Vaca Pena Middle School in Vacaville recently played host to the North Bay Honor Band for middle schools.
There were two days of rehearsal, culminating in a concert on Sunday.
“Students are selected by competitive taped auditions,” Ted Foreman, a teacher at Green Valley Middle School, said in an email sent through a third party.
Source: Good News: Middle school honor band holds concert | News | dailyrepublic.com
By Richard Bammer
Several Solano County education leaders on Thursday said the so-called “nation’s report card,” indicating that America’s children have continued to show declines in reading skills and made little progress in math, underscore needs and opportunities for improvement.
Given every two years to a sample of America’s children, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered one of the best gauges of the academic progress of the U.S. school system. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the most recent exam was administered in early 2024 in every state, testing fourth- and eighth-grade students on math and reading.
Source: Solano educators: Nation’s ‘report card’ underscores needs, opportunities – The Vacaville Reporter
The Vacaville Unified School District is prepared to navigate a possible classified employee strike.The district’s classified staff voted to authorize a strike. No date has been set.
“Our primary focus remains ensuring that learning continues in our classrooms and that our student’s educational experience is minimally disrupted,” the district wrote in an email to the Daily Republic.
Vacaville Unified School District classified staff voted to authorize a strike, saying “it is looking imminent.”
No date has been set. District management could not be reached for comment.
Source: Vacaville classified employees announce strike vote | News | dailyrepublic.com
Vacaville Unified trustees will meet tonight in regular session as members of the Service Employees International Union Local 1021 — some 700 school-support employees ranging from bus drivers and special education aides to maintenance workers and custodians — threaten to strike.
Chelsea Fink, a communications specialist with the union, said lead negotiator Casey Thompson and others have been in talks with district officials for a “successor contract” for some nine months and have met well more than a dozen times to resolve contract and other matters.
Source: VUSD trustees to meet as school-support employees threaten strike – The Vacaville Reporter
By Richard Bammer
Like an adolescent, Kairos Public Schools, which currently enrolls nearly 800 students in TK-12 classes, keeps growing and growing. It will enroll nearly 900 students next year and will have its own separate high school in 18 months in east Vacaville.
The bold plans are part of an “exciting new chapter” to expand opportunities for the independent charter school’s students and the Vacaville community, Jared Austin, superintendent and CEO of Kairos, said in a press statement.
That chapter includes construction of the school’s first permanent high school, the Kairos Luminary Academy High School. Groundbreaking is set for this summer and its estimated completion date is July 2026, he said in an email to The Reporter.
Source: Kairos plans ‘new chapter’ in Vacaville – The Vacaville Reporter
Whether it’s in the form of digital assistants like “Siri” and “Alexa” or a Facebook video of a cat clumsily dancing on two legs, there’s no doubt that AI — artificial intelligence — is increasingly common in our everyday lives.
That includes education.
Depending on who you ask, its role in the classroom is either the first step towards inevitable doom or the first step towards an enlightened future.
Source: Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom: Pros and Cons – Times Herald Online
The Vacaville People’s Forum and Vacaville City Councilman Greg Ritchie will team up to present the fifth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Celebration, from noon to 2 p.m. onMonday, Jan. 20, at the Sunrise Banquet Hall & Event Center, 620 Orange Drive, in Vacaville.
Doors will open at 11 a.m. so attendees have time to visit more than a dozen resourcetables offered by local non-profit organizations, organizers said in a press release. The free event will feature DJ Al Ilaoa, with live music by the Sylvan Singers of Will C. Wood High School and the Vacaville School of Rock, and dancers from Bliss Urban Arts Center and the Vacaville Neighborhood Boys & Girls Club.
Source: Vacaville People’s Forum to host annual MLK Day of Celebration – The Vacaville Reporter
By Richard Bammer
It may be a cliched story but still a true one for some: a teacher somewhere along a student’s education path influenced them to become a teacher.
“I had amazing teachers,” said Renee Yeasted, a Vallejo native and a traditional kindergarten teacher at Hemlock Elementary in Vacaville, said during a brief telephone interview Monday.
Which explains, in part, why she entered the profession, one in which she can exercise a deeply felt emotion every day at work, and also explains why she has been named as this year’s Vacaville Unified Teacher of the Year.
Source: VUSD’s Teacher of the Year ‘really passionate’ about teaching TK – The Vacaville Reporter
By Robin Miller
It was 25 years ago that two students walked into Columbine High School and opened fire, killing 13 people and wounding 21 others before turning the guns on themselves. Monday’s school shooting at a Madison, Wisc., school has once again stirred the same debates that raged over school safety and gun violence back then.
In the wake of the most recent shooting, parents and school leaders across the nation are again talking about the issues.
Source: Latest school shooting spurs safety conversations in Vacaville – The Vacaville Reporter
By Richard Bammer
Tonight will mark the Vacaville Unified governing board’s last meeting of 2024, and two newly elected women will be sworn in as the school district’s newest trustees — just in time to hear the school district’s 2024-25 first interim budget numbers and see some projected red ink.
Audra Orr, a retired state Department of Justice special agent and retired Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel representing Trustee Area 4, and Michele Guerra, chairwoman of the Solano County Republican Central Committee representing Trustee Area 7, will take the oath of office.
