Grand opening scheduled for Merced College academic building

An open house will be held at the Allied Health Center, the newest academic building at Merced College, at 11:30 a.m. on Nov. 18. The Merced County Chamber of Commerce will conduct a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the facility, while faculty and students will lead tours.

Elementary students take gardening to a new level

Second grader Amelia Boyd's favorite part of the Julien Elementary Garden Celebration is the taste testing. Along with tasting the variety of plants, she danced to garden songs, learned about nutrition, and studied the process of photosynthesis on Friday.

Education Notes

CSU Stanislaus application deadline nears First-time freshmen that hope to attend California State University, Stanislaus in September 2010 must submit applications by Nov. 30. The deadline comes earlier than in years past due to a CSU system-wide effort to reduce student enrollment. State budget cuts have forced the reduction in students, according to CSU Stanislaus President Ham Shirvani. As new admissions for 2010 winter and spring terms were closed in July due to budget cuts, ...

Mt. View gym construction delayed

The project to construct a new Mountain View Middle School gym, originally scheduled to open this month, has been beset by delays that will push the project back well into the new year.

DUSD board candidates answer tough questions

The six candidates vying for two available seats on the Denair Unified School District board gathered on Wednesday to debate the issues at hand in their Nov. 3 election.

Parents learn how to support their child’s learning

The Turlock Unified School District is seeking parents' help in making sure their children are prepared for the rigors of school. In an effort to better cement the collaboration between parents and educators, the district is offering classes for parents through the Parent Institute for Quality Education.

School administrators, student leaders prepare for a ‘positive’ Harvest Bowl

The Harvest Bowl is a chance for the Pitman and Turlock high football teams meet in battle on the field with tackles, interceptions and touchdowns, but with local competition brewing, other problems often come to surface.

TUSD board candidates field questions on the budget and Joe Debely Stadium

The budget, accepting money from the city's Redevelopment Agency to refurbish Joe Debely Stadium and the achievement gap were all issues brought up by attendees of the second Turlock Unified School District Board of Trustees candidate debate held on Monday at Turlock High School.

Osborn teacher dedicated to his students’ success

For the past 17 years, teacher Robert Lopez has been going to work everyday with the goal of helping his students succeed in life.

Student test scores fall short, once again

For the third year in a row, the Turlock Unified School District has not met state test score expectations and is once again been categorized as a program improvement district.

School district reviews new policies suggested by the state

Among the new and revised policies the California Department of Education sent to the Turlock Unified School District for review and possible adoption was an environmentally friendly district plan.

Teachers jobs are safe, so far, says TUSD

At Tuesday's Turlock Unified School District Board of Trustees meeting, superintendent Sonny Da Marto announced that there will be no layoff notices sent out this year. As of Tuesday night, no pink slips will be sent to teachers for layoffs in the 2010-2011 school year.

Program provides students with food for their families

Children from low income families in Stanislaus County often get free breakfast and lunch at school. But what do they eat for dinner and weekend meals when their families cannot afford food? Foster Farms and Second Harvest Food Bank of San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties hope to answer that question with the Food 4 Thought pilot program in Stanislaus County schools.

Stanislaus County slams tobacco use with training for local high schools

Stanislaus County is working toward maintaining a healthy community from fitness to nutrition to tobacco use prevention. On Tuesday, the Stanislaus County Office of Education continued their fight for a healthy community by hosting the fifth annual Protecting Health and Slamming Tobacco Youth Coalition: Tobacco Slam Training.

Governor rewards Hickman’s healthy students

Taking part in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign "Fit for the Future," Hickman went above and beyond which won them the Gold Country Regional Award in the 2009 Governor's Challenge.

UC Merced professor designs HIV inhibitor

University of California, Merced professor Patricia LiWang has designed what may be the most effective chemical inhibitor against human immunodeficiency virus infection, the university announced this week. LiWang's discovery combines two existing drugs to work between several times and several hundred times more effectively than existing inhibitors, depending on the strain of HIV. The new inhibitor blocks HIV from entering a cell at two different steps of viral entry, an approach among ...

Love and Logic alive in Hilmar

As every parent knows, there is no instruction booklet for parenting. The Hilmar Unified School District, however, has been helping local residents be better parents through its Love and Logic program. Love and Logic is a philosophy founded by Jim Fay and Foster W. Cline, who had over 75 years of working with and raising children. The philosophy has been taught for over a decade in Hilmar by Bruce Reisdorph, a licensed marriage, ...

