Willow Grove seeks new playground
Sometimes all it takes is a little help from Mom and Dad. Asking the community may not hurt, either.
 In a time when California schools find they are at the bottom of the state’s priority list when it comes to funding, parents are stepping up to the plate.
The parents at Willow Grove School in San Benito County are no different. A need for new playground equipment has banded parents together in a fundraising event. Currently, the small, rural school of 40 students has one slide, two swings and a 50-year old jungle gym, and the school has been trying to raise money for several years to update the equipment.
With the help of parents Brenda Lewis and Tamara Starkweather, $10,000 was raised in just two weeks. An additional $20,000 was needed by Nov. 15, 2006 in order to meet a deadline for a matching grant. Lewis has helped with candy sales and organizes an annual silent auction to raise money for the school each year. As part of the playground drive, Lewis placed an empty five gallon water jug in the classroom for a loose change drive so that the kids could help raise money as well.
The Willow Grove parents are just one example of local parents and community members who are coming together to help schools raise money for items not covered by the state. The parents club at Tres Pinos School, for example, coordinates a hot lunch for students every month and funds a sixth grade science camp each year. The Tres Pinos E3 Foundation, which sponsors an annual Trail Ride/Dinner, funds part-time art and music teachers no longer supported by the State. Even the bigger schools like San Benito High School have parent groups that help raise money for various activities. Most of the athletic teams, band, and drama have a booster club that help defray the costs of participation.
Willow Grove parents continue to work towards the goal of providing their children with new playground equipment, part of an increasing trend in California of schools reaching out to the community for help.
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At first glance, one might think Southside School’s first graders were watching a movie on a big screen television.
But while they are watching something, it isn’t a movie. And it isn’t exactly a big screen television, either.
Southside and Panoche schools have recently added some high tech gadgets to their classrooms – smart boards, 77-inch interactive screens that allow teachers to use laptop computers to generate lessons in a variety of subjects, including math, grammar,
and science.
“It’s simply amazing,” Southside School Principal, Eric Johnson, said. “The students just grab on to it. You walk in and realize that these kids aren’t watching cartoons but doing math. And they love it.”
The smart board hangs on a wall in the classroom, much like an old-fashioned chalkboard did. The teacher then plugs in a laptop computer, on which they have already created the day’s lesson. It appears on the screen, which is large enough for every student to see.
But it’s more than simply creating a picture. Smart boards go a step further, allowing for interactive use between the students and teachers. Students can actually go up to the board, and by touching it, do math problems, correct sentences, and spell the week’s vocabulary words.
“You can make corrections, add words,” Johnson said. “Once the lesson is going, the teacher can add to it if they like. You can write on it as you go. Students can work on problems on the board. You can connect to the Internet. You can stream the Internet into the classroom. The list goes on and on. We are putting one in the eighth grade classroom, so in January the students will be able to use the smart board to learn quadratic equations.”
The most advanced boards can cost up to $15,000, Johnson said, but the smart boards installed at Southside cost $5,000 each, along with $3,500 for materials and $1,500 for installation.
Johnson says the school started with one smart board in the first grade classroom, but as his staff saw how well the students responded to the board “more and more teachers wanted one.” Southside has since installed two more smart boards since the start of the school year and will install three more over winter break. The school has also purchased four illuminators, which are a more advanced form of an overhead projector, Johnson said.
“This is where we are putting our technology funds,” he said. “They are wonderful. It’s like going to the movies, but for academics. Technology in the classroom has just grown. We now have this instrument that is so easy to use and the students are just captivated.”
And while advances in computer technology happen almost daily, Johnson says he does not anticipate smart boards going out of style any time soon.
“They have been using smart boards in San Jose area schools for about four or five years now, and they are still extremely popular,” he said. “As the petals come off the rose, so to speak, the boards might lose a little bit of their glamour. But I think smart boards are going to become an integral part of education. In a few years, people will be saying ‘How did I ever get along without this?’”
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