Sacramento City Unified School District eConnection Newsletter

Sacramento City Unified School District:

SCUSD.EDU PUTTING CHILDREN FIRST SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

District Calendar of Events School Lunch Menus SCUSD Kicks Off School Year with Breakfast Event Pencils? Check. Paper? Check. Yogurt and fresh fruit? Check! To emphasize the link between healthy eating and student academic success, SCUSD sponsored a free breakfast for Peter Burnett Elementary School families on Tuesday - the first day of the new school year. More than 200 children and their parents enjoyed fresh fruit, yogurt, eggs and pancakes served by SCUSD Superintendent Jonathan Raymond, Board of Education President Gustavo Arroyo and Board Vice President Patrick Kennedy. Mayor Kevin Johnson and City Councilman Kevin McCarty also attended the event. Mayor Johnson encouraged children to be nice, work hard and go to college. Principal Manuel Huezo thanked Peter Burnett's community partners, including Old Soul bakery, which has "adopted" the campus and pleged to work with Reading Partners to improve literacy at the schools. This year, SCUSD plans to raise awareness of its federally sponsored breakfast program and increase the number of children who eat breakfast at school. Thirty-four campuses are offering free breakfasts for every student. Nearly 14,000 students in SCUSD will have access to healthy morning meals every day at these sites. First Day Sacramento Goes Back to School! Kids and families were welcomed back to school - or welcomed to school for the first time - by celebrations throughout the district. This is the fourth year SCUSD has sponsored "Sacramento Goes Back to School," an effort to make every campus welcoming and friendly on the first day of school. Click here for a slide show of various first-day celebrations. First Day Photos New Sports Complex for the Titans An opening ceremony will be held later this month for Luther Burbank High School's new $6.9 million sports complex, which includes a new state-of-the-art turf playing field, track, scoreboard, bleachers for 25,000, classrooms, restrooms and a concession stand. The complex is being paid for through a facilities construction bond passed by voters in 2003. The complex also includes an innovative rainwater capturing system that will be used to reclaim water for use in landscaping. The Titans are scheduled to play their first home football game in several years on the field on September 23 against the Hiram Johnson Warriors. SCUSD Expands Its Language Immersion Programs Two new language immersion programs opened this week in SCUSD schools: a Mandarin Chinese class at William Land Elementary School and a Hmong immersion class - the first of its kind in California - at Susan B. Anthony Elementary School. The expansion of immersion programs is part of SCUSD's commitment to graduating high-achieving, bilingual and bicultural students ready for college and careers in the future global job marketplace. In a language immersion class, students in kindergarten are taught primarily in the target language, such as Spanish, Hmong and Chinese. As students progress through the grades, they are taught less in the target language and more in English. Years of research shows that students in language immersion programs are more successful at school, scoring higher on standardized tests given only in English than their counterparts. SCUSD Welcomes New Principals Over the summer, several new principals were hired to head SCUSD campuses. They come from varying backgrounds, but all share one thing in common: They are enthusiastic and eager to lead! Please join us in welcoming: · Carolyn Olsen, Earl Warren Elementary School · Thu Le Doan, Elder Creek Elementary School · Torie England, Isador Cohen Elementary School · Angela Novotny, John Sloat Elementary School · Tiffany Smith-Simmons, Mark Hopkins Elementary School · Evelyn Baffico, John Cabrillo Elementary School · Garrett Kirkland, Albert Einstein Middle School · Temeca Richardson, John Still Middle School · Rachel Lane (Interim Principal), Nicholas Elementary School Also, four administrators who served on an interim basis last year have returned to those campuses as principals: · Michael Kast, A.M. Winn Elementary School · Kelley Odipo, Parkway Elementary School · Andrea Egan, Phoebe Hearst Elementary School · Norm Tanaka, Matsuyama Elementary School Congratulations! Watch Our Back-to-School TV Special! Enrollment Center Check out segments from SCUSD's Back-to-School cable television special on our YouTube page. Clips provide information on our new Enrollment and Family Resource Center, the state's whooping cough booster (Tdap) requirement, Linked Learning, Early Kinder, Project Green and O.W. Erlewine's new Integrated Thematic Instruction (ITI) program.