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Common core, eScrip, pot, college visits, PSAT

Education Roundup

The Boys & Girls Club has leased a portable classroom at its Maxwell clubhouse location to accommodate its burgeoning teen program. The club is also rolling out a Khan Academy pilot program (khanacademy.org) for its students to experiment with after school, which I will be reporting more on shortly. Thanks to the Vadasz Family Foundation, several BGC sites began the pilot, using Kahn Academy to increase math competency, at the end of the last semester.

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Every school district in California is scrambling to make the transition from the California State Standards to the new national Common Core standards. As California has always been considered to have rigorous standards, the concern is not so much that the Common Core standards are harder, they are just so different that it will involve a lot of teacher training to make the switch. Some specific examples, the Common Core eliminates cursive instruction, it changes the year that multiplication takes place, critical reading will be stressed starting in the lower grades and most importantly, it relies less on memorization and more on real-world challenges and higher-order thinking. Sonoma is taking aggressive steps to be ready. We’ll be reporting on Sonoma’s efforts to switch over to the new standards in the weeks ahead.

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Walking through Sassarini last week at lunch time I was excited to see the students enjoying what looked to be a delicious and healthy lunch of whole wheat tortilla chicken fajitas and fresh fruit. It bore no resemblance to what I was served in grade school.

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Every school in Sonoma has a program whereby the simple act of signing up (for free) at Safeway and/or at Lucky supermarket results in a contribution made every time you shop and show your savings card. If you haven’t heard of eScrip, it is hard to explain here, but I urge you to ask your school PTO. If you are already signed up, pay it forward and explain the process to a new family. Sonoma Market does a similar program (ask for details). These consumer rewards programs are one of the few sources of easy money for our schools. I shop at Target so much that I ended up getting its (no annual fee) “red” charge card because it gives 5 percent off every purchase automatically and a donation is made every time it is used, to the school of your choice.

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The website Daily Tekk has created a list of 101 indispensible websites for students (of all ages). Many I had heard of but many are new and truly astounding. Check them out here: tinyurl.com/8mtwchh.

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I was surprised to learn that 85 percent of children’s learning is related to vision, and that in the U.S., 80 percent of children haven’t had an eye exam before they start kindergarten (Science Daily 8/30/12). Make sure your children’s eyes are checked before they start any type of school, including pre-school. Kids can’t tell you that they can’t see well because they have no basis for comparison.

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The Robert Ferguson Observatory at 2605 Adobe Road in Kenwood is hosting a public star viewing party on Saturday, Sept. 15 at 9 p.m. It offers night sky classes as well. Its website at rfo.org has all the details.

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Sunday, Sept. 16 is the first free admission day of this school year at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Go to calacademy.org.

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It is that time of year again when colleges around the United States visit the Sonoma Valley High campus to present to students. This week, seven colleges will be on campus: University of Alabama, California College of the Arts, St. Mary’s College of California, CSU Humboldt, Azusa Pacific University, Portland State University and University of Connecticut. Encourage your junior or senior to look at the exact times and locations, and get a pass to attend from the College & Career Center.

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Hanna Boys Center hosts its 20th annual Golf & Tennis Classic later this month. On Friday, Sept. 14, the tennis event will be held at the Silverado Country Club and on Monday, Sept. 24, the golf event will be held at Sonoma Golf Club. To buy tickets or for more information, visit hannacenter.org. If you haven’t been out to Hanna to see how its campus has been transformed, I highly recommend going up there for a tour.

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New at the Kenwood School this year is the Toolbox Project, something I look forward to hearing more about. The program was developed by Mark Collin, a Santa Rosa resident, and I gather it is a comprehensive K-8 curriculum in social and emotional learning. The Toolbox Project is currently being implemented in various school districts in Northern California.  Go to toolboxproject.org.

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Maybe our parents were right: the British Broadcasting System (BBC) last week reported that researchers have found that kids who started smoking pot below the age of 18 – while their brains were still developing – suffered a drop in IQ. For more than 20 years, researchers have followed the lives of a group of people – beginning before any of them had started using marijuana – and then re-interviewed them repeatedly, up to the age of 38. They found that those who persistently used cannabis – smoking it at least four times a week year after year through their teens onward – suffered a decline in their IQ. The more that people smoked, the greater the loss in IQ. The effect was most marked in those who started smoking pot as adolescents, and no loss was found among those who began as adults. Stopping or reducing use failed to fully restore the lost IQ.

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The Sonoma County YMCA Youth Court is a juvenile diversion program for misdemeanor offenders. The program is being expanded into our area and they are looking for both donations (tax deductible) and volunteers. Volunteer opportunities include youth attorney training, serving as jurors and Youth Court internships. Contact Jim Yarborough at 320-3587 or jmsyrb@gmail.com for more information.

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The more familiar a student is with college placement testing, the less stressful and, hopefully, more successful it will be. I urge sophomores and juniors to take the (practice) PSAT at Sonoma High on Saturday, Oct. 20, at 8 a.m. in the Pavilion. The fee is $25 and the test gives students a lot of useful data on their strengths and weaknesses before the real SAT.

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Student volunteers are needed for the Prestwood Fall Carnival on Friday, Sept. 21 from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Email Jana Fiorito at mjfio@comcast.net if you are interested.

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If your son or daughter (of any age) doesn’t love to read, you might try audiobooks, either downloaded to an iPod from audible.com or on CDs from the library. Many kids find that they love to unwind listening to a book at night and many will stick with it for many more hours than they would hold a book.

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California has sunk from the middle to the bottom in the nation on education spending per pupil. You’ll be asked to vote on an important ballot item regarding education funding on Saturday, Nov. 6. Take the time today to begin educating yourself on the pros and cons at voterguide.sos.ca.gov.

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This is my 50th column. If you are trying to recall something I wrote about in the past, every column is archived on The Sonoma Index-Tribune website. My goal for this year is to share more news from the elementary and middle schools. Please send me story ideas.