More than 65 students from schools in Santa Ana are spending their summer breaks at Camp Cove. Located at Crystal Cove State Park in Laguna Beach, it’s a place many of the students have never visited before.
The summer camp is a partnership between the Santa Ana Police Athletic and Activity League, California State Parks and the Crystal Cove Conservancy. The league offers after-school programs year-round, supporting students with their homework, physical fitness trainings, exposure to culture and the arts, and intramural sports.
A team from Inside the Outdoors, a program administered by the Orange County Department of Education, brought live millipedes, toads, snakes and a great horned owl to show and educate the campers on Wednesday, July 24. This hands-on experience aimed to foster a deeper appreciation for wildlife and the environment among the students.
“Inside the Outdoors has been fortunate to partner with organizations such as Crystal Cove State Parks to offer outdoor experiences for Orange County students throughout the school year,” said Yarib Dheming, school and community outreach manager for Inside the Outdoors. “Our support for Camp Cove further reinforces our commitment to offering environmental literacy experiences for all Orange County kids as Inside the Outdoors enters its 50th year of programming.”
Children who participate in the programs are eligible to apply for Camp Cove.
“Oftentimes, these kids have never been to the beach or a park like this,” Danielle Snyder, supervisor at Crystal Cove State Park, shared with the OC Register. “So we want them to understand that there’s a lot outside of their community, and they can come and explore and discover new things.”
Here are the other stories we’ve been following this week:
- Dr. Stefan Bean’s journey to becoming Orange County’s superintendent of schools reads like a movie script, a cinematic tale of resilience and odds overcome. He recently sat down with the OCDE Newsroom to talk about facing adversity, his first impressions of the job, his interests outside of work and his vision for empowering the students of Orange County.
- Dr. Bean recently attended an active shooter training event organized by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department on July 19, which involved a dozen law enforcement agencies and representatives from 20 school districts — highlighting the importance of school safety and collaboration in creating supportive school environments.
- Huntington Beach High School quarterback Brady Edmunds, who began playing the position in eighth grade and just completed his freshman year, has already earned 21 Division 1 scholarship offers, including from top programs like the University of Michigan and the University of Washington.
- Earlier this month, Marina High School tennis coach Chuck Kingman welcomed the renovation and resurfacing of the school’s 16 courts, funded by the Huntington Beach Union High School District.
- Through a paid summer internship with the Anaheim Union High School District, students are learning to properly tend the Magnolia Agriscience Community Center’s farm and promote it as a resource for those in need, bringing people together and addressing food insecurity through agricultural education.
- Sunburst Youth Academy, a community high school for at-promise youth operated by the California National Guard in partnership with the Orange County Department of Education, offers students hands-on opportunities to develop skills and find purpose through its media team.
- A former school official was sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison for embezzling funds from the Magnolia School District.
- School attendance rates, which dropped to historical lows after pandemic-related closures, increased by 1.18 percentage points last school year but remain 2.17 points below pre-pandemic levels, with the largest gains seen in elementary grades.
- Starting as a freshman at Millikan High in the Long Beach Unified School District during the pandemic, Kai Yamamoto helped develop an Asian American and Pacific Islander ethnic studies course, earning her a $5,000 Girl Scouts Gold Award.
- California’s SUN Bucks program, launched to provide summer food assistance to students from low-income families, has successfully distributed $162 million in benefits to over 3.2 million children, while other states face delays in implementation.
- Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho will appoint a task force to investigate the collapse of the AI company leading a key artificial intelligence initiative and determine how to move forward with integrating AI in classrooms.
- Crean Lutheran High students Jasmine Lee and Lara Cinar, members of the 2024 Fellowship Class of the Dragon Kim Foundation, created a free cooking camp called Feast of Flavors to teach youth about diversity and cultural appreciation through food.
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.