary, junior high and high school students living or attending Claremont schools are invited to submit an essay on social justice issues.
The contest is designed to increase awareness among Claremont youth of the contributions made by human rights champion Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
President Lori Bettison-Varga recently announced a $5.3 million pledge to Scripps College from current Scripps College Board of Trustee Nancy Katayama, Scripps class of 1977.
“Scripps College’s intellectually stimulating community is enriched by the valuable support of our trustees,” Ms. Bettison-Varga said. “Nancy embodies the best of Scripps graduates’ leadership, integrity, creativity and community engagement. She believes in making a difference and with this forward-looking pledge, Scripps students will benefit now and in the future.”
At the latest meeting of the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education, the board took a vote on whether to join districts across the nation—including nearby Glendora Unified School District—in urging Congress to rescind across-the-board federal cuts to education.
Unless Congress is able to reach a last-minute compromise to stop sequestration, which would involve $1.2 trillion in cuts to federal funding for programs ranging from public education to the military to Medicare, schools across the nation will face a 6 percent slash in federal funding.
Two pieces of district property, the site of the short-lived La Puerta Intermediate School and the current Service Center site, were declared surplus on Thursday at the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education meeting.
The school board first voted unanimously to ratify the January 17 recommendation of the Surplus Property Advisory Committee, also known as the 7-11 Committee, to declare the La Puerta property surplus. It was an unsurprising decision, given the land, located at 2745 N. Forbes Ave., has been all but abandoned in recent years.
The fate of district property will be mulled at the next meeting of the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education, set for Thursday, February 21.
Board members will vote on whether or not to ratify the January 17 recommendation of the Surplus Advisory Committee that 2 parcels of district land be declared surplus, ideally in preparation for sale.
Two votes will be taken, one regarding the site of the short-lived La Puerta Intermediate School, 9.7 acres located at 2475 N. Forbes Ave., and a second regarding the 3.5-acre site of the district’s current Service Center (700 W. Base Line Rd.).
It was all good news when President Barack Obama appointed Pitzer College President Laura Skandera Trombley to the 12-member J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
In this prestigious position—for which she was sworn in at a February 11 ceremony in Washington, DC—she will not only be expected to meet quarterly to help establish policies for Fulbright selection and operating procedures. Ms. Trombley is also encouraged to travel as much as possible, serving as an ambassador for the program.
If you have a little bit of talent and a lot of dedication, greatness is within your grasp. This was the message delivered by Lincoln Peirce, author of the popular Big Nate book series, when he stopped by Foothill Country Day School on February 8 to talk about his journey from doodling kid to comic strip creator to best-selling author.
As a boy, Mr. Peirce loved the “Peanuts” comics, so he was inspired when he read this piece of wisdom in an interview with the legendary Charles Schulz. “To be a cartoonist, you need to be a good writer, not a great writer, and a good artist, not a great artist.”
COURIER photo/Steven Felschundneff
Cartoonist and author Lincoln Peirce demonstrates the scribble game during a talk at Foothill Country Day School on Thursday. The game involves closing one’s eyes, making a scribble and then trying to make it into a cartoon character. On Thursday Mr. Peirce made a clown out of his scribble. More in our next edition. COURIER photo/Steven Felschundneff
The Thursday, February 7 meeting of the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education started with the swearing-in of 2 new student board members and the acceptance of a second petition by a potential Claremont charter school, the Embracing the Whole Child Arts and Technology Academy.
Claremont High School student Carolyn Bird and San Antonio High School student Aimee Orcasitas got started right away, delivering reports on the activities of local schools later in the meeting. The petition for Embracing the Whole Child Academy, proposed by Lynette Lucas, will be reviewed at a public hearing at the May 17, 2013 gathering of the school board.
Contrary to appearances, there was no time machine involved in this blast-to-the-past. Instead, it was just another night where they made an attempt for a group photo in a longstanding dance class taught by retired Claremont High School show team coach Michele Allen. The program, which is offered through the El Roble PFA and which Ms. Allen has led since the late 1980s, allows kids on the brink of their teenage years, to have fun and blow off steam while learning to engage with the opposite sex. COURIER photo/Steven Felschundneff
