MVSA News - December 2009

Tuesday, December 08 2009 05:41 | Written by Filiz Crocker |

From Our President:

Dear Mission Valley Friends,

I hope you had a pleasurable Thanksgiving break, which was restful or eventful depending on how you prefer it best. My family and I chose to keep it simple with good food, good friends, short trips and lots of much needed rest.

I know November is a short month, but this year it went by amazingly fast. One minute I was convincing myself to get an early start on holiday shopping and next it was already December and I had fallen behind. It was a relatively quiet month for MVSA activities. Our annual teacher potluck lunch during parent-teacher conferences fell victim to the school budget cuts. No conferences, no need for the potluck. Our other annual event held in November, the Multicultural Day Celebration, also was cancelled due to scheduling difficulties arising from the budget cuts.

This isn’t to say that volunteers were not busy helping at our school in November. The Safety Patrol parents and students, the Copy Committee members, the FAME docents, the Tech Committee volunteers, the Marquee changer, Science Camp fundraiser organizers, to name just a few, all continued their hard work. Parents helped in the classrooms, the library and on fieldtrips. Volunteers make a difference daily in our students’ lives. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

Don’t forget about our next MVSA meeting next Tuesday evening. I look forward to seeing you there. But just in case you can’t make it, I’m wishing you and yours a very happy Holiday Season in advance.

Filiz Crocker

Announcing the Winners of the Membership Drive Pizza Parties:

Each year, the MVSA awards pizza parties to the classrooms that have the highest participation in our Membership Drive. The funds collected go directly back into our school in the form of computer upgrades, fieldtrip scholarships, classroom donations and much, MUCH more. In the past we have had two winners, one amongst K through 3rd graders and one amongst the 4th through 6th graders. This was fair when the class sizes in those grades were the same. Because of the class size increase to 30 students in Kindergarten this year, we’ve decided to add a separate category for just the Kinders.

The winners are:

Kindergarten: Room 1 – Mrs. Cudney

1st – 3rd: Room 16 – Ms. August

4th – 6th: Room 31 – Ms. Maryman

Congratulations to our winning classrooms. We will be contacting you to schedule your parties very soon.

We’d like to thank everyone who has joined the MVSA, parents/guardians, teachers and staff members. Your generosity has made this year’s drive a success despite the current economic environment. We have seen an increase in company matching donations and thank all the parents and their employers for their contributions.
We hope to get the directories and incentive gifts out to you along with your receipts very shortly. If you have not yet joined the MVSA, you can do so at any time.

A Super Star at Mission Valley!

The award-winning StarStruck Theatre opens its 15^th season with none other than the family classic, The Music Man and we happen to have a star among us at our school! Our very own Kai Goodman (6^th grader in Room 20) will be performing in StarStruck Theatre’s presentation of The Music Man at the Ohlone College Jackson Theatre which will be marching onto the stage January 9^th – 24th. (Recent alum Lynnea Shuck, now a student at Hopkins, is also in the cast.) Gather the family together and go see this timeless production filled with invigorating choreography, a spectacular orchestra, and dazzling sets and costumes. Tickets and show information are available at www.starstrucktheatre.org.

From Vick Chan, Safety Patrol Coordinator:

We have two positions open for parent volunteers on Thursday and Friday mornings. Please email Vick Chan ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) if you are interested.

The rainy season is around the corner—please remember to drive slow and pay extra attention to the kids on the street when approaching the school zone.

Last month’s quiz: Can you guess how many cars on average pass through our school drive-thru lane every morning?

Answer: The team works from 8:15am to 8:30am, allows ten cars at a time and takes about 1.5 to 2 minutes to serve ten cars. Therefore in average, we have about 80 cars passing through our drive-thru lane every morning and could have up to 100 cars on a good day.

This month’s quiz: The team posts at three locations in the morning. The team calls those locations Denise/Mckay, Drive-Thru and Dumpster. Why is one of the locations named Dumpster? (Look for the answer in the next Newsletter)

Message from the City of Fremont:

The City of Fremont has a new Community Alert System, CodeRED®, which is provided by Emergency Communications Network. CodeRED® is a high-speed notification system that gives City officials the ability to deliver pre-recorded emergency alerts and non-emergency notifications to targeted geographic areas or the entire city.

CodeRED® is a "reverse 911" system that currently contains land-line phone numbers for most residents and businesses. You are encouraged to enroll additional information to receive notifications by email, SMS (text), and cell or work numbers. Also, please help us spread the word about this new system and encourage your Fremont friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc., to enroll their contact information as well.

The Fremont Police Department and Fremont Fire Department will use the system to notify homes and businesses of situations that pose imminent threat to life or health, such as evacuations, hazardous materials releases or spills, barricaded criminal suspects, and floods and fires in an immediate area.

The City also plans to use the system for non-emergency, time-sensitive information, such as road closures, scheduled major maintenance work, planned traffic impacts, missing persons, criminal descriptions, and City events.

Signing up for Fremont's Community Alert System is simple and free. The first step is to log on to www.Fremont.gov/CommunityAlert, and follow the links to enroll land-line telephone numbers, cell numbers, text, e-mail, or all of them. Please note that standard text messaging charges apply.