Columbus Elementary School

NORTHWEST GLENDALE — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger toured the aging campus of Columbus Elementary School with several other local officials Monday and spoke about a proposition that would bring $10.4 billion to refurbish and add facilities for schools throughout the state. If passed in November, Proposition 1D would bring about $34 million into Glendale Unified School District, with $3 million set aside for Columbus — which has several buildings dating back to the 1940s.

The playground area at Columbus Elementary School filled up with food, friends and even a fire truck on Friday at the annual Columbus Fair. "This is our biggest event of the year," said Columbus Elementary School Principal Kelly King. "We get our current students and former students and our neighbors come with kids so we get future students too." A big attraction was a Glendale Fire Department fire truck parked at one end of the campus blacktop. Four firemen greeted children and posed for pictures.

Meredith Cervenka: The Falcon hurler has established herself as one of the premier pitchers in Southern California during her junior campaign. She set a state record with 292 consecutive innings pitched without allowing an earned run this year, breaking former La Canada High standout Lindsay Parker's mark. As of May 13, she has a 25-1 record, 0.04 earned-run average and struck out 334 in 180 innings, throwing 16 shutouts and 21 complete games. During her career at CV, she has allowed just one run in 30 Pacific League contests, all victories.

Judy Seckler COLUMBUS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL -- Columbus Elementary School students came face to face with the wilderness during a touring animal chatter assembly on Wednesday. The program is run by Six Flags Magic Mountain. The animal performers are part of the amusement park's ongoing Animal Action Show. Touring since 1973, the program provides interesting educational information about domestic, wild, endangered and protected species. Students had an opportunity to see many of these unique creatures up close.

Alecia Foster Columbus Elementary School students got an early sneak peak of a couple of yet unaired cartoons Wednesday morning. While the cartoons were fun to watch, a trio of writers and producers from the Cartoon Network told students, much work goes into creating them. "Dexter's Laboratory" Supervising Director Chris Savino and Outline Editor Amy Keating Rogers and "Johnny Bravo" Editor Van Partible discussed the important role reading, writing and art lessons played in their careers.

COLUMBUS CONSTRUCTION The board is slated to vote on a resolution to adopt the pre-fast method for buildings proposed at Columbus Elementary School. The district plans to completely replace Columbus Elementary School with PreFast buildings, which are buildings made of pre-made cement modules. WHAT TO EXPECT The board will most likely approve the resolution. NEW SCHOOL REPORT CARDS The board is scheduled to vote to hire Schoolwise Press to produce the district's School Accountability Report Cards at a cost of $26,600.

Students, teachers and faculty at Columbus Elementary School hosted the school's fourth annual Columbus Community Fair on Friday. Members of the community, Glendale Police officers and firefighters attended the event, which included carnival games like a ring toss, rubber-duck pond and putting green, as well as face painting and food. The school hoped to raise about $4,000 at the event, to purchase new lunch tables for students, add additional murals to the school's campus and other beautification efforts and school improvements.

There was an interesting crowd gathered at the Glendale Central Public Library Tuesday evening for a Student Story Teller event. Thirteen students in third through sixth grades at Columbus Elementary School came dressed like fictional and real-life characters from books to tell stories in the first person, as if they were that character. Mingling at the library to tell stories were students dressed like George Washington, Johnny Appleseed, Anne Frank, and Susan B. Anthony, among others.

Gary Moskowitz NORTHEAST GLENDALE -- Barnes & Noble Booksellers will host two days of Cinco de Mayo events this weekend. Events will be from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 245 N. Glendale Ave. The two-day celebration is free and open to the public. Saturday's lineup includes an historical reading of "Battle of Puebla," author Roger Fernandez will discuss and sign his book, "Odyssey to Opportunity," and children's illustrator Diane Greenseid will read her new book, "When the Pigs Took Over."

Columbus Elementary School will host its annual Columbus Community Fair today. The fair is from 3 to 6 p.m. at the school, 425 W. Milford St. The event is free and open to the public. The fair is a fund-raising event hosted by the school and the Columbus Parent-Teacher Assn. The school hopes to raise as much as $5,000. Funds raised at last year's event went toward new school lunch benches. The event will include food and drinks and games and Glendale Police and firefighters will have informational booths.

