10/26

School Safety

Earlier in the school year we talked with all the students about putting emergency numbers in their phones.  Now there is an even easier way for Solano College students to connect with the campus sheriffs if needed.  The Solano Safe App can be downloaded for free in the App Store and Google Play.

The app is designed to help students, faculty, and staff:

● Access emergency plans detailing specific actions students should take in the event of an emergency situation.  

● Contact on-campus and off-campus emergency personnel.

● Access a personal safety toolbox with a flashlight, alarm, and personal safety tips.

● Report suspicious activity.  Photos can be submitted directly to Campus Sheriff's Office.

● Follow the Solano Safety News Feed for safety and other related information, such as weather alerts.

● Find their way around campus.

● Open real-time chat with on-duty, including a mobile emergency "blue light" button that lets users send their location to the Campus Sheriff's Office.

● Find student support resources including Campus Sheriff's Office services, mental health and other important contacts.  

Solano College is actually a very safe place but we always want to take every step possible to ensure student safety.  Every year Solano College publishes a report called the, "Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act."  Here is one of the pages with statistics from the Fairfield campus.  As you can seen there is a very low crime rate here on campus.  There were 5 incidents of burglary in 2017.  This is a reminder for students who drive to make sure to lock their cars and not keep valuables in their vehicle.  

FSUSD School Board Meeting 

Last night was the first time Early College High School has had an opportunity to make a student representative presentation at a school board meeting.  Isabella Biscocho played the board a video that she and fellow 11th grade student Natalia Zola made.  Isabella was given 3 minutes to share with the board and the public what is taking place here at ECHS.  As the video played with no sound she talked about student activities, clubs, and student tutorials that take place in College Readiness class.  Isabella did a great job last night!  Here is a link to the video and the script from her presentation.  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QwgNqLP5RTOF-2R7gYFW5-Kq7VDOLx2e/view?usp=sharing

Good evening Superintendent Corey and members of the Governing Board.  I’m Isabella Biscocho and I’m a student at Early College High School. ECHS is a Rodriguez High School program at Solano Community College that allows its students to simultaneously take high school classes and college courses.  We work towards earning our high school diploma while at the same time, earning transferable college units. Though it is only on its 5th year, this year Early College has a total of 236 students. As a group we will earn over 1,500 college units this semester!

Our seniors last semester earned an average college GPA of 3.3.  The seniors started this year off with a senior sunrise hosted by the senior class club. The junior class earned an average college GPA of 3.18 last semester and are striving to complete an average of 8 units each this semester on top of their high school load.  Our sophomore class earned an average college GPA of 2.87 in their second semester in the program. ECHS has also welcomed 65 freshmen this year, who are already enrolled in their first college course!

In addition to academics, Early College also offers a variety of clubs for its students to join. They include magazine, academic decathlon, debate club, senior class club, robotics, drama club, art club, leadership, and National Honor Society. All these clubs are student-led and allow for ECHS students to be involved in our community. For instance, drama club hosts a yearly production; robotics, debate, and academic decathlon have their respective competitions for students to compete in; art club is preparing pieces to display at an art show at the end of the year, senior class club is building a scarecrow to enter into a contest, magazine creates a yearbook for the entire program, and leadership sets up monthly events for students to attend. With all these clubs, Early College is able to cater to the many interests of its students.

One class that is special to the Early College curriculum is College Readiness. CR is required all 4 years at ECHS and is where students are able to receive academic support in college and high school classes and are given the opportunity to explore options for the future. Every week in CR students are required to fill out a TRF in order to be prepared to complete a tutorial. As shown by these video clips, tutorials are where students are able to get specialized help from their peers by presenting a point of confusion or POC to a group and using the questions their groups ask them to solve this POC. These tutorials are helpful to students because it sets aside time each week for them to answer any questions they may have in any subject. The overall process of questioning required by tutorial helps to advance all students understanding of a subject by the use of inquiry. By helping each other, students are able to set themselves up for academic success. This, paired with the support of faculty and peers at Early College, help ECHS students achieve any goal they set. Thank you all for listening.

Socratic Seminars

On Thursday Ms. Williamson's 11th grade CR class was participating in a Socratic Seminar over what is the best college to attend.  The students brought in their research, were citing facts, and making their arguments.  Their was a great debate taking place that every student got involved in!

Student of the Week

Senior Michael Garcia, is the ECHS Student of the Week.  Michael transferred to ECHS from RHS after his 10th grade year.  He did very well last year during his junior year.  He took five SCC classes and earned 15 college units on top of his high school 11th grade classes.  This semester he is enrolled in 3 SCC classes (Math 2, English 1, and Economics 2).  Michael is also on the RHS football team and tonight is his last game.  I will be there along with many of his ECHS classmates and family to support him.  Great job Michael!

Senior Pitches

On Wednesday and Thursday the seniors began giving their Senior Project pitches.  The projects sound amazing!  I am so excited to see them follow their plans through and showcase their projects at the end of the year showcase event on May 3rd from 1:00-3:00.  Please mark your calendars for May 3rd to come and check out these amazing projects!  It is also not too late to join us on one of the last two project pitch sessions either Monday from 1:00-3:00 or Tuesday 10:00-12:00 next week.  Here are some pictures from this weeks presentations.

Trunk or Treat and Malloween

Thank you to everyone that has donated goodies for us to hand out to children at both Truck or Treat and Malloween events.  We are happy to continued accepting donations on Monday as well.

Trunk or Treat is at the Adult School from 5:00-7:30 on 10/30.  

Malloween is at the Fairfield Mall from 3:00-5:00.  The ECHS kiosk that the seniors are setting up in the Mall Sunday night will be there through Thanksgiving.  This is also a canned food donation contest.  We will have a barrel to accept can food for the Contra Costa Food Bank.  The school that collects the most canned food wins $2,000.  Stop by the mall next week to see our kiosk and drop off cans!