The La Cañada Flintridge joint-use committee, which consists of representatives from the LCUSD school board and the City Council, met on May 25 to discuss various topics, but also to hear progress on La Cañada High School and a new resource for reserving park and field use.
LCHS President James Cartnal presented updates to the committee on how the year went and how the school has recovered from COVID restrictions.
“It gives me great joy and pleasure to report back, particularly to our city partners, who are definitely part of the life at La Cañada High School, but maybe don’t see the same instructional program that we do on a day-to-day basis, that we’re fully back. The pandemic is receding each day into the rearview mirror of our history,” said Cartnal.
He added that students might still get sick with COVID, but he recognized that as time has passed, day-to-day life for students has improved.
“In La Cañada, perhaps differently in other communities, what we see by internal and external measures is our kids are still strong, and that the pandemic did not undo their strong writing abilities, critical thinking capabilities, their reading, their mathematics,” said Cartnal. “We see that by grade distributions, standardized tests, advanced placement tests and college admission rates. The pandemic did not wipe out learning in La Cañada.”
Academically, students are getting more A’s now than they did before the pandemic, Cartnal said.
Although, Cartnal did admit that the pandemic did create challenges for students’ mental health, LCHS heard their students and gave them the tools they needed, such as the addition of a wellness center on campus.
At LCHS, teachers from both math and English departments provide students with five days of after-school support, along with the science teachers, who provide four days of support.
In the next academic year, there will be two new advanced placement courses added, which includes an advanced placement pre-calculous class and an electricity and magnetism variant of advanced placement physics. The high school has also expanded their partnership with Pasadena City College to create a pre-business pathway, where students get to learn the basics of business and personal finance.
“When we offer these Pasadena City College classes, there’s usually like 12 to 15 brave souls that are the first to dip their toes in the water… but we had 75,” said Cartnal talking about the new business pathway.
In terms of campus life at LCHS, there has been an expansion of services, campus beautification additions and the inclusion of the choices matter initiative.
The initiative was put in place to educate students on the importance of the dangers of drug and alcohol use.
LCHS opened a college and career center and testing center earlier this year. By the start of next school year, there will be a LCHS 7/8 wellness center.
“What I see are powerful community partnerships starting with the city of La Cañada Flintridge, campus-based community groups, and to be able to do things that other schools simply cannot, and do not, but we do. A dream to put a brand-new basketball court, which many schools would think about or dream about but never have the capacity to do, comes together in La Cañada in three and a half weeks, because we are able to do that,” said Cartnal. “… I want all of you to know the deep gratitude and appreciation I have in my mind and heart for that massive support, couldn’t do it without you.”
Councilwoman Terry Walker asked about work opportunities: “Is there any vocational work for students who don’t want to go to college?”
Cartnal mentioned the college and career center has many opportunities where students can find work.
“What kind of job postings do you have for businesses that are local?” asked Walker.
Cartnal noted that Kelly Proctor, who is the college and career center coordinator, has started to work on reaching out to local businesses and finding contacts to make sure students are informed about them.
ACTIVELCF
Director of Administrative Services Arabo Parseghian did a demo for the committee on an in-progress resource for residents, called ActiveLCF, which is a database system that would visualize which groups are using the fields in LCF, and would give the public access to make reservations to parks or fields. It is set to go live this summer for use.
“As a reference, this is still in a development phase. So, if there are questions, comments or doesn’t look right, it could be that we just haven’t configured it fully,” said Parseghian.
The system is reservation-based rather than scheduling-based and will require users to log in. Users will then be able to make reservations and see all the available times on a calendar. The platform is for user groups, residents and nonresidents to schedule an event at a park or field in LCF. Hours will reflect the hours that the joint-use committee has agreed to for the school year and summer.
“Under a municipal code, the city requires that any resident who would like to get a permit to use a recreational facility must submit the request a minimum of 30 days prior to their first usage,” Parseghian told the Outlook Valley Sun. “The same rule applies for nonresidents, but that requires minimum of 60 days prior to their first usage.”
The committee asked how the system would work in certain situations such as if a user group doesn’t use the time they reserved or if problems of overlapping occur.
“I don’t want to get into micromanaging yet, because we need those [user] groups to do that first and get feedback. This is just a quick overview of the system,” said Mayor Keith Eich, talking about the LCF Sports Coalition and the Parks and Recreation Commission.
Parseghian said that the system would go to the Parks and Recreation commission soon for feedback and meet with user groups separately.
Marco Quezada who is the director of the LCF Sports Coalition, which consists of all local youth sports programs, thinks that ActiveLCF will be a good system to put in place for data but won’t change the process of permits and access within the city.
“I think it will collect a lot of great data that will be usable in a few years,” said Quezada. “But at this time, I think it is going to save time for Boy Scouts, who want to use whatever field on a particular day, and they’ll be able to check and see that softball has something scheduled.”
“So, we basically reached out to various municipalities that have software and solutions in place and basically started getting their feedback about what are some vendors out there,” Parseghian told the Outlook Valley Sun. “As part of that research, there were a couple of vendors that were identified. Then ActiveLCF was selected as a reliable vendor for us to use based on feedback we received from other municipalities.”
The system, still in its early stages, is set to go live soon, and the city is currently testing the software application now.
“My hope is by summer … we will be going live,” said Parseghian.
First published in the June 8 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
