Pomona's only magnet elementary school, Cortez, is in the midst of it's first year of existence. So far, I am hearing only good things from parents of students who attend there, but I still have a lot of questions.
Cortez Elementary will be holding an open house on January 29, 2008 at 9 a.m. They will give a tour of the school, go into some of the classrooms, and answer questions. Cortez is located on Dudley, just off the 10 freeway. You can see the angular tops of the buildings on the south side of the freeway as you pass by on the 10.
Cortez admission is done on a lottery basis. This year's lottery will be held in the Spring, but the deadline for applying for the lottery will be sometime in mid-Feburary 2008. (It hasn't been announced yet.) They will have lots of openings for kindergarten, but since they anticipate almost all of this year's students to return, there will be very few slots in the upper grades.
I am emailing Principal Janet Alvarez, who I hope will be willing to either agree to an email interview or write a post about the school for the blog.
It was not until recently that I realized that Cortez Elementary is named after our late mayor Eddie Cortez. Eddie has always been a good guy in my book. When I wrote the then police chief about a razor blade I had found ON the children's play equipment at Lincoln Park, Eddie called me up personally. In that phone call, Eddie talked to me at great length, about how he had raised all his children here and how important the park was to him as a safe sanctuary for the kids. Pomona Children's Librarian Miss Lois used to talk about how Eddie "got it" in terms of the importance of Pomona children above all.
Eddie's Lincoln Park home is on the market again (it's the white bungalow with blue trim on the corner of Alvarado at Gibbs). It looks like a foreclosure, since there are the signature "No Trespassing" signs on all the windows. It's a pity, since it seemed to sit empty a long time before it sold the first time. I think it will have a hard time finding another owner who will make it as much of a home as Eddie did.
THE END
3 comments:
How did you find out about this open house? I can't get any info on it, but would like to go.
I heard about the open house by chance at a park in Claremont over the weekend, so I called the school today to get the particulars. Back last year, I didn't hear anything about Cortez until after the deadline for application. Which is weird, because I kind of keep my ear to the ground. Most people I knew who knew about it seemed to be existing PUSD families.
G of P
They post on it in the PUSD newsletter, which is occasionally stuffed in the local paper or in the Pennysaver along with the adult ed schedule. And, of course, every kid gets a copy to take home. If you instinctively toss the ads in the Pennysaver, you would have probably missed it.
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