It started out as just a class where students could find their voice through art.
But Rise Up Radio has become much more than that for a group of Peoples High School students.
“This really helped me come out and be more out there. At the end of the day, this is going to help us out in the future,” said Alejandra Ambriz, a 17-year-old senior at the continuation high school.
Golden Hills Community School celebrated its new, $4.7 million classroom building on February 27! The building contains six classrooms, including a computer lab. It will serve the 72 high school students referred to the school by the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District. The previous school was housed in a temporary building on the Golden Hills campus that was beyond modernization. Construction money came from state bonds.
via Golden Hills Community School celebrated its new, $4.7 million classroom buildin….
FAIRFIELD — Golden Hills Community School on Wednesday celebrated its new, $4.7 million classroom building.
The building contains six classrooms, including a computer lab. It will serve the 72 high school students referred to the school by the Fairfield-Suisun School District.
Buildings show who a community is and what it values, county Superintendent of Schools Jay Speck said. The new classroom complex shows the students that they deserve a nice facility, he said.
The alternative school lacks a science lab — a fact noted by during a recent accreditation team visit. Benicia High School has several labs.
via Benicia school board to talk about science lab at Liberty High School.
FAIRFIELD — It was all about the “A” Monday morning at the Matt Garcia Learning Center.
Students packed into the cafeteria to hear from a panel of local businessmen and view the film “Bring Your ‘A’ Game.”
“School teaches you skills, education teaches you how to use those skills,” said Andre W. Davis Sr., who facilitated the event. Davis is with the county’s juvenile justice delinquency prevention commission.
FAIRFIELD — Thirty iPads were stolen last month from Sem Yeto High School and the thieves left no sign of forced entry into the building.
School officials were alerted the morning of Sept. 18 of the burglary that occurred the night before. According to Lt. Greg Hurlbut, the room was locked at 11 p.m. Sept. 17 and the burglary was noticed at 7 a.m. the next day.
The iPads were used by the Bridge to Success program and were stored in a locked cart, which was pried open, Hurlbut said. He said there was no damage to the classroom where they were stored, but said that doesn’t necessarily mean it was an inside job.
Solano County Office of Education’s Facebook Wall
SCOE’s Juvenile Court and Community Schools’ staff spent August 13 discussing Common Core Standards, STEM (science, engineering, technology, and mathematics) professional development opportunities, and listening to a presentation on gangs by the Fairfield Police Department.
via SCOE’s Juvenile Court and Community Schools’ staff spent August 13 discussing Co….
Yeah, they were a little late.
But so what?
“We may not have done it on time, but walking on this stage today just goes to show we never really gave up, and all our hard work really paid off,” Vallejo High School’s Ahury Martinez said, dressed in a white cap and gown.
Martinez was one of 34 Vallejo students who graduated Thursday from the Vallejo City Unified School District’s summer school program. They spent the last several weeks finishing classes and making up credits.
via Vallejo students refuse to give up, snag high school diplomas.
It may be a month after traditional high school graduation season, but there was one more cap-and-gown ceremony Wednesday afternoon in Vacaville.
Twenty-nine students from four Vacaville Unified School District high schools walked across a stage at Will C. Wood High School to receive their diplomas from school district trustees Whit Whitman and David McCallum in the Catwalk Theater on the Marshall Road campus.
via Students back on track in Vacaville; have diploma to prove it.
Sutter Medical Foundation hires six Dream Team interns.
The Dream Team interns are students enrolled at Golden Hills Community School, part of the Solano County Office of Education, who’ve been expelled from public school or are on probation. Golden Hills Community School’s mission is to give the kids a well-rounded education to get them back on track with their academics. The Dream Team program helps to carry this mission through the summer months by providing meaningful jobs at area employers. Read more – http://www.solanocoe.net/pdf/2012-06-18_dreamteamprogram.pdf
via Sutter Medical Foundation hires six Dream Team interns.
The Dream Team interns….
A grand jury report recommends expanding a Solano County juvenile hall gardening program so that the food grown in the garden can be incorporated into daily meals.
The Solano County Juvenile Detention Facility garden program currently donates all its produce to local food banks.
Food staff could not cite any code or contractual impediments to serving the food grown in the garden, the Solano County Grand Jury said.
via Grand jury urges Solano County to grow juvenile hall gardening program.
Travis Unified School District announced Monday that it lost a valued member of its administrative team following the death of Tom Newsom, principal of Alternative Programs at the Travis Education Center.Newsom, “the heart and soul of education for students in the district’s alternative programs” died Sunday, according to a press release.
“He had a heart for all students that was evident every day when he walked onto the campus of the Travis Education Center,” said Kate Wren Gavlak, superintendent of the Travis Unified School District, in a press release. “Students loved and respected Mr. Newsom, as did parents and staff members, alike.”
