Students recognized for community involvement

Three students were honored at Wednesday night's Healdsburg Unified School District board meeting for their involvement in community service, including one devoted little league coach who was a little bit late but came straight from baseball practice.

Joe Miller, a senior at Healdsburg High, arrived at Wednesday's meeting after two fellow students had already received their Youth Service Awards certificates from and spoken briefly in front of the meeting. Miller, who plays shortstop for the HHS baseball team, arrived at the meeting wearing baseball pants that showed no small amount of wear and tear.

Miller's passion for baseball extends to his involvement in coaching little leaguers, for which he was recognized Wednesday. Miller said that, in addition to playing high school baseball himself, he coaches two teams: one is a “rookie ball” team of 6-year-olds who are learning the game, and second is a team of slightly older, more experienced players. Miller said his community involvement also includes coaching basketball and participating in in fundraisers for youth sports.

“It's cool watching little kids play baseball and seeing how happy they get,” Miller said. “It's also funny how surprised they are when they find out that (someone my age is) coaching.”

The other two honorees at Wednesday's meeting were Ivonne Meneses, who was recognized in the category of health sciences for, among other things, volunteering with the Redwood Empire Food Bank; and Shelbi Enzenauer-Sereni, who was recognized in agriculture and whose contributions include fund-raising and logistical work for the FFA Ag Boosters. All three students were nominated for the Youth Service Awards, sponsored by The Press Democrat; students from schools around the county who were nominated in ten different community service categories will attend an awards ceremony in May at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, where one student in each category will win $1,000.

Also on Wednesday, the School Board saw a presentation from a local architect commissioned to construct a “facility master plan” for sprucing up Healdsburg school campuses. The presentation was reminiscent of those given by consultants in recent months for the t in the way that it focused on efficient, inexpensive, community-driven and environmentally-friendly ways to spruce up local schools.

The presentation by Mark Quattrocchi, a Partner at Santa Rosa-based Quattrocchi Kwok Architects, was preceded by one from Harding, whose slide-show provided some examples of local blight (among them, “caulky, rotting” portable classrooms). Harding said the extent to which local schools are renovated depends on the district's fiscal situation, which he said remains very much in limbo as the new state budget continues to be hammered out.

“The obvious piece missing here is the funding piece,” Harding said. “It's quite possbile that we'll do this in two parts. We can talk about cursory problem issues, and then talk about ways for raising money … And then once we have that money we can work to fine-tune that plan, rather than doing everything and then running the risk of not making it a reality.”

Quattrochi's recommendations included more windows and skylights in school buildings to increase sunlight and ventilation (he said studies indicate students perform better on tests in well-lit, well-ventilated areas); building better walkways between structures to engender a sense of connectedness and facilitate safe foot travel; creating large, clearly-defined spaces conducive to gathering and socialization; and creating more inviting entryways to buildings.

“The design process has to be sure that schools are made an integral part of the community,” Quattrochi said. “It's important to work with parents, teachers, personnel, students and the community to figure out what works and what doesn't … In the end this may end up in a fundraising room, so it's very important that, as we make decisions, we take all these people along with us.”

In other areas of business, the School Board refrained from naming a second community member to the , and instead assigned a sub-committee to work on establishing a clearer rubric for selecting from the applicant pool.

The Board also voted to enter into an interdistrict transfer agreement with nearby schools that allows Healdsburg Unified to work with other districts individually in establishing rules around transfer students (for example, grade point averages transfer students are required to maintain to stay in a new district), rather than abiding by the California state code.