After making pandemic-safe adjustments to graduation ceremonies last June, graduation season has returned to normal with fully in-person high school graduation festivities — cap tosses and cheerful embraces included.
As the Orange County Register reported, more than half of the county’s high schools have celebrated their seniors earning diplomas over the past two weeks. Thousands of graduates from the Anaheim, Brea Olinda, Capistrano, Fullerton Joint, Garden Grove, Irvine, Saddleback Valley, Santa Ana and Tustin school districts have walked the ceremonial stage this year to the sound of their families’ and friends’ applause.
Earlier this week, students from the Laguna Beach, Newport-Mesa and Orange unified school districts also attended their commencement ceremonies. Coming up, the Huntington Beach Union High School District and the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District will get the chance to celebrate their high school graduates.
Here are some of the other stories we have been following this week:
- The OC Pathways program, “Getting to and Through College Career,” was awarded an $18.1 million grant to support their work-based learning programs for students to strengthen their career opportunities.
- Incumbents have taken the lead in the election races for the Orange County Superintendent of Schools and the Orange County Board of Education, with still more ballots to be counted.
- California Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced that a statewide initiative that would require allocating 1 percent of state and local public school funding to arts and music education has qualified to appear on the November election ballot.
- Irvine student Rhea Sreedhar will soon compete with her methane-detecting miniature computer that identifies signs of food waste at the national Broadcom MASTERS Competition — considered the premiere middle school science and engineering fair.
- A classroom of kindergartners at Laguna Road Elementary School will be the second class in the county to learn Korean through the implementation of a new dual language program in the Fullerton School District.
- On the state level, legislators have joined with civil rights leaders to increase dual language education by calling for a $5 million investment in training K-12 teachers for Asian language accreditation.
- After completing a rigorous training process with up-to-date automation and data analytics technologies, six students from Buena Park High School became the first cohort in California to receive the Smart Automation Certification Alliance advanced technology certificates.
- A group of middle school students in Fruitvale is raising awareness for discovering high levels of lead in the soil of their school campus, local park and neighborhoods while conducting an environmental justice project.
- Lastly, on July 1, a new California law will go into effect extending start times to no earlier than 8:30 a.m. for public high school students and no earlier than 8 a.m. for middle school students in an effort to prevent sleep deprivation.
This is the part where we encourage you to keep up with local education news stories by bookmarking the OCDE Newsroom, subscribing for emailed updates and following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.