Source: On VUSD agenda: New trustees, board reorganization, budget report – The Vacaville Reporter
Vacaville is one of 10 recipients honored with a League of California Cities Helen Putnam Award for Excellence.
Vacaville was recognized for its commitment to youth engagement and community service with the Ruth Vreeland Award. This award celebrates the city’s Summer at City Hall program, which empowers high school students by blending classroom learning with hands-on internships in local government.
Source: Vacaville honored for ‘Summer at City Hall’ program | News | dailyrepublic.com
By Richard Bammer
While Sacramento leaders are singing the blues about the 2024-25 state budget, freighted with $46.8 billion in red ink, a Vacaville Unified labor group hears the same tune.
Barbra Hamilton, chapter president of the Vacaville Unified School District chapter of Local 1021 of the Service Employees International Union, said Wednesday district, after some eight months of fruitless negotiations, “is bargaining in bad faith.”
Source: VUSD chapter of Local 1021 of SEIU still without new contract – The Vacaville Reporter
By Nick McConnell
As voters across the country head to the polls to pick a new president, Solano County voters will make their voices heard in down-ballot races.
Vallejo voters will select a new mayor and will vote in city council districts one, three and five. Vacaville voters will weigh-in for contested city council races in districts three and five and will select new school board trustees in Vacaville Unified School District areas four and seven. Vacaville will also vote on Measure E, a school bond issue.
Source: Local races, issues on November ballot – Times Herald Online
By Richard Bammer
Vacaville Unified School District leaders appear to have a relatively light agenda when they meet Thursday night in Vacaville.
The governing board likely will adopt a resolution declaring support for Red Ribbon Week, Oct. 23-31, the nationwide campaign — this year themed is “Life is a Movie, Film Drug Free” — to join in tobacco, alcohol and other drug-prevention programs, activities, and, according to wording in the agenda documents, “making a visible statement and commitment to healthy, drug-free communities.”
Source: On the VUSD board agenda: Designating Red Ribbon Week – The Vacaville Reporter
By Nick McConnell
If excellence is what students at the Shereene Wilkerson Academy of Excellence seek, they need only look to their new namesake for an example that is, well, excellent.
Wilkerson served with the Vacaville Police Department in the 1970s as the city’s first School Resource Officer and set up the Youth Services Section for the department, which still serves community youth today. In 1980, she started working for the Vacaville Unified School District as a teacher, where she became Teacher of the Year in her first year at Vacaville High School. Wilkerson eventually became a principal and was later promoted to the district office, where she finished her career as Associate Superintendent.
By Nick McConnell
Five Vacaville Unified School District Board of Trustees candidates from Areas Four and Seven participated in a forum hosted by the Vacaville Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday night at Travis Credit Union. Asked a series of questions throughout the two-hour forum by chamber CEO Debbie Egidio, candidates expanded on their policy platforms, giving answers on spending, their priorities for the district, and their motivations for running.
In Area Four, incumbent Lindsay Kelly, elected in a 2023 special election, is running against Audra Orr, a former military member and police officer. In Area Seven, 21-year incumbent Michael Kitzes is running against challengers George Burton, a father in the district with longstanding family ties in the area and Michele Guerra, Chair of the Solano County Republican Central Committee.
Source: Vacaville Chamber holds VUSD Forum – The Vacaville Reporter
By Thomas Gase
As numerous Vallejo High School basketball and volleyball players walked into Bottari Gym on Monday afternoon, they were floored with what they saw.
Nearly 11 years after the school changed its mascot name from the Apaches to the Redhawks, the old gym had its floor replaced during the past month. The floor’s center now has the logo of the Redhawks in a design that was made by current Vallejo High athletic director and head baseball coach as well as head boys basketball coach Andrew Johansen.
“This is amazing,” Johansen said while looking that the gym on Monday. “It’s nice to know the student athletes have something new and something to be proud of. I’m just so glad this was done.”
Source: Vallejo High gets new floor for Bottari gym – Times Herald Online
By Richard Bammer
A Vacaville Unified School District official will update district trustees on the 2024-25 proposed spending plans for arts, music and instructional materials for several schools, and the governing board likely will approve two related agenda items during a public meeting Thursday night.
In a computer-aided slide presentation, Ali Eeds, director of secondary education, will note the money comes from a block grant from the Arts & Music in Schools Funding Guarantee & Accountability Act, Proposition 28.
Source: VUSD leaders to hear update on arts and music in schools – The Vacaville Reporter
By Richard Bammer
Vacaville Unified School District leaders will hear a facilities update and discuss Measure E, a $317 million general obligation bond program on the Nov. 5 ballot, when they meet Saturday morning for a special governing board workshop.
Adam Rich, the district’s senior director of facilities, will lead the workshop.
If approved by 55 percent of district voters, the bond will pay for new buildings and modernize or renovate others across the school district’s 19 campuses. If approved, it would levy costs to property owners of $48 per $100,000 of assessed value annually.
Source: VUSD leaders to discuss proposed new bond measure at special meeting – The Vacaville Reporter