We've has several new students join us at Grace in the last few weeks.

We welcome Chris, 10th grade, Ben, 7th grade, Jacob, Kindergarten, Stephen, 6th grade, and Courtney in 7th grade. We hope you'll all have a great time learning together at Grace Christian School!

Love this picture of Katelyn after the Valentine's Day party.

I'm very happy to announce the winner of our last fundraiser. Once again, Daniel Rojas raised more than twice as much money as any other student and he is the winner of a blue iPod Shuffle!

Congratulations, Daniel. We're very proud of you (and mom too)

PB

Some of you will remember Deanne Schenk. She was the secretary for the church and helped out the school a lot. She's been at our school and church for about 50 years. We celebrated her 85 birthday today at church. Congratulations, Deanne!

New Fund Raiser!

We are now selling Valentine's Day candy from See's Candy. We did great with the Christmas sales and hope to repeat that with this effort. We haven't really sold much yet, it's a bit early, but please help us out as you did for Christmas so we can buy even more equipment for the school.

Thanks,

Pastor Bob

By now all our students should have received their Student IDs.

We welcome two new students to our school this week. Chris is a tenth grader and his brother Ben is in 7th grade. They are off to a great start and we give them a big Grace welcome.

We received the proofs for the Student IDs last week and have sent them back. We hope to have them soon for the students. It took them quite a while to get them done for some reason.

There will be no school on Monday, January 15. We will be closed in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. School resumes on the 16 of January.

Congratulations to our 3 winners for selling the most candy before Christmas. Here are the winners:

First Place - Daniel R.

Second Place - Veronica H.

Third Place - Elizabeth R.

Good work. Among themselves they raised about $1,000.00!

We've upgraded our School blog and some recent posts were lost, so here's a bit of what has gone on lately.

We took the children on a field trip to Our Way Ceramics. Each student bought a molded piece of greenware, brought it back to school and after Pastor Bob fired it in the kiln, they were able to glaze it. The students also saw how to make a mold and open it. It was very instructional and fun.

We also had a school wide science experiment mixing Mentos and Diet Pepsi and watching it explode over Pastor Bob.

We just finished taking pictures for the school children.

We came back from the ACSI Convention this week and are now enjoying our Thanksgiving Vacation.

Have a wonderful time with your families.

Don't forget our Parent's meeting is on Thursday, Aug. 31 at 7:00 p.m. in the chapel. You will be receiving important information and hand outs. It is also the place to get your child's uniform T-shirts ordered. See you there!

We have successfully used our Distance Learning program for our summer school program and it's going quite well. We look forward to being able to use this for homework again this year as well as summer school and home schooling.

Pastor Bob

Our Easter vacation starts on Friday and continues through the week after Easter - April 14 through April 21. Have a great holiday!

We have beta tested our Distance Learning program for one semester and it has gone very well. We are now able to home school students who have computers through this program. It also is a great complement to our regular campus students who now have a very easy way to do their homework on their own computers. This also is a boon to students who are ill for extended periods of time. Often they can still work at home on the computer. It has been a great new service for our students and parents. Feel free to inquire if you wish to add this to your child's program or if you are interested in home schooling through this online distance learning program.

562-868-2398

All parents of high school students should be aware that the State of California now requires all high school students to pass Algebra to graduate. Public schools must have all students pass an exit exam to graduate. As of this time, private schools are not required to give exit exams to their students.

One in five might not graduate in 2006
By Kevin Butler
Staff writer

LONG BEACH — More than one-fifth of California's high school seniors are at risk of not graduating because they have not passed the exit exam required for a diploma, according to a state-commissioned independent study released Friday.
Nearly 100,000 seniors began the school year without having passed the high school exit exam, a graduation requirement starting in 2006, according to the report.

Perhaps half of that number ultimately won't don caps and gowns this summer, including substantial numbers of disabled students and those not fluent in English, according to the report by the Human Resources Research Organization.

In the Long Beach Unified School District, 25 percent of high school seniors 1,615 began this school year having not passed the exam, which includes an English and math component, according to district officials.

