The Friends of the Claremont Library has announced Susan Straight’s novel Take One Candle Light a Room as its 2013 selection for the citywide “On the Same Page” (OSTP) reading program.
The goal of this annual event is to engage community residents in a public discussion regarding a work of fiction, or non-fiction, that forms the foundation for a common experience and encourages the pleasure of reading.
Selections from previous years have included The Soloist by Steve Lopez, Into the Beautiful North by Lluis Alberto Urrea, and last year’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
Three community members took to the podium at the Thursday, March 21 meeting of the Claremont Unified School District to express concern about the board’s recent decision to declare 2 pieces of district property surplus.
The first of these was Barbara Solorzano, who teaches “Mommy, Daddy, Grandparents and Me” parenting classes through the Claremont Adult School, which are designed for children ages 18 months through 5 years and their caregivers.
Ms. Solorzano said she came to “clarify a misconception,” which was printed in recent Claremont COURIER articles, that the site of the La Puerta Intermediate School had been abandoned in recent years.
With Governor Jerry Brown proposing a new K-12 funding system, the future of the Baldy View Regional Occupational Program is uncertain.
At the Thursday, March 7 meeting of the Claremont school board, board president and Baldy View ROP Commissioner Mary Caenepeel reported that employees of the local Joint Powers Authority—which provides career technical education (CTE) to residents of Claremont, Upland, Chino and Chaffey Joint Union school districts—have all been given pink slips.
Claremont schools may soon be one step closer to having a new base of facility operations.
At the next meeting of the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education, set for Thursday, March 21, the board will vote on whether the district should hire Flewelling & Moody Architects to undertake a design study of the relocation of the district’s current Service Center. The contract would cost CUSD $19,820.
There’s no getting around it. Johnathan Thomas, a local psychologist and the founder of a fast-growing local meditation group, is a bibliophile.
He devours 3 books a week, furthering his spiritual development with books on Buddhism and occasionally indulging in the guilty pleasure of a supernatural romance.
As a student of Zen Buddhism, which teaches adherents to focus on small moments of beauty, he sometimes take a moment to savor a book as a physical object, flipping through its pages and breathing in the scent of ink on paper.
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.).
