SAN DIMAS/LA VERNE – Bonita Unified students looking to get a head start on college and career planning received expert guidance in auto repair, architecture, and engineering through career technical education (CTE) summer academies at Citrus College and Cal Poly Pomona, with rising juniors and seniors taking weeklong courses designed to spark their interest in lucrative fields.
For its dedication to providing students a rigorous education in a positive learning environment, Bonita Unified has been named a “Favorite School District” in the San Gabriel Valley in the Southern California News Group (SCNG) Readers’ Choice Awards for the third year in a row. Each spring, SCNG newspapers—including the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Pasadena Star-News, and Whittier Daily News—invite readers to vote both online and through print for awards across a range of categories.
Bonita Unified School District will welcome seven new administrators for the 2025-26 school year, including three assistant principals, two principals, an assistant superintendent, and a director of transportation. Bonita Unified has appointed Dr. Kendra Peterson-Broussard as Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Development and James Foster as Director of Transportation. Kaitlyn Trotter will serve as principal of Allen Avenue Elementary, and Orlando Beltran will lead Lone Hill Middle School. The District also welcomed new assistant principals at Ramona Middle School and San Dimas High School. Most recently Director of Human Resources at Centinela Valley Union High School District (CVUHSD), Dr. Peterson-Broussard brings nearly two decades of administrative experience to her new role. She began her career as a middle school teacher before serving as a recruitment specialist with Los Angeles Unified and later as a secondary site administrator in CVUHSD. She has spent the past four years as CVUHSD’s Director of Human Resources, overseeing personnel programs for both certificated and classified staff. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Illinois Chicago, a master’s in educational administration from Cal State Los Angeles, and a doctorate in leadership from USC.
Nearly 500 students filled the stage with energy and enthusiasm during La Verne Heights Elementary School’s 14th annual Dance Festival, a schoolwide showcase celebrating the rich cultural diversity of the school community through music, movement, and tradition. Students from transitional kindergarten (TK) through fifth grade performed in the festival, held in late May. Each grade level showcased a different style of dance, including an African-inspired routine, Ballet Folklórico, the Hawaiian Hukilau, a Scottish jig, a 1950s American square dance, traditional Chinese fan dance, and more.
Two Bonita High School ProStart culinary students looking to flip the script on breakfast menus and transform the meal into an Instagram-worthy food truck experience were named co-grand prize winners at the EcoLab Sunday Night Spotlight “Bites & Beats” competition, which challenged students from across the U.S. to develop unique takes on food truck cuisine and marketing. Bonita High Class of 2025 graduate Charli Padilla and rising junior Abby Brandler won for their food truck concept, “The Flip Side,” a mobile restaurant with two separate menus for day and night, serving tasty twists on classic American breakfast staples paired with bold new breakfast-themed delights created by Padilla and Brandler.
More than 800 graduates from Chaparral-Vista, San Dimas, and Bonita high schools tossed their caps into the evening air as celebratory music swelled, earning thunderous applause during commencement ceremonies on June 3 and 5 that showcased the culture of each campus, shared stories of perseverance, and honored the achievements of Bonita Unified’s Class of 2025. Each high school celebrated graduates’ academic, artistic, and athletic successes, noting CIF championships, a national culinary title, regional and state honors for music, and more. Bonita Unified graduates will pursue higher education at institutions including Notre Dame University, UC Berkeley, Columbia University, Syracuse University, USC, and UCLA; others will enlist in the armed forces or enter the workforce, bolstered by the skills developed in the District’s career technical education pathways.
The San Dimas High School ProStart culinary team saw their long nights of prepping and months of hard work creating a world-class menu pay off in spectacular fashion as the five-member team was crowned the 2025 National ProStart Invitational champion, capping off the culinary program’s most successful year ever, and making District history in the process. San Dimas student chefs Kaila Khoury, Emma Johns, Emily Robertson, Kyle Yamate, and Renata Marcillo captured Bonita Unified’s first national championship, a goal that husband-and-wife duo Nick and Laurie Brandler, ProStart instructors at San Dimas and Bonita high schools, respectively, established when they first started bringing their student chefs to competition more than a decade ago.
In an age of rapid technological advances, as the risk of falling victim to a cyberattack continues to rise to unprecedented levels, San Dimas High School is training a new generation of cyber defenders and tech troubleshooters to become ethical hackers through its Information Technology (IT) and Cybersecurity class. The class, led by San Dimas High computer science teacher Leslie Leaming, is a hands-on learning experience where students rebuild and repair devices, design games, develop websites, and attempt to solve real-world cybersecurity challenges. The comprehensive course gives students an opportunity to explore lucrative careers in the IT and cybersecurity fields.
Bonita Unified high school students looking toward careers in the healthcare industry have received invaluable experience as interns, thanks to an exclusive partnership with the San Gabriel/Pomona Regional Center (SG/PRC), which provided the students access to college-level no-cost training in the psychology, nursing, and social work fields Six Bonita Unified students took advantage of the career technical education (CTE) learning opportunity, which concluded in mid-May. The inaugural SG/PRC interns are: San Dimas High seniors Jazmine Cardenas (social work) and Marlie Walker (social work), San Dimas High junior Kamryn Henderson (psychology), and Bonita High juniors Morgan Salcido (psychology), Ranin Sour (nursing), and Katherine Situ (nursing).
The San Dimas High School Color Guard took its program to new levels when it earned a gold medal at the Winter Guard Association of Southern California (WGASC) Color Guard championships in April, a stunning turnaround for a program that took a yearlong hiatus from competition only to come back stronger than ever. Performing a show inspired by the System of a Down song “Toxicity,” the San Dimas team – which featured three Lone Hill Middle School students – gave a stirring performance that earned first place in the Scholastic AAA division and gave the Color Guard its first gold medal since 2010.