The LBUSD and other area school districts have created special classes during the day, after school and on Saturdays to prepare the struggling seniors.

"I think given what we know about how to prepare kids for the test, we are doing an effective job," said Lynn Winters, LBUSD assistant superintendent of research.

Seniors will get up to three more opportunities to pass the exam before graduation time.

In the Downey Unified School District, 23 percent of seniors have not passed. The figure is 26 percent in the Norwalk-La Mirada District. In the ABC Unified School District, 19 percent haven't passed, but that figure does not include special education students.

The independent evaluator used estimates to calculate the passing rates because the state lacks unique student identifiers and cannot track individual pupils.

The estimates may be two percentage points higher or lower than the actual totals, the organization reported.

Forty-nine percent of California's English-language learners and 65 percent of special education students have not passed the test, the report stated.

Blacks and Latinos also have struggled. Thirty-seven percent of black seniors and 32 percent of Latinos haven't passed, the report estimated.

Economically disadvantaged seniors also have fallen behind, with 34 percent not passing the exam.

The report noted that among special education students, those



Advertisement



with more severe disabilities are faring worse on the test than those who are able to spend more time in regular classrooms.

The report fuels a growing debate about the extent of alternatives that should be offered to seniors who fail to graduate this summer. Among the possible options for those seniors is an alternative diploma or graduation certificate, the report said.

The LBUSD has a certificate of completion, but only for special education students, Winters said.

Extending the certificate to other students would require a change in state law, she said.

The report's other suggestions include completing a senior-year portfolio project, successfully finishing a special summer course after 12th grade and taking additional years of high school.

In the LBUSD, seniors who don't pass the test at graduation time can study at adult schools for future tries at the exam.

Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of public instruction, said the state Department of Education will study the alternatives suggested in the report, but that the exam requirement is still in place.

"While it is appropriate to consider these options, it is critical that in doing so we keep one core principle front and center: Awarding a student a diploma without the knowledge and skills to back it up does a great disservice to that student," he said.

The discussion of alternatives should not be seen as a license for seniors to "slack off," said Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. Students will still have to show mastery of the test concepts, she said.

"The California high school exit exam is here to stay," she said.

Our school is off to a good start. We have a great bunch of students this year. Something exciting is in the air. As you all know, our curriculum, grades 3-12, is mostly computerized, which is exciting in itself. But soon we hope to offer students and parents the opportunity to do their homework online if they have a broadband connection. We are installing a DSL line next week and after we beta test it, we should be on our way to offering this.

What's even better is that we will be able to offer Distance Learning to anyone in the country or the world, for that matter, who has a broadband connection. After installing some software, people can homeschool through our school, taking all their classes through us with a live teacher on the other side, standing by to help them. Stay tuned for more information.

Silent Auction

You won't want to miss our Silent Auction Fundraiser. Prior to our 7:30 meeting, we will have our Silent Auction at 7:00 p.m. When you enter the cafeteria, you will see tables with items on them. In front of each item will be a paper with lines for you to write on. The first person will sign their name and what they would like to bid on that item. Another person comes by and if he's willing to pay more for that item, he puts his name down and what he will pay/bid for the item etc. Sometime before we go in to the Parent's Meeting a bell will ring from a timer. When it goes off, all bids are final and people with the highest bids get the item at that price. There are many nice items that I think you'll like.

Pastor Bob

Parent's Meeting

Be sure to attend the Parent's Meeting on September 8, which is a Thursday. It is here that you will receive your menus, school year calendar etc.

Every year parents complain to me about not knowing things and I say, "We discussed it at the Parent's Meeting. Were you there?"

School starts at 8:30 a.m. on September 12. Please make sure the kids are well prepared. You need to be at the School's Parent Night on Thursday, Sept. 8. We will be giving you the new school handbook, going over changes we have made for the new year. There are things you will need to buy by Monday. Children on computers, mostly grades 3-12, need to bring a set of headphones, a new mousepad, and an optional new mouse.

We will be taking an order for new school T-Shirts at this time as well. Until the new school uniforms are ready, you will need to use last year's t-shirts or solid red or white polo shirts with the blue or black pants.