Last flag ceremony of the year
DATE POSTED: Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Longfellow Flag Ceremony Recognizes School Fundraising Achievements
On Friday, June 4, 2010 over 800 students, along
with teachers, staff and parents gathered at the Longfellow Elementary School courtyard
to celebrate the end of a successful school year and to recognize the
fundraising achievements of the Longfellow PTA and the Longfellow Legacy
Foundation (LLF), two organizations who have rallied to support the school in
the face of on-going budget cuts. The
extraordinary fundraising efforts have saved programs that are essential to the
tradition of academic excellence at Longfellow. Longfellow Elementary, located in Bixby Knolls, is the
highest achieving diverse school in the Long Beach Unified School District and
recently received the 2010 Distinguished School Award.
During the ceremony, State Farm Insurance representatives,
Public Affairs Officer Priscilla Orozco and local State Farm Agent Jeff Yanc,
presented a $5,000 check to LLF to fund the Longfellow/BLAST Summer School Program. Long Beach BLAST (Better Learning after
School Today), a mentoring and tutoring organization, will provide math and
literacy tutoring for Longfellow students who are in danger of being
retained.
LLF raised $36,000 from its Second Annual Cinco de Mayo Golf
Tournament, which will be used to fund the After-School Tutoring and the
Chorale Music Programs. We would like to recognize the efforts of the entire golf committee for their tireless efforts, co-chaired by Jeff Johnson and Steve Rockenbach. A special thanks to all our sponsors; Baja Sonora, Scott Robinson Honda, Power of One, E.J. Malloy's and many others. Our work would not be possible if not by the support of Longfellow Elementary: parents, students, teachers, and administration. We are truly humbled to be part of such a wonderful community.
With funding from the Leadership Long Beach Connected Corridor
Project, funded in part from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the
Long Beach Community Foundation, LLF formed a partnership with Long Beach BLAST,
which successfully brought up the reading levels of students who were two or
more years behind. With this
funding, LLF also brought in Alive Theater to help produce the Longfellow
Talent Show and created the Hughes Tutoring Partnership that brought in Hughes
students to review math facts with Longfellow students.
Special guests at the ceremony included: LBUSD Superintendent Christopher
Steinhauser; Dr. Jill Baker, Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education;
Sandy VandenBerge, Vice President of the Long Beach Community Foundation; and Leslie Keeney of BLAST.