Welcome to 2012!
The New Year brings new, exciting events and programs for our school district.
A Parent Room located at the North Campus of PHS will open second semester, hosted by volunteers and bringing together the community. Outreach to high school parents and the desire to build relationships among our parent population spurred a group of very involved community members to support this opportunity.
Construction at both Black Diamond High School on Stoneman Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr., Junior High School on California Avenue is well underway! These new schools will provide fresh opportunities for students, staffs and programs:
• High school students who need or prefer an alternative learning experience and the teachers who provide that alternative experience, have for many years been housed in old buildings or have shared facilities with others. Now they will have new options for teaching and learning in a contemporary high school facility.
• Our third junior high school located north of highway 4 will provide a campus with an entire building dedicated to the sciences, a music building with indoor and outdoor performing options, classrooms rich with technology, and fabulous athletic facilities. Additionally, having three junior high schools will decrease the enrollment numbers at each campus to less than 800, allowing for programmatic innovations and increased safety.
Grateful recognition is extended to the Pittsburg community for supporting the bond measures which have made the construction of these new schools possible.
The Dual Immersion program will matriculate to the high school in Fall 2012, when our first group of students who entered the DI program in kindergarten become ninth graders. These students who are bilingual and bi-literate in both English and Spanish will register for various core classes in Spanish, a true sign of fluency in another language. The ability to speak, read, and write in more than one language is a skill set desired and admired across the globe. Congratulations to this pioneering group of students!
The grand re-opening of the Creative Arts Building on the Pittsburg High School campus will be an exciting highlight for second semester as well! The historic retrospect of artists and influencers painted by artist Dr. Ronald McDowell and the state-of-the-art renovations completed will take your breath away. This venue is certain to become a destination for a variety of outside performers and a showcase for our visual and performing arts programs at the high school and across our district schools.
A New Year is also the time of renewed vigilance for public education and enthusiastic embracing of our talented, brilliant student population. Yes, we face daunting challenges with funding and cutbacks. These are not the issues of our children. They deserve a new year full of optimism and opportunity.
To our best year ever!
Linda K. Rondeau, Superintendent