Grant helps foreign language

Laguna Beach students will have extra help learning foreign languages in the future.

SchoolPower, Laguna Beach School District’s fundraising arm, presented a $500,000 check to the Laguna Beach Unified School District on Tuesday specifically for foreign language education.

SchoolPower endowment President Bill O’Hare, and President Jeff Spurlock, presented the “big” check to the district at the Board of Education meeting.

O’Hare emphasized that the foundation was acting to support the district’s goals and vision laid out by the board.

“I’d like to emphasize that as supportive and enthusiastic as we are about the Foreign Language initiative, the vision came from everyone on the other side of this podium,” O’Hare said. “Your staff and your administration, each of you on the board, decided over the course of your strategic planning this year and the budget process, foreign language education in the elementary schools was an important priority, and ultimately foreign language education and proficiency K-12 was something that is important to the school district.”

O’Hare added: “We enthusiastically jump on your bandwagon, but it’s important to emphasize in keeping with longtime SchoolPower tradition, you craft the vision, and we help you make it a reality. You set the policy, and this is certainly a policy that we strongly support.”

The grant, payable over 10 years, will be used to improve and expand foreign language education at all grade levels. Initially the program will be implemented as an after-school program with Berlitz for first through third grades at both elementary schools; the following year, by adding a full-time certificated teacher to teach foreign language to fourth and fifth grades.

Supt. Robert Fraisse thanked the group for its support.

“One of our district goals is to emphasize our powerful partnerships and certainly there is no better partner to the district than SchoolPower,” Fraisse said. “I give credit to Mr. O’Hare who came in on my first week on the job and said that one of the biggest challenges would be to integrate our strategic planning with the great support we’d get from this community; but it has to be integrated. To see tonight this integration moving forward is a giant step for us and a model of the way we are going to do this in the years to come.”

SchoolPowerPalooza is Saturday

SchoolPower is hoping to attract the entire community to a live concert event, the first ever SchoolPowerPalooza, from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday at El Morro Elementary School.

The popular local reggae-rock band Common Sense will head up the live concert event, which also features Lagunan Jason Feddy and Party Foul.

Organizers say the “back-to-school” event is an invitation to hang out with friends, bring the family and enjoy a picnic-style barbecue dinner with fantastic ocean views. Plus, the event, priced to cover costs only, gives more people a chance to participate in the efforts of SchoolPower.

The outdoor event will take place on the El Morro Elementary School grounds, 8681 No. Coast Hwy., Laguna Beach.

Attendants will direct cars to complimentary parking at the Crystal Cove State Park lots (first to the lot directly behind El Morro, and then to the Los Trancos location on Coast Highway). Frequent and free shuttle service will be provided.

Tickets at the door are $15 for children and $20 for adults respectively.

For more information and to buy tickets, contact the SchoolPower office at (949) 494-6811 or visit www.lbschoolpower.org.

CINDY FRAZIER is city editor of the Coastline Pilot. She can be contacted at (949) 494-2087 or cindy.frazier@latimes.com.