Palomar Summer School to Commence Monday

Summer is here, and summer school at Palomar opens tomorrow. For the next six weeks, more than 1,600 students will be studying with us in over 70 classes offered by our department. The credit and INEA students will be in class for eight weeks, as always. Like you, I always anticipate a new session with a profound sense of excitement and gratitude--excited about the new ways I will try to teach my students and grateful to our classified staff who did an excellent job of building our classes by working hard through the break. I would like to thank all of our classified staff for their hard work!

No doubt budget reductions in public education in our state continue to stir fears that no one will be well served. Fortunately, President Deegan believes that Palomar's goal is to continue to serve the maximum number of students that we can afford to serve as best that we can.

June 30 will mark the first time Palomar terminates all student and temporary employees (formerly called short-term hourly workers) on a yearly basis. Only a limited number of such employees will be approved to be rehired for the new fiscal year. They will be subject to background checks as well as newly established uniform hourly rates and skill level requirements. The new process will take some time, so if your program depends on these employees to be operational, you should plan accordingly.

We all know these are unusual times and that we will all need to pull together to get through the next couple of years. We should all look carefully at how we can contribute and conserve wherever possible. I'd like to get my fellow teachers to respond to these few questions:

1. Do I know my students' current telephone numbers in case I need to call them to increase student attendance?
   
2. Do I have a way to remind myself to take the markers, erasers, etc. that I brought with me at the end of the day?
   
3. Do I have a way to put handouts online for my students to print out themselves?

On the health front, people all over the world are still coming down with the swine flu. So talk up these precautions in your class:

1. Cover coughs and sneezes.
   
2. Wash hands frequently.
   
3. Stay home when sick.

Theresa Gonzalez of the County's Health Dept. is available to give an hour-long presentation to any weekday class, both AM and PM, on the topic of lead poisoning for children. Her talk covers basic information about the topic of lead poisoning as well as why take children for a test and how to ask doctors questions in English. She is Spanish-English bilingual and can be contacted directly at (619)515-6576 to make arrangements for her class visit.

This next bit of information is especially for colleagues who work in Escondido. The retiring person at the helms in Escondido, Theo Brockett, has recently been diagnosed with colon cancer. She is currently making normal progress on her recovery from surgery, however. Let's all send healing thoughts her way. If you want to send a card, please email me or ask your program coordinator for her mailing address.

Thanks. And have a great start of summer school!