Bonita Unified School District’s Board of Education held its annual reorganization meeting on Dec. 13, voting members into new leadership roles. The Board selected Greg Palatto as president, Chris Ann Horsley as vice president and Derek Bahmanou as clerk. Members Glenn Creiman and Jim Elliot round out the Board.
For the second year in a row, the Bonita High School Chamber Singers performed in the mass choir during the Candlelight Processional at Disneyland Resort, held Dec. 2 and 3. Following a rigorous audition process, the Chamber Singers were selected as one of just 11 school, community and college choirs to perform in the choir. The Candlelight Processional, which began in 1958, features a retelling of the story of the first Christmas, narrated this year by actress Brie Larson, along with songs performed by the Candlelight Choir.
Bonita High School choral students Gage Dowdle, Ksenia Freeborn and Nathan Kwan were selected for the California Choral Directors Association 2024 All-State Honor Choirs, continuing a Bonita Unified tradition of elevating its vocal music students to perform in prestigious regional and state ensembles. Students with the top 44 percent of audition scores were accepted from each region to perform in this year’s choirs. The students will perform with the state’s top high school vocalists at the annual California All-State Music Educators Conference, to be held in February in Sacramento. Dowdle, Freeborn and Kwan are among 10 Bonita Unified students who were also selected to the Southern California Vocal Association Honor Choirs this year.
Bonita Unified will be well-represented at the 2024 Rose Parade on New Year’s Day after four District students – three from Bonita High School and one from San Dimas High School – were selected to perform in Pasadena City College’s 2024 Tournament of Roses Honor Band. Bonita High seniors Aidan Millan (trombone), Lake Ericson (cymbals) and Tatiana Arreola-Chavez (mellophone) will be joined by San Dimas High junior Anthony Bailey (clarinet). Millan will make his third consecutive appearance in the prestigious parade, while Ericson is returning for the second year in a row. Arreola-Chavez and Bailey are both making their Tournament of Roses Parade debuts.
Shull Elementary School students and their parents took an intergalactic journey through a solar system of literature, exploring new worlds and learning new words during the school’s inaugural Family Reading Night on Nov. 14. With its theme of “Blast Off Into Reading,” the Shull community reaffirmed its commitment to literacy, with a night of fun, food and fiction. More than 250 Shull community members attended the reading night, where students read books, took Accelerated ¬Reader quizzes, posed for photos behind a space backdrop, enjoyed snacks and listened to Shull reading ¬intervention teachers conduct “read-alouds” of their favorite books. Several BUSD schools have held similar family reading nights throughout the fall. Bonita Unified’s emphasis on boosting reading comprehension across all grade levels has earned the District a No. 1 ranking on the California Reading Coalition’s California Reading Report Card for two consecutive years.
Shortly after returning to the Tournament of Roses Parade following a 30-year hiatus, Bonita Unified band director Kelly Leyva will march in another iconic holiday parade when she joins the Band Directors Marching Band in New York to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade® on Thursday, Nov. 23. With a theme of “America’s band directors, we teach music, we teach life,” the Band Directors Marching Band follows up its inaugural appearance in the 2022 Tournament of Roses Parade with an expanded lineup that includes 400 band directors from across the country, representing every state in the union. Leyva will once again play mellophone with the band, as she did in the Tournament of Roses Parade. Now in her 15th year at Bonita Unified, Leyva serves as band director at Lone Hill Middle School and teaches introductory band at four elementary schools.
Continuing what has become an annual tradition for the District’s top vocal talent, 10 Bonita Unified students have been selected to perform with the prestigious Southern California Vocal Association (SCVA) Honor Choirs, with multiple performers chosen from both Bonita and San Dimas high schools. San Dimas High School senior Steve Moreno, junior Soft Washburn and freshman Leanne Flores joined Bonita High School seniors Eric Romero, Audrey Granger, Gage Dowdle and Nathan Kwan, juniors Christian Weber and Ksenia Freeborn, and sophomore Valeria Geren to be among the 270 top choir members from Southern California selected to perform Saturday, Nov. 18 at the University of Redlands.
The La Verne/San Dimas Educational Foundation (LVSDEF) continued its annual tradition of supporting education in the classroom as it announced its 2023-24 Teacher Mini-Grant award recipients during the Bonita Unified Board of Education meeting on Nov. 1. LVSDEF President Anthony Porter and LVSDEF member Michelle Riddell presented more than $14,000 in mini-grants to teachers from 11 Bonita Unified schools, money that will help fund a variety of small classroom projects. The grants, which range from $100 to $500, are provided to teachers to encourage projects that benefit students and address a classroom need. The Foundation received 78 applications this year and was able to award 35 mini-grants, which will support projects focused on mental health and wellness, the arts, field trips and more.
Roynon Elementary School students crowded around the garden bed with rakes, shovels and hoes, breaking up dirt clods, pulling up weeds and roots, and expelling invasive species like grubs. Meeting every Tuesday after school, the students are proudly upholding a grand tradition at the school: the ongoing and successful Roynon Beautification Project. With nine garden beds to work with, Roynon student volunteers – nearly always accompanied by peers from Oak Mesa and La Verne Heights elementary schools, as well as Ramona Middle School – tend to crops such as tomatoes, zucchini, strawberries, peppers, sage, oregano and green beans. When ripe, the produce is distributed to students, staff and local residents.
Lone Hill Middle School students are learning the joy of developing their craft skills in wood shop, an elective class that allows them the freedom to create intricate works of art and discover that woodworking is a pursuit that can bring the whole family together. In his 27 years as Lone Hill’s wood shop teacher, Mitch Jacobs has seen modern technology transform the class by making the wood-cutting process safer for students, who are fashioning projects well beyond the bookshelves and bird feeders of wood shops past. The elective has also experienced an influx of female students; the inclusivity is evident in the scope of projects created by students, which range from simple wood carvings of animals to elaborately designed and etched plaques.
