Report Card

The Rotary Club of Huntington Beach and the Huntington Beach Sunrise

Rotary Club staged a recent drive to help fill the library shelves at Oak

View Elementary School.

Their hope was to put books in the hands of children in kindergarten

through third grade and have them all reading by the age of nine.

With a goal of attaining 2,000 books for the Oak View students, the

two rotary clubs went to work, asking the public to contribute to the

cause.

They exceeded their goal.

“We are ecstatic with the outcome of this drive,” said Dale Dunn of

the Rotary Club of Huntington Beach, which was established in 1923.

Both clubs gave $1,500 to the cause, and with the public’s help, the

drive collected a total of $3,467. That led to the purchase of 2,350

books, which were recently ordered.

He said that the school’s book shelves should be filled by late March

or early April.

The program is based on the Reading by 9 program, a Southern

California literacy initiative, started by the Los Angeles Times, that

puts books in the hands of children and brings adult volunteers into

classrooms to read with students one on one.

Moldy classrooms and just what is being done about them has been

foremost in parents minds in the Huntington Beach City School District.

The district held a special meeting last week at the Eader Elementary

School to assure parents that things are under control.

The district hired Assets Environmental Group to address the problem.

The group’s spokeswoman, Jeanna Sellmeyer, reported to a crowd of about

75 people that abatement work is ongoing at Eader and vowed to kept

district officials, school personneland concerned parents abreast of the

progress being made at the school site.

Currently, four active classrooms are shutdown at Eader. One classroom

not in use has mold infestation, said Dick Masters, the district’s

maintenance and operations supervisor.

“We began having problems last April, they came in and took care of

that problem, and then two more schools were found to have mold in some

of their classrooms,” Masters said.

The first school infested with mold, Masters said, was Kettler

Elementary last April and the school received aggressive mold abatement

treatments and the problem has been solved.

Mold was also discovered in five rooms at Perry Elementary School in

late September, and the rooms were stripped and gutted and put back

together when treatment was completed, Masters said.

Three rooms at Smith Elementary School have had mold infestation and

although some treatments have already been completed, abatement

treatments in those three rooms is now in a holding pattern.

“We are aggressively tackling these problems,” Masters said.

Eader Principal Dixie Arnold said the next informational meeting will

be held Friday before the start of the school day at the school’s

cafeteria.

Students give ideas for new laws

Edison High School junior Travis Jensen was recognized for his entry

in the essay contest, “There Ought To Be A Law,” which was sponsored by

Assemblyman Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach).

Jensen was one of four semifinalists chosen by a panel of community

leaders. His essay proposed to combat child abuse using alcohol taxes.

His idea will be molded into a bill and introduced by Harman, said his

chief of staff Bob Biddle.

The three other semifinalists were Brad Stapleton and Harold Wong,

both of Huntington Beach, and Stephanie Antal of Fountain Valley.