Schools turn out for Vintage Festival parade
Harvest festivals go back to the dawn of civilization and the Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival is just about that old. Since 1897, folks have gathered to trade produce, wine, baked goods and tall tales. It is, in fact, the oldest such festival in California.
At this year’s parade, the school district was out in full force, complete with the SVHS band, and representatives from every school. The schools were identified by hand made banners and many participants were decked out in their schools’ spirit wear; students were accompanied by their families and their administrators. A conservative estimate places school participation at well over 500 people!
School board members Gary DeSmet, Nicole Abate-Ducarroz, Dan Gustafson, Sal Chavez and Britta Johnson were also in attendance, and like many, some of them were sporting the newly available SVHS spirit wear with the fierce yet friendly SVHS Dragon! And yes, of course, this was a ton of fun, with glow sticks, food, lights, and general (but harmless) shenanigans.
But just as important, however, is this show of strength and pride the emanates from our schools to our community and back again. What would our town be like without our children, whether they are literally “ours” or whether they are the children who live in and attend school in “our” community?
This is the town where I was fortunate to grow up, and I was fortunate to raise my own family here. In many ways, the experience has not changed that much. Sure, we live in a very different world, but the support that Sonoma provides to our schools is, if anything, even greater than it was when I was a student.
But the demographics of our student body have changed. Many more students are raised in poverty, and in fact carry the extra burden of multi-generational poverty. Much has been written about this, but unless one works directly with these students and their families, the literature is likely to be unfamiliar to you. In fact, in Sonoma, if one does not have children in the schools, the awareness of poverty itself in Sonoma might be abstract and hard to understand.
Yet we are fortunate to have so many here in the Valley who support these students through acts of generosity large and small, and through organizations such as the PTOs, the service organizations like Rotary, and, of course, the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation. It takes a Valley!
