Los Altos Rotary Club eNewsletter "Rotator"

Los Altos Rotary Club

Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show

January 7, 2010

Writer: Steve Anderson - Photographer: Jerry Tomanek - Editor: Cindy Luedtke

This Thursday's Program: Jan 14 2010 Tracie Murray Club Assembly

Your faithful scribe was late for this meeting. If you know me, I’m most always late in that I arrive at 12:18 or so. I’m just very glad I didn’t agree to lead the song as JEANNE MAC VICAR asked me to do as JOHN SYLVESTER was well into ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ when I arrived. So I also missed the greeters: JACK HEIDMILLER, PHIL ROSE AND PAUL NYBERG all did an excellent job greeting all of you.

President TRACIE opened the meeting (I was told) with her usual aplomb. How did we happen to elect a president with such little interest and personality? She really must get excited once and a while. Pres. TRACIE announced that next week would be our club assembly.

We had lots of guests today and then we took in lots of new members.

Steve Yarbrough, Steve Wu and Barbara Small

JOHN CARDOZA swore in four new members: STEVE WU and BARBARA SMALL both brought in by their sponsor STEVE YARBROUGH. He went on to say that we only have about 20 lawyers in our club and he’s trying to increase the number. Both these new members are attorneys with private offices on Main St. in Los Altos.

Not to be outdone, DON HULL brought into our club yet another attorney, VON PACKARD. Von has a suspicious last name as if another member of our club is related, like twins.

BOB ADAMS completed the foursome by introducing JOHN NICHOLSON, plastic surgeon. This brings our club’s population to 167. Aren’t you all proud to belong? Each new member received our 60-year anniversary book and a video of ‘The Los Altos Story’.

In announcements,

KENDRA announced that as of 2/1/10 our post office box will be located in the new post office location on Main Street. Our box number will still be 794, as it has been for many years.
JERRY MOISON asked again for old laptops to be brought to LA HS by Sunday.
MATT CABOT asks for a volunteer to help with the website calendar. WARD WILDANGER contacted Matt after the meeting, and he will be willing to do the job. Thanks WARD for stepping up to the plate.
JEAN HOLLANDS needs Rotarians to interview students for jobs, etc. at Alta Vista HS on Friday 1/29, contact JEAN.
JOANNA MEDIN played her part as fairy godmother to sprinkle A’Sante dust on us all. They need donations for auction. Asante this year is 1/21 from 5:30 to 8:00 in the old Del Monte building in Sunnyvale.
MARLENE COWAN needs folks to sign up for the District STARS training program to learn to be club leaders and presidents. This is held on 3/20 and the cost is $50 which is paid for by our club. See MARLENE.

Master of Fines, KURT HUEG took the floor. He fined everyone but me.

DUDE fined for a bad 2009 and a terrible story about his bathroom on Christmas Eve.
YOUNG; fined for his 44th anniversary;
YARBROUGH; for bringing in three lawyers for one doctor. But, in addition, he has a new grandchild $50.
LISTON’s 80th birthday party; where his never-married ,51 year-old daughter got married AT the party! $80.
CABOT; his last unmarried daughter got married on 12/27 $50.
BERONIO; $20 for his mother’s 100th birthday.
MARSHALL; $100 for his first daughter born on 12/21.
STADLEN; $25 for his new grandson.
LU: for her 18 yr. old joining the Air Force.
BYRD: $25 for never having been fined.
KENDRA; $5 for the UCLA win over Cal.
HUEG; $20, SHEPHERD; for not manning up when he had his kidney stone attack $10.
ADAMS and NICHOLSON; for his (the good doctor JOHN'S) daughter graduating from UCLA.
And finally, PESNER; for his birthday and the King Tut exhibit.

It was announced that the Rotary float won the President’s Trophy in the Rose Parade. Also, over the Christmas/New Year's break, we had an informal 'makeup' luncheon at Chef Chu's. There were exactly 22 spots and exactly 22 lucky people attended the annual tradition. I think this was the 10th year organized by PP ROY LAVE.

Our program was put on by the MVLA Superintendent, BARRY GROVES and Tim Justus, Superintendent of the LA Elementary School District.

First, our very own BARRY got into our incredible High Schools. They have many clubs and organizations that the students can join including Rotary’s Interact Clubs. 95% of the students go to college, 3% of the students are in the top ranks of all high schools in the country. Five of our District’s students have taken early admission at MIT. The music program at both schools is known throughout the world. Despite this, 10% have special needs and 7% need assistance with English as a second language.

In Mountain View High School, 50% are under the poverty line and 50% are Latino. The Freestyle High Academy has 128 students learning film and web design. This is all extracurricular.

Languages taught are Spanish, French, Latin, Japanese and Chinese. The MVHS Robotics team is #1 in the country. The speech and debate team is #2 in the country. It is estimated we will have a 25% increase in the number of students over the next 10 years. We need more classrooms to be paid for without a tax increase.

TIM JUSTUS told us about the elementary and Jr. High schools. We have 4308 students. He was very proud of the $5600 contribution from our Red Badge committee for the library at Gardner-Bullis School. We have 204 full time teachers and 12 part- time teachers. We have nine schools including two Junior Highs. There is a big push toward Math improvement this year. Every year another subject is the push. Unfortunately the budget will be down by $3M over the next two years. This is on a $42M budget. 28% will be funded locally. And the Parcel Tax will need to be renewed in 2011. Despite these dreary numbers, our district is ranked academically as 1 and 2 in the state.

The average wages for high school staff is about $90K with starting salaries at $44K. In the elementary school, teachers’ earnings average about $86K for the best teachers.
Both mentioned that cell phones and twittering are a problem they deal with daily.

It was a great program. I hope you didn’t miss it.