February 21, 2008 

IMPORTANT CALENDAR DATES

If you have items to add to the calendar, please e-mail the date and time along with a description to calendar@pacificaschool.org

DONTATIONS, DONATIONS, DONATIONS…

… for the art party. Please. The more we have the more money we can make for our kids. Any art, services, food, drinks or stuff you can donate will be appreciated so bring it to the school (see Carmen for big or breakable things) as soon as possible. Questions or comments? Drop a note in the Mokhtari box, or e-mail stephanie@pacificaschool.org

ART PARTY IS COMING ON SAT.  MARCH 1!

Sign up sheet for jobs coming soon in the entry hallway. Please sign up to help out. If everyone pitches in, it could mean thousands of dollars for our school. Thank you all for all you've already done!!!

CHARTER RENEWAL UPDATE

The LAUSD Charter Division has informed us that they are recommending a three year extension on our charter - until June, 2011. They were impressed with both our test score growth from 2006-2007 (34 points compared to the district average of 7 points) and our school this year.

Congratulations to all our hard working staff and parents for their passion, dedication and commitment! We will let you all know when we confirm the LAUSD Board date in early March.

MARCH SCHOLASTIC BOOK CLUBS

The order forms are in the family boxes. Please place orders by march 7th in the WEISSE family box. 

MEET YOUR COUNCILPERSONS!

In our continuing series of introductions of your Organization Council members, this week we present to you one of our Human Resources co-chairs, Laurie Monday: 

“Hello Pacificans – I am Laurie Monday, mom of Grace Conway in 2/3. Glen stood over me with an anvil to get me to write my bio for the Wednesday Weekly, so here goes: I am the new-ish co-chair of Human Resources, and wowie zowie are we busy!! I love volunteering for school and feel honored to be on the Council. This is our first year at Pacifica and we feel like we won the lottery – Grace is thriving and Jim (my hubby) and I are most grateful for the humanitarian values here that we try and espouse at home. Home, btw, is Venice, where we have lived for about a billion years. We love walking or bicycling to the beach and in fact, enjoy all things beachy and most things Venicy. I am a licensed psychotherapist and do a lot of work in the addictions field, sometimes with Jim, who is a well known addictions expert. We teach a class in ethics at UCLA every summer, for the Drug and Alcohol Studies Program. In my spare time, I make jewelry. (Bid a lot on the earrings I donated to the Art Show!!) Sometimes I spend so much time at it I think I need Jewelers Anonymous. We have a new puppy, a crazy Vizsla named Carmela, who is mending from knee surgery. Her favorite pastime appears to be chewing and shredding up the house. If I ever disappear, you could probably find me on the North Shore of Kauai, snorkeling my days away. That’s my life in a nutshell, and, oh, Glen didn’t really stand over me with an anvil, he merely asked very nicely.” 

CLASSROOM UPDATES 

2/3 Group:

The 2/3 group visited Chinatown for the Chinese New Year - the year of the Rat.  Rita and Jenny wanted to follow up the field trip with a few small projects which included writing about the experience and publishing their writing in scrolls, and artistic output in the form of painted dragons and scrolls. We are also wrapping up our gathering of information about Holland so the students can synthesize their learning into a presentable format. 

Sea World/Cabrillo Tide Pools - Many of the students are gearing up for their Sea World excursion next Tuesday. I will be leading other students on a field on trip to Cabrillo/White Point tide pools to explore the rocky inter-tidal zone and marine organisms that inhabit this area. We hope to come away with some hands-on experience about how marine scientists/ecologists study this zone and discuss how humans impact this area.