The Educational Services department has been busy for the past month. We have been supporting quite a few schools and districts with professional learning opportunities, either during their PD days or through ongoing collaboration during staff meeting time.
Our Arts coordinator is thrilled that Proposition 28 has passed, and she will be working with the districts to support them on
ways to spend the funding. Proposition 28 provides additional funding for arts and music education in all K-12 public schools (including charter schools) by annually allocating from state General Fund an amount equaling 1% of required state and local funding for public schools.
In addition, we have 3800 4th and 5th grade students from our county signed up for the Orchestra Sings Youth Concert. This is a collaboration between the COE, the Santa Cruz Symphony and Carnegie Hall. The response has been so strong that we have added a 3rd concert day on Wednesday, February 22.
The COE was highlighted as a key partner during the two sold out Bay of Life events this past Saturday, November 12th. Youth for Environmental Action student leaders co-hosted the COE table during the networking time and Amity Sandage, our Environmental Literacy Coordinator presented our vision for the “Every Classroom a Green Classroom” Teacher Leadership Institute for Sustainability as part of the main program, reaching 1000 community members
attending the events. The program also highlighted our role as partners–we are creating a collection of education materials and programs to accompany the book, in particular a future edition in both English and Spanish that will be available for use in classrooms– and announced the new environmental fund at the Community Foundation that will support environmental education programs connected to the curriculum.
Migrant Head Start has ended their regular season serving 135 children on November 10th. Staff is recruiting and registering for the smaller Winter program. The program has received extra ARP/CRRSA (Covid) funds providing stipends of $450 per enrolled child for the contracted 25 childcare providers. MHS staff and our family child care providers remained stable throughout the challenging Covid years.