Pumpkins pop up at Cunningham

The Kiwanis Club of Greater Turlock delivered 650 Halloween pumpkins to Cunningham Elementary School in Turlock on Friday. For the past 22 years the Kiwanis Club of Greater Turlock has been delivering the pumpkins. This year's batch was donated by Kiwanis members Ron and Karen Macedo, owners of Ram Farms.

Drug-free life

It was Red Ribbon Week last week in Turlock as schools all over town celebrated living a drug-free life.

Pitman High band kicks of Washington D.C. fundraising with free concert

The Pitman High School Band, known as the "Marching Pride" was recently invited to the 2012 National Independence Day Parade in Washington D.C. following a recommendation from Governor Jerry Brown. The Marching Pride hopes to raise $100,000 in order to make the trip to the nation's capital. Tonight the band will celebrate its nomination and kick off its massive fundraising effort with a free concert. The event will be held at 5:30 p.m. ...

THS Symphonic Band places 4th at Foothill Review

The Turlock High School Symphonic Band finished fourth overall out of 17 bands during the Foothill Band Review held Saturday at Amador Valley High in Pleasanton. The THS Symphonic band consists of 38 students who play an ensemble of percussion, wood and brass instruments. Only 38 students of the 100-member THS band participate in the symphonic section. At the review THS placed second in the concert class of schools. Band Director Daniel ...

Spooky fun at Chatom

It was a spooktacular engagement at Chatom Elementary School on Saturday afternoon. The country campus was filled with hundreds of ghostly sights and scary sounds.

Local schools to compete in Spelling Championship

Top local elementary and junior high spellers are scheduled to compete in the Stanislaus County Spelling Championships in the coming weeks. The top spellers in grades four through six from Chatom, Denair, Keyes, Sacred Heart and Turlock Unified School District elementary schools will compete with schools from throughout the county on Nov. 2 at Gregori High School at 5 p.m. Mountain View, Denair Middle, Sacred Heart and Turlock Junior High will compete ...

Migrant preschool program earns top honors

The Central California Migrant Head Start Program, operated by the Stanislaus County Office of Education, was recently named a "Center of Excellence" by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families. Locally, the Migrant Head Start Program operates the Turlock Child Development Center, which serves 150 children from low-income, agricultural-income based homes. Since 1965, the program serves 8,000 children in a seven county area and it was ...

Stanislaus AD resigns, joins staff at Simon Fraser in Canada

Strong Character at Crowell

Crowell Elementary in Turlock capped off its Character Counts Week celebration with a presentation of students who scored a perfect 600 on their California Standardized Testing on Friday. Throughout the week the school held assemblies to promote strong character amongst students and even held a professional dress and career day for sixth graders.

Farhadian named Love of Learning scholar

Isaac William Farhadian, of Turlock, a graduate student in History at CSU Stanislaus, was chosen as the Love of Learning award recipient by the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. Farhadian completed his undergraduate at CSU Stanislaus in 2010. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with a double-major in History and Political Science and received the J. Burton Vasché Award. He has also received the Miriam V. and John L. Keymer Student Leadership Award, ...

UC Merced names first Alumni Association Board

Now with more than 1,200 alumni to its name, University of California, Merced on Thursday announced it has established the first-ever board of directors for its Alumni Association. Christopher Abrescy ('09), Uday Bali ('08), Josh Bolin ('07), Jason Castillo ('09), Efferman Ezell ('09), Sam Fong ('09), Jose Godinez ('11), James Kirby ('10), Jacqueline Miramontes ('10), Elizabeth Perkins ('11) and Yaasha Sabba ('09) will serve as the board's founding members. The board will ...

Kamali named dean of CSU Stanislaus College of Natural Sciences

Reza Kamali, the current dean of the School of Science and Technology at Cameron University in Lawton, Okla., has been named the new dean of the CSU Stanislaus College of Natural Sciences.

Merced College president retires

Merced College President Benjamin T. Duran will retire at the end of the academic year, he announced Tuesday. "I have contemplated this move for the last year or so but could never find the right time to make this life changing decision," Duran said. " … After reflecting on this and talking with my family for the last few months I came to the conclusion that there is never a right time to ...