Stephane and Patricia on retreat and ready for 2010-2011, Palm Springs

Calendar Check:

Friday August 20 and Monday August 23~
Faculty Orientation
Monday August 23~
New Family Orientation, 4 PM
First Day of Classes:
   Middle school, 8:20AM;
   High School, 8:30 AM

Happy Birthday

Shovik Sarkar, Stewart Wirick, Makenna Chan, Forrest Gitlin, Shaynie Glazebrook, Natasha Sachs, Parker Johnson, Allie Negroni, Jada Henry, Minoru Yamamoto!

Peace, Welcome, and Discovery

Greetings and welcome all to the new academic year--our 20th year. We've had a beautiful summer preparing for this great year. What do we mean by great? This summer we have:

• Enrolled 36 new families. And, we have two new teachers, for American Sign Language and Chinese.
• A new multimedia equipment and recording studio, coursework, and courses (thanks to the Dave Murrant family [Ben, '12] and the hard work of Isaac Langen).
• A new Association with UNESCO: Thanks to the Herculean efforts of Dana and Steve Diggs, The Grauer School has become one of 11 secondary schools nationwide invited into the prestigious UNESCO Associated Schools program.
• New mobile foreign language and mathematics labs-two of them! Thanks to the Loewy Foundation and the Linz Family (Tommy, '10) as well as the great planning work of Stephane and Sean in the computer lab, and Jessi Young who led language lab development.
• New Scholarship funding, and an all time high in scholarships to great, deserving kids (thanks to the Miller Family (Chase, class of 2014) and many other scholarship donors.
• New School Partnership: Our sister school is Maui Preparatory Academy in Hawaii, sponsored by Tom & Laurie DiNoto (Brandon, '16)
• New Grauer School website, launching this week, and new Grauer Online for parents, launching this week.
• Created a 20th year campaign which is sure to make students and everyone in our community proud of their school.
• Created formats for more parent forums than ever - you will all get many invitations for engagement.
• Hosted the first of several faculty retreats where we develop our shared vision of what is most important about what we do!
• Designed new procedures and calendaring for working with our various feeder schools, which will accelerate new enrolments of great kids.

For starters. Each of these developments will deliver years of benefits for our students and their families. The Grauer School offers up unparalleled access to opportunities for its students. You'll be hearing plenty more about all these enriching opportunities.

We've also launched the Coalition of Small Preparatory Schools, with Grauer School as the home base. We have several founding schools who are joining us on this worldwide effort to link schools of 200 students or less. Many of the world's best schools are this size, and our network will empower them and enable us to gather research on our important design features and why they empower us.

Looking back at the last two months, I have no idea how we got all this done: but we got very much more than this done. I want to thank our office staff Tracy and Theresa, Principal Dana (who was Herculean this summer), Dean of Students Clayton, IT Stephane, Counselor Tricia, and others around here this summer for going far beyond "the job description" and creating opportunity for our students. I feel great, and can't wait to see kids all over the quad!

And yet, what is best of all is not what is new, but what is old: 20 years of great education. For 20 years, The Grauer School has been the place to go for a humanitarian college preparation - the place where caring teachers and parents can provide for authentic, caring relationships in the classroom. The place one parent called: "An oasis of heartfelt education."

20 years ago, we had no idea that one day colleges would practically be in bidding wars over our grads, but that's just about what has happened. Last year's 18 grads got $2.2 million in scholarship offers: about four times Francis Parker's rate, and about six times Santa Fe Christian's rate. And we're just warming up!

Welcome to the 2010-2011 academic year. The Grauer Board of Trustees and I wish you peace and discovery.

Messages from the Registrar

Parents, if you have any new information to add to your student's file, particularly updates on vaccinations or changes to your medical insurance coverage, please inform Elizabeth at elizabeth@grauerschool.com or 760-274-2116.

Also, if you are new to Grauer you need to fill out various safety forms on-line. Just go to our website at www.grauerschool.com, click on "Grauer Grades Online", then click on "Weekly Report" and follow the prompts.

ALL families need to update these forms at the beginning of each semester.

Thank you!

Host Family Needed for Italian Boy

Gerardo, from Bologna, is coming to Grauer for his 11th grade year of High School. He is looking for a nice family to live with. He loves tennis, and is very enthusiastic about learning everything he can about American culture. The host family will be compensated with a stipend. If you are interested please call or email the Admissions Office: 760-274-2116 or elizabeth@grauerschool.com.

Alumni Teacher Jen

Alumni Teacher Jennifer Trevino and Erin Paris Preci (Sean's wife), are taking their incredible resumes in teaching and are creating a lab for developing childhood creativity with the latest in technology--combined with the care and nurturing that tomorrow's artists and leaders require.

What if every time you needed to run errands or have "date night" you could drop the kids off somewhere that made them not only better citizens, but better artists? Their new creation, THE COVE, is an interactive creativity lab for kids.

There is much more to learn about THE COVE; to learn more you can contact Jennifer at 858 880-5909 or visit Jennifer Pigott Trevino on Facebook, or call Erin at 858 945 7591. What a wonderful asset for our community!