Tuesday’s school board meeting was full of recognitions for local students, including the Carlson twins and Prestwood School’s students of the year, Tsering Sherpa and Ricardo Pulido.
Alexandra and Melissa Carlson were honored by the board for their senior project, which provides guidelines for green schools. Pam Martens, Sonoma Valley Unified School District Superintendent, said the district is extremely pleased to recognize the program as well as all the other wonderful senior projects that have been completed this year.
“Sonoma Valley High School is the Valley’s first green school and we’re very proud for it to have that distinction,” said Martens.
From Prestwood, Tsering Sherpa and Ricardo Pulido were recognized as students of the year. Principal Beth Wolk commended each student’s contribution to the school community as well as their dedication to learning. The students were each presented with a plaque from school board president Dan Gustafson.
Peter Hansen, the high school’s video production program instructor, also took the podium to highlight his students’ contribution to the Sonoma Valley Film Festival. “Each year, my students sell out the student portion of the film festival,” he said. “They are passionate and they receive a huge amount of public support and recognition for all their hard work.”
During the public comment portion of the meeting, high school principal Micaela Philpot announced and congratulated the six high school students who had been selected as national merit scholars: Kirsten Aguilar, Dominic Amara, Peter Armstrong, David DeSmet, Sean Hammett, and Kevin McCarthy.
During staff reports, teachers’ union president Melanie Blake said that a tentative agreement had been reached about contract language and a calendar for next year. Student trustee Ethan Cohen mentioned Convention, when new student body officers were elected, and he highlighted the recent La Noche Latina dance at the high school. In the superintendent’s portion of the meeting, Pam Martens reported on the many fundraisers and outings she had attended on behalf of the school district.
Next up, Suzanne Heiser, a fourth-grade teacher from Prestwood gave a presentation about a school she had recently visited while at a conference in Long Beach. Lincoln Elementary is an urban elementary school that was in program improvement four years ago. With 903 students, many of whom are socio-economically disadvantaged as well as having language barriers, the school was losing students to other magnet and charter schools in the area. After hiring a new principal, the school created a model to pull itself out of PI. Today, the school has an API of over 800, it is a California Distinguished School and has high achieving classes in all classes from grades one through five.
Heiser is a fourth and fifth grade gifted coach and the model created by Lincoln elementary celebrated gifted students and used the power and achievements of those students throughout all the school’s classes. Heiser said it was interesting to see that the homogeneous grouping of students allowed all students to receive instruction at the level needed. Students were not intimidated by one another, were eager to raise their hands and were able to shine.
Louann Carlomagno, director of curriculum said she’d seen a similar model used at another southern California school called Lee Elementary and that the results were very inspiring and that this might be something that could work in Sonoma.