She worked with Newsom for seven years and from day one his passion for the students was evident, she said.
With family and friends dispensing shout-outs, screams and cheers, 58 Country High seniors, the largest graduating class in the Vacaville alternative school’s history, picked up their diplomas, posed for photographs with district trustees, then walked across the Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre stage, ready for the next passage in their young lives.
After a 35-minute ceremony Thursday evening, the newly minted graduates, clad in shiny bright blue robes, and more than 500 people in the standing-room-only audience, gathered in the Vacaville Cultural Center’s courtyard for cake, conversation, congratulations and still more memento photos.
Graduate Tyler Grinston, standing in the VPAT lobby and holding two celebratory metallic balloons, flashed a megawatt smile as relatives circled around to shake his hand or hug him.
“I’m happy,” he said, adding that he plans to study at Solano Community College and hopes to become a police officer. “I feel good.”
FAIRFIELD — Brandon Williams held on to his walker as he gave his fellow Fairfield-Suisun Adult School graduates this message: We finally made it.
Williams was weeks away from earning his GED and joining the California National Guard when he suffered a massive stroke. The doctors told him he had major nerve damage and may never see again.
Standing in front of his classmates, Williams can now walk and see and, after five years of working toward it, he can finally say he earned his high school diploma.
“Now, I’m here, standing in cap and gown, finally a high school graduate, ” he said.
For the students of Vallejo’s Peoples High School graduating is not a foregone conclusion, making Wednesday’s ceremony even more meaningful.
“It was not a sure thing for most of these students,” said Peoples’ new principal Edison Kelly. “It’s hard to describe that sensation, when you see that light bulb come on in a student others have given up on, and they beat the odds.”
Guest speaker Pastor Dante Quick echoed that sentiment.
“I assume you’re at Peoples because there were obstacles in your way and that somebody didn’t think you could make it,” he told some
Two years ago, Kevin York thought he’d never be able to walk across the stage and receive his diploma.
That was then. York has spent the intervening time making up more than 100 deficient credits — all while battling a degenerative disease.
“Toward the end of my junior year, I felt that I could do this,” said York, an 18-year-old senior who suffers from muscular dystrophy and who will graduate tonight from Jesse Bethel High School.
The disease progressively weakens an individual’s muscles, with symptoms varying from person to person. Though diagnosed at about 4 years old, York’s muscular dystrophy didn’t really manifest until high school, where it left him tired and unable to keep up with his school work.
FAIRFIELD — As the Sem Yeto High School senior class walked the processional during graduation, a deafening applause erupted from the stands.
A total of 173 seniors received their diplomas Wednesday night during the 2012 commencement in the Solano Community College gym.
Friends and family yelled as loudly and proudly as they could while they watched a sea of blue robes step closer to their future.
Fairfield-Suisun School Board members along with Superintendent Jacki Cottingim-Dias were also cheering for the Class of 2012, though not as loudly as friends and family.
By
The last time Lerone Matthis was released from the Division of Juvenile Justice, in April 2008, he feared he had reached bottom.
“I was discouraged by the prospects for a meaningful future,” Matthis recalled.
He didn’t have a place to rest his head, bathe, or change his clothes. He wore the same jeans and a white shirt that was dingy around the neck because it hadn’t been washed for a month. He bought socks from a neighborhood liquor store, relied on relatives and friends for food and shelter, and at times the former foster youth simply went hungry.
However, Matthis had earned a GED in jail. When he got out, he enrolled in City College of San Francisco through an educational support system for the formerly incarcerated. Still, the 29-year-old single father of two young children never believed he would graduate.
via Foster youths’ financial climb through college getting even steeper – by Rosa Ramirez.
Sarafina Johnson is ready for a new life.
That’s why, just weeks after graduating as the Peoples High School valedictorian, the 18-year-old Johnson will point herself east and resettle in Georgia.
“I have big plans for the future,” said Johnson, who hopes to enroll in a fashion and design school in Georgia.
Johnson, who graduated in October, has never been to Georgia, but is looking forward to the move.
via Vallejo student heading for Georgia after People’s High commencement.
It may have taken her 23 years, but Tesha Wallace will proudly walk the stage tonight and receive her high school diploma.
“There is nothing stopping you,” said Wallace, 41, who faced a sudden loss of her medical field job — and the barriers to employment that come with not having her high school diploma.
In the seven months she’s been at the Vallejo Adult School, the mother of four has launched a fashion line and a Berkeley-based business called The Pineapple House, which focuses on bulk pineapple cream pies.
via Vallejo Adult School students ready to pick up diplomas tonight.