The Columbus Elementary School mural — a depiction of the school’s mascot, the eagle — had been a welcoming sight to students and visitors for years. For William Kaufmann, 16, who attended Columbus for seven years and was raised near the school, it was a landmark. But the mural disappeared in 2008 along with several old campus buildings amid a major modernization project. It was strange to look over at the school and not see the eagle, William said. So when it came time to develop a project required to earn the Eagle Scout award from Boy Scouts of America, he immediately thought of his alma mater.

Nooneh Gasparian has only ever known Glendale Unified schools. She is a fourth-grade teacher at Columbus Elementary School, where she began as a kindergartner. She attended Toll Middle School and graduated Hoover High in 2000. And next week, she’ll find out how likely it is that she’ll be laid off. “It’s not something I can do anything about,” she said. “I can’t stress about it or put myself down [about] the not-knowing, the waiting period of maybe you’ll get rescinded, maybe you won’t, we don’t know the numbers, that kind of situation.

GLENDALE — A state agency has approved reimbursing Glendale Unified School District about $16.8 million for campus improvements, but none of it can be used to offset teacher layoffs, officials said. The State Allocations Board will compensate Glendale Unified less than half of the roughly $37.9 million district officials requested last year. The funds can be spent only on facilities, Chief Budget Officer Eva Lueck said. A projected $18.5-million deficit by 2011-12 has set the stage for rounds of teacher layoffs in coming weeks, pitting union leaders against district officials and the school board.

Is Glendale a safe place to live? What makes a city safe? A safe community looks out for one another, takes responsibility for supporting its members, ensuring that each person is valued. Does the city of Glendale measure up? I don’t think so: For more than a month now I have observed a member of our community living in a manually operated wheelchair. Yes, living in it. This is happening on Brand Boulevard mainly at the intersection of Colorado Street. Despite the smell of urine and feces, he leaves a trail of trash and garbage and is using empty newspaper stands to store some of his personal belongings, as well as his trash and garbage.

GLENDALE — Construction at several school sites will continue as state funding trickles in, and Glendale Unified school board members may get an opportunity to advance additional construction projects soon, officials said. Construction at Columbus Elementary School should conclude in December and work at Hoover High School is almost finished. “There’s a desire to push forward with additional projects, and I do think we’ll have that opportunity in the future,” Chief Financial Officer Eva Lueck said.

Lupe Beltran grew up in Mexico dreaming of becoming a preschool teacher. Her father passed away when she was 12, and her mother did not have enough money for Beltran to continue her studies. “Since I was in elementary school, my dream was to become a preschool teacher because I saw the teachers and how dedicated they were to their students,” Beltran said. It wasn’t until she moved to the United States to live with her sister in 1983 that Beltran was able to continue her education.

FACILITY PROJECTS The Glendale Unified School District Board of Education heard a report on the progress of its school construction projects. Some of the projects had been in doubt because the state froze grants to pay for them as a result of California?s cash shortage. The continuation of an ongoing development at Columbus Elementary School was previously uncertain, but officials have begun renovating an old building at the site, using money from the district?s construction funds instead of the state grants, said John Fenton, the district?

Every year the Northwest Glendale Lions Club supports the worldwide Lions Peace Poster contest for students ages 11, 12 and 13. The club sponsors the contest for students at Columbus Elementary School. It is estimated that 350,000 students worldwide enter the contest each year. Each student?s poster is judged on its originality, artist merit and expression of the contest?s theme. The theme this year is ?Peace Begins With Me.? Jonah Espino, a fifth-grader at Columbus, won the Glendale contest and went on to win the next level up, the district contest.

DOWNTOWN — The Glendale Unified School District will dig into its own funds to pay for the completion of a previously state-funded construction project at Columbus Elementary School, the Board of Education decided Tuesday. Trustees agreed with administrators, who suggested that the district use leftover funds from Measure K — a $186-million bond measure for facilities improvements passed by voters in 1997 — to makeup for the interruption of funding from the state, Supt.