Posts Tagged ‘school’

Now that Halloween is just a memory and a bunch of crackly candy wrappers in a bucket, you can really have some fun.

Mission Indie-Mart

Say no to sweatshop labor and corporate sameness at this fleamarket, where over 40 local designers, retailers, and crafters offer quirky wares for kids and adults. There’s hot barbecue for sale too.

When: Sun., 11/8; noon-6pm; All Ages; Free.

Where: Thee Parkside, 1600 17th Street (at Wisconsin Street), San Francisco; indie-mart.com.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Four children step into an antique wardrobe and fall into an adventure in a magical fairyland in this adaptation with young actors.

When: Ongoing through 9/15; Sat. 1pm; Sun. 1:30 & 3:30pm; Age 4+; $10 adults, $7 children under 13.

Where: Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Building C, Marina Boulevard (at Buchanan Street); 415-346-5550; ypt.org.

Animal Secrets

Learn how bats find their way through dark caves and if chipmunks really sleep in a tree like Chip and Dale at this exhibition that pokes into the private lives of familiar animals.

When: Ongoing through 5/9/10; Age 0-8; Free with paid admission (Free-$18).

Where: Bay Area Discovery Museum, 557 McReynolds Road (at Fort Baker), Sausalito, 415-339-3900, baykidsmuseum.org.

SFUSD Public School Enrollment Fair

The biggie, with representatives from every San Francisco public school and all the forms parents need for the 2010 application process.

When: Sat., 11/7, 9am-2:30pm; Age 2+; Free.

Where: Concourse Exhibition Center, 620 Seventh Street (at Brannan Street), San Francisco; portal.sfsu.edu.

Fantastic Fridays
Crissy Field Center naturalists take little ones on an exploration of the outdoors using the senses. This week: cuddle up to trees with a hike and leaf rubbings.

When: Ongoing each Friday including 11/6; Age 18 months-4 years; $12-15

Where: Crissy Field Center, 603 Mason Street (at Halleck Street), San Francisco; 415-561-7752; crissyfield.org.

Spaces are still available in the super-popular San Francisco Zoo day camps, set to run April 6-10 and April 13-17, during Bay Area school vacations, natch. The buzz on the camps is that little campers are led on adventurous walks to meet the different animals; they get a very intimate view and learn about their care and habitat from zookeepers. The springtime camp is particularly sweet, as that’s when the baby animals are born, and kids can marvel over nests and tiny, floppy baby paws. Then there are animal crafts and activities, and vigorous games. Kids seem to go crazy over it all, which is why the camps sell out every season.

For pre-K and kindergarten-aged kids (age 4 and up), the day runs from 9am until noon; kids in first through fourth grades come at 9am and hang around until 4pm. Early drop-offs (8am) are available for both sets of campers; the older group can also be picked up late at 5pm.

If you want to sign your child up, better hurry because once the camps are sold out, that’s it until summertime.

Call 415-753-7073, email zoocamp@sfzoo.org, or visit sfzoo.org.

Local boy Dave Eggers is a hero for a reason, and only part of it has to do with his 2000 bestseller A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers made some money, and he plowed it right back into San Francisco, founding the kids’ writing support center 826 Valencia. Children age 6-18 can get free drop-in homework help and writing support, long-range one-on-one tutoring, or attend special workshops, like the upcoming Valencia Bay-farer series, where kids age 8-14 put together a little community newspaper under the tutelage of professional journalists. Teachers can also bring schoolkids to 826 Valencia for free field trips, including the popular Storytelling & Bookmaking course, at which students collaborate on a story which is illustrated, printed, and bound by the time the class is ready to leave.

Just dropping in to the 826 Valencia space is an experience in and of itself. Whimsical Eggers set the place up as a “pirate emporium,” with drawers full of bizarre items: tangled nets, glass eyes, sextants. There’s a giant fish tank with an enclosed hallway surrounding it, turning the tank into a mini movie theater, and a huge vat of sand with a stool in front of it so that kids can climb up and search for buried treasure inside. Bringing young ones here to wait for big sis to finish with her class won’t be a problem; in fact, you may be begged to go early.

826 Valencia is located at 826 Valencia Street (at 19th Street), in San Francisco. Call 415-642-5905 or visit 826valencia.org.

Schools are closed on Tuesday for Veterans Day, leaving a lot of local parents trying to figure out what to do with the kids all day. An option that will at least leave your morning free: San Mateo’s Junior Gym Tot Drop. Parents with children aged 2 to 3.5 can leave them at the luxe, lauded, large facility from 8:30am to 12:30pm to play with Junior Gym’s excellent teachers. Diapers are OK, but parents should pack a snack for their children. The session costs $40.

The Tot Drop, regularly held on school holidays, is a great chance to check out the Junior Gym for local parents who haven’t taken a look at it yet. The place is stocked: lined with padded mats and filled with climbing/play equipment that is moved around each week, giving kids a fresh environment to explore on each visit. There’s a child-sized zip line; musical instruments; fun teachers who play music that doesn’t make parents’ ears bleed (no Raffi!). And if you sign a child up for a class, all the children in your family can go to the open gym periods that occur twice every weekday. If you’re a pay-as-you-go type, open gyms are $5 an hour for kids aged 0-8.

Junior Gym is located at 101 South B Street (at First Avenue) in San Mateo. Call 650-548-9901 or visit juniorgym.com.

In a report released Thursday, a San Francisco Civil Grand Jury has recommended that the San San Francisco Unified School District should dump its “confusing, time-consuming, alienating” system of assigning students to schools via lottery, and instead assign students to schools in their neighborhood.

It was tough to hear over the “Oh HELL yeah” emanating from local parents, but the grand jury insulted the lottery system on all fronts: it’s expensive, it’s confusing, it chases intimidated families out of the city, and worst of all, it doesn’t even work. One 2005 study found that more than 50 percent of the SFUSD’s schools were “severely segregated.”

The lottery was only a stopgap solution anyway. As a story in the San Francisco Examiner explains, a 1983 NAACP suit caused a federal court to order San Francisco to integrate its public schools. Another lawsuit in 1991 said that using race to assign students to schools was also unfair. Thus our bizarre lottery system, which assigns weight to such factors as the languages students speak, their socioeconomic background, and the performance of individual schools.

For parents the process is stressful and confusing; for taxpayers the lottery’s expensive: it costs $2 million a year just to maintain the 29-member staff necessary to help parents with the application process. And here’s the real kicker: The federal order to desegregate the schools expired in 2005, so there’s not even anyone making us run it anymore.

Does that sound racist? I’m not jumping up and down that schools are so segregated. I drive by the nice, expensive private schools in town and see only white faces, and then by the schoolyards in the neighborhoods I can afford to rent in and see only brown ones. It bums me out because weren’t we supposed to be over this by now? Actually melting together in our melting pot?

It’s not working, but the lottery isn’t the solution we need either. And it’s a stressful time-suck for the parents and students who have to research scores of schools, and who can’t be sure which (if any!) of their ultimate choices they’ll get. And maybe they get School X all the way over on the other side of town, and either Mom or Dad are hauling them, or they’re getting up at 5:30am to take two buses in order to get there on time.

School board president Mark Sanchez agrees that the lottery ain’t working, and this fall there’ll be discussions and probably changes.

Yippee.