Welcome to our board meeting!
Tonight I want to start by sharing some individual, school, and district accomplishments and celebrations. Antoine Serrano, junior at SUHI, was just awarded a full ride for the rigorous Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Program. Vienna Gambol, senior at CVHS, was just given a full-ride scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design, considered by many as the most prestigious school in the country. Art Lopez, SUHI teacher, and Dr. Roman Del Rosario were invited to present at the American Educational Research Association’s Annual Conference to share the expansion of our Computer Science program in Sweetwater UHSD.
Teacher Aida Jarrett, was notified by the Classroom of the Future Foundation that Hilltop Middle’s FLAGS Program was chosen for the 2016 Innovation in Education “Achieve” The Innovation in Education Awards highlight champions of educational innovation in the community for making a difference in education. Finally, we are looking forward to hearing the results of our students who qualified for the Greater San Diego Science & Engineering Fair coming soon.
Congratulations to SEA President Roberto Rodriguez, who was just elected to the CTA Board of Directors, District P. That area includes most of San Diego County and all of Imperial County. We thank you Roberto for his service to our district and we wish him well in his new position. His leadership in this new role will only help us in Sweetwater UHSD. We know he won’t forget us!
As some of you may know, Mary Wager, Human Resources Operations Manager, just accepted an HR Officer position in San Diego Unified. We are grateful for her work here in Sweetwater and we will miss her. To help us get through the end of the year, Dr. Tom Glover will be moving over to HR to work with “all things” related to classified employees; that includes recruitment, hiring, training, and labor relations. He will be part of the district negotiations team for CSEA. Dr. Glover has served formerly as the director of classified employees in the not-so-distant past and we appreciate him helping as he brings his expertise to this area of HR.
We are about to officially announce our partnership with SDSU and the R.I.S.E Program – Return and Inspire to become a Sweetwater Educator. This program will offer Compact Scholars at SDSU, who want to become a teacher, guaranteed employment in our district; especially, if they want to become a math, science or special education teacher. Isn’t that a great idea and an incredible way to close the loop on the Compact’s guaranteed admission! The purpose of R.I.S.E. is to help address the teacher shortage we are experiencing now and the anticipated shortage over the next 5-10 years. Secondly, R.I.S.E. will help us hire teachers who mirror our student demographics because they ARE our former students.
Our goal is to offer our Compact Scholars an opportunity to return to Sweetwater as a teacher and impact future generations in our community. The announcement event will take place at SDSU on April 20, 2016 from 4-6:00 p.m. Currently there are approximately 2000 Compact Scholars. SDSU is inviting Compact Scholar juniors and seniors who have declared education as their major as well as other potential teacher candidates. We plan to have our teachers of the year from every Sweetwater School and all principals attend. We have a very special speaker, Lindsay Goulet, SUHI alumnus and Compact Scholar, who is now a teacher at CVHS. It will be a very special event. More information to follow.
But, wait there’s more! Dr. Joe Johnson, SDSU’s Dean of the College of Education, asked if we might be interested in starting a R.I.S.E. Scholarship through SDSU’s Campanile Foundation. This sounds like a great opportunity to help our prospective educators with the cost of their additional year of teacher education. District leadership is happy to support the R.I.S.E. Scholarship program. We are inviting every employee and our Sweetwater community to donate to this meaningful effort.
Right now, there’s $2000 in the fund. Every donation will make a difference…anything from $5 to $500. Our first goal is to be able to demonstrate to our RISE Compact Scholars that their community is behind them. If you can, it would be great if you can donate before the April 20th event, so we can announce the scholarship to our future teachers. The flyer with all the pertinent information is attached if you are interested in making a donation. There will be a link very soon where you will be able to donate online. Thank you for your consideration of this very worthwhile endeavor.
Thank you for the opportunity to serve and support all of you!
Sincerely,
Karen Janney, Ed.D.