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New Vice Principals Jessica Bledsoe, Stephanie Hall and Tara Grings have been hired to replace former Vice Principals Karina Gerger, Kristin Wolberg and John Shaw. Along with the new Vice Principals, Costa has undergone changes in teaching staff, new classes and new electronic classroom platforms.
New Vice Principals
Prior to this year, Bledsoe taught Advanced Placement Biology, served as the Science Department Chair, and piloted the biotechnology class. Bledsoe applied to be Vice Principal so she could look at education from a new vantage point and create solutions to common problems she faced from a teaching standpoint, she said. She is in charge of world language, the English department, the master schedule and transcripts.
“Being a Vice Principal differs from teaching in that I have [other] counselors that help to clarify positions, make decisions as a team, [and] talk about things before things are done,” Bledsoe said. “It’s very much a team mentality and it’s about looking at the process from that perspective instead of me just in a classroom full of kids.”
Hall comes to Costa after serving as a Physical Education teacher and an Intervention Specialist. This year, Hall is in charge of athletics, facilities on campus, school sponsored activities and organizations including Model United Nations, Choir, Band and the Associated Student Body.
“From what I have seen so far, is that the kids are just incredible,” Hall said. “Students are respectful, driven and they are also highly involved which I think is incredible.”
Lastly, Grings has been a teacher for twelve years, in subjects including English, Musical Theatre and Choir. Grings was first drawn to Costa after hearing Mira Costa principal Dr. Ben Dale, who, as her professor in her Masters and Administration program, shared his stories about Costa.
“When I first visited Costa, I fell in love with the school, the teachers and all the unique and wonderful classes offered,” Grings said. “When I was in high school you had one option for English, let alone a creative class like 80’s Literature which is something I am very drawn to.”
Teachers New to Courses
James Locke previously taught seventh grade science at Manhattan Beach Middle School. He also took over Bledsoe’s role as the AP Biology teacher in addition to continuing his role from last year as the CP biology teacher at Costa.
Ernesto Nodado also replaced Bledsoe as the biotechnology teacher while continuing to teach Honors and CP Chemistry.
“I like the idea of teaching kids in a class that they want to be in,” Locke said. “Everyone has to take CP Biology, so some want to be there and some do not. It is very exciting to work with a group of students that are in a class, such as AP Biology, because they want to be there.”
Schedule Changes
In previous years, while students have needed to fill out multiple paper forms to request schedule changes, this year counselors addressed schedule change requests through an online Google Form accessible through a student’s mbusdapps account which could only be submitted once.
“For the counselors, the new system was really helpful because we didn’t have papers all over our desk,” head Counselor Eliza Santaroza said. “There was one format and one place the schedule changes were coming from so we as counselors could see every student’s request and if there was a trend, we would talk about it as a team and see if we could tackle that.”
While the new system has benefits, some students made requests after the deadline to submit the online form, resulting in changes needing to be made the first day of school. These changes could not be made after the form closed because counselors were occupied in teacher training days, Santarosa said.
“For next year, a goal the counselors have talked about is aiming to not have lines of students waiting to make schedule changes,” Santaroza said. “On the first day of school we want students in class learning not lined up for changes.”
New Student Information System
After four years of using Powerschool as the student information system, Manhattan Beach Unified School District has made the switch to Aeries for the 2017-2018 school year.
Aeries is a student information management software that provides multiple forms of customer service such as conferences, workshops and training. On July 1, Mira Costa implemented the new system.
“[Powerschool] was causing us to do too much clean up work with the transcripts, if you have a digital electronic tool, it needs to work,” Principal Dr. Dale said. “However, we knew that Aeries spit out the transcript that we wanted with minimal trouble.”
Costa held two training sessions for office staff in March in order to prepare them for the new system. However, there were still a few major issues with Aeries and Canvas at the start of the year, which the administration is in the process of fixing.
[Aeries and Canvas] weren’t talking in the first week, but in the second week we got it together,” Dale said. “[The week of Sept. 18] we’ve been training people and making sure the Aeries gradebook is set up.”
New class
This year marked the first for a number of both academic and elective courses. One of these new classes is Link Crew.
Link Crew is a program that brings upperclassmen in contact with Freshman, and there are 104 students currently involved. The idea for Link Crew came from the Social Emotional Wellness committee which was discussing ways to reduce student stress, increase campus inclusion and empower students to take on leadership roles, Link Crew teacher Maddie Hutchinson said.
“We are so lucky to have so many junior and senior students volunteers over the summer preparing for our incoming freshman class,” academic support counselor Keshia Fields said. “ We also had amazing support from the teachers and administrators on campus, which really helped everything come together smoothly.”
Class Adjustments
Along with the introduction of classes new to Costa this year, a number of changes have been made to already existing classes in the All Media Arts Department.
This year, yearbook and La Vista have been moved into the same building. Both classes have also received new advisors, replacing Valerie Park in Yearbook and Michael McAvin in La Vista are Lindsey Valbuena and Keely Gabbert, respectively.
“We’ve had to adjust to a smaller space in the computer room where the staff worked,” senior and Hoofprints editor-in-chief Kate Lovekin said. “With 40 plus students, it gets pretty cramped so some groups have to be split up and move into Ms. Valbuena’s classroom to have more space to do their work.”
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