By Isabelle Chiu
Sports Editor
As students’ schedules change, classes are dropped or added. This year, 12 new teachers, counsellors, and administrators were added onto Mira Costa’s staff.
Costa will be welcoming four teachers, three special education staff, two administrative positions, two counselors, and two teacher-librarian positions. The special education staff include Amber Aleman, Caroline Robinson and Dave Halushka, who is also one of Costa’s water polo’s coaches.
“Many of them [the new staff] seem to have adjusted very well,” principal Ben Dale said. “It’s a steep learning curve here and they are obviously up to the task.”
Emily Sommer joined the guidance counseling department and is taking over the students that were previously under Sue Bertran. Sommer has worked as a counselor at schools in Orange Country and Watts, which varied in class size.
“The students here are completely awesome,” Sommer said. “Everyone’s been nice, respectful, funny and good at communicating.”
Photo essay of a few new teachers
Bridgett Sullivan is Costa’s new teacher-librarian. Sullivan has many ideas to revamp the library and has already made several changes to Costa’s library such as allowing students to eat food while working in the library. James Marshall will be assisting Costa students with technology like Canvas on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in the library.
“Revamping the library will probably take a bit, and I want input from students and what they need in the library so we can make those changes as well,” Sullivan said.
The College and Career Center will be adding Elizabeth Reiken to its staff as a full time college and career counselor who will be available to students and parents in the evening. Reiken has worked at Los Angeles Unified School District as a guidance counselor for eight years prior to taking her job at Costa.
Click here to see the new changes to the CCC
“It has been an adjustment between being a guidance counselor and solely focusing on college,” Reiken said. “It’s fun because it’s very concentrated and I get to learn about the different colleges and help kids find their fit.”
CP Biology teacher James Locke and English 9 and 10 teacher Lindsey Valbuena are both coming in from Manhattan Beach Middle School, while Jarrod Parra, who currently teaches Earth Science and Biology CP, came in from Mt. Gleason Middle School in the San Fernando Valley. Locke said that adjusting to Canvas wasn’t too drastic, as the middle school was all digital.
“The opportunity to teach at Costa just came up, and I thought that at this point in my career I had been at the middle school for 12 years, and that it would be a great change for me to do something different,” Locke said.
Read: a News coverage of the new staff members
Carol Meeks, the principal’s secretary, and Nancy DiRado, the vice principal’s secretary, are Manhattan Beach Unified School District Parents and South Bay residents and will be joining the administrative staff. Meeks has been a music teacher for 15 years, and she says that the experience of being a teacher and working with the administrative staff has been the best of both worlds.
“When I’m in the classroom I get to work one on one with students and have a variety of groups every day and now I get to do work as a secretary in a lot of the behind-the-scene items that I didn’t know existed when I was just a teacher,” Meeks said.
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