A Pie in the Face for Jog-A-Thon

As a reward for meeting the goals of the fund raiser, students enjoy watching Marcus Lam, Principal, and Clinton Puckett, Vice Principal, get a pie in the face. The students actually exceeded their goal of $25,000. Make sure you watch the video all the way to the end as it really gets wild at the end. This video was prepared by the students in Mr. Guernseys 5th grade class.

Resource Teacher Retires

Donna Smith-Harrison and her husband, Sam

After 35 years of teaching, Donna Smith-Harrison is retiring. She has been at Alvarado for 10 years. Her students will greatly miss her. Donna has been a strong influence on many students as she has a very special knowledge and understanding of students with special needs.

Donna Reads the Important Books made by students and staff and Tracie wishes her well.

Carmen, Thora, Karen, Cheri
Best Friends Forever say Farewell

Steve, Rachel................ Sam, Donna, Thora

Donna gave all the staff a good laugh with a list of her top ten reasons for retiring.

Mani, Laurie................ Rachel, Colleen

Anna, Nancy, Jill, Anita, Vince


Congratulations Donna.
Thanks for the many years of service.

To begin her retirement with fun and friends, Donna had lunch with this fabulous group of principals at the Slanted Door in San Francisco.

Karen Saucedo, Cheri Benafield, Donna Smith-Harrison
Tracie Noriega, Carmen Jorgenson

1997 - 1999 Moving on and Moving Down

The first full year of class size reduction in K-3 was 1997. Each teacher had 20 students. It was a dream come true. Prep teachers still had 30 kids. The triad teachers were happy to have their own classes. All the classrooms were occupied. We still had about 450 students. We just had many more teachers. However, our student population was soon to go up.

In 1997 the Synergy Media Retrieval System was installed in the hub room and each classroom. We had instant broadcast video in each room including the office for about six years, then it started falling apart. When the district lost the only two people who knew how to make it work school wide, Jay Hendee and the technician, Richard, that was the death knell. By 2009 Synergy was no longer was viable. The technology had changed 500% during that time span. It was old equipment that had not been updated.

After much debate with parents and students, in 1998 5th grade moved down from the middle school. It was quite a switch for them and us. Now we were a K-5 school with about 650 students and five more teachers. More portables were moved out to the grass area. Prep teachers did the “wheel” as an elective for the 5th graders. The media specialist started the AE television broadcast with each 5th grade class. The wheel only lasted one year. The system was too complicated for elementary students and their teachers to handle. It just didn’t work.

In 1998 began the Cell and Excell literacy training program for teachers. Laurie Koehler was the ExLL coach and Bee Medders was the CELL coach. ExLL was for 4th and 5th grade. CELL was for k-3. CELL stands for California Early Literacy Learning. The focus is on teaching reading and writing including content reading for the 4th and 5th grades. Teachers spent a lot of time on this training much of it during staff meetings. Much of their focus was on using read alouds in the classroom everyday and twice a day if possible. The buzz word now was "coaching" instead of trainers. The coaches went into classrooms and worked with teachers and students.

Leonore Sanchez

Jill Baer

We also had some office changes. In 1996 Nancy Mumm replaced Barbara Finnigan as a clerk III. Barbara went to the district office to work with Kathy Moniz. In 1998 Mike recruited Jill Baer from the district office to come to Alvarado when Leonore Sanchez retired. Leonore came to AE from Hillview Crest in 1984 with principal Hector Carabello. Jill worked with Mike at the district office and liked his jolly sense of humor.

Late 1980's

Hector Caraballo retired and Julia Strong (Yoho) became the principal of Alvarado Elementary in 1989. Hector had been a strong principal who basically made most of the decisions. Julia had long experience in education. It was a change for the staff when Julia asked for input. The staff was used to Hector making the decisions without much input. Around 1985 Rhonda Neagle became the media specialist/librarian. Nancy Mumm was a volunteer parent and a noon supervisor. Betty Silva became aide in 1986. At that time there were 4 other aides. They were Diane Angelo, Irene Galvan, Elenore Yip, and Jackie Lomax.

Rhonda Neagle was hired by Hector Caraballo as the media specialist in 1987. According to Rhonda, Roger Hoyer, the technology director at the district office, and Guy decided to move the district in the direction of the dot com revolution and worked hard to make it happen from the mid-1980s on. Part of Rhonda's job was to help them do this. Teachers did not have computers in their room. The school had a few Commodore Pets and a few Apple IIgs in the staff room.

Rhonda recalls, "I first met Stephen Politzer at AE. He was a Curriculum Leader then (I think that's what they were called) and he taught me how to use the Commodore Pets that I had in the media center (two or three of them). He and I also ran the site Technology Team. The software titles that were available for the Macs were few and far between. I do remember Dazzle Draw and all of the MECC stuff though like Oregon Trail. Those were fun times."

Julia Strong-Yoho Principal
Tess Melendez Assistant Principal
1989-1990
Click on the photo to enlarge.