Vallecitos Elementary School Update

Greetings to our Rainbow Community:

Vallecitos Elementary School is buzzing with an array of activities aimed at enriching the lives of its students and nurturing our sense of community. On January 24, 2024, the school hosted "An Evening With Rocky Herron," focusing on drug prevention for families and emphasizing the importance of a healthy and drug-free lifestyle. This event showcased our commitment to holistic education, addressing not only academic but also essential life skills.  During the month of January, we also started an evening ESL program designed to help increase communication in our community by building capacity in the English language for our families.  Our first couple of classes were very well attended and we appreciate the great work of our Teacher, Natasha Koelkebeck to make the program a success.  Vallecitos is also working hard to reduce food scarcity in the community and we maintain a wonderful partnership with the San Diego Food Bank who provides us with food to distribute to our students on a weekly basis.  The San Diego Food Bank also provides food to the whole community on the third Friday of each month at 1:30 PM in our parking lot.  We will continue our efforts to promote community and family engagement in the coming months.

On the student side of our work, we provided a number of great opportunities for our students to learn and grow.  On January 8, our fifth graders visited Los Jilgueros Preserve in Fallbrook where they learned about our local environment and lent a hand planting trees and shrubs to help sustain our beautiful environment.  On January 11, 2024, we took a group of students to UCSD in La Jolla and provided them with a day of college experience.  They participated in a campus tour, visited the Birch Aquarium, had the dining hall experience, and then capped off the evening by watching a UCSD Men's Basketball game against Long Beach State.  A special thank you to our Counselor, Jasmine Burke for putting this together for us.  On January 25, the San Diego County Office of Education was on site to teach and promote digital literacy initiatives to our students to help them navigate the World Wide Web in a smart and safe way.

February was an equally exciting month.  On 02/09/2024, we hosted our Student Stand-Out Assembly, which honored the hard work of exceptional students for their performance during the first half of the school year.  During President's week, our own Ms. Peace chaperoned a group of our 5th and 6th graders as they attended camp at Cuyamaca Outdoor School.  The students had a fun-filled week of experiential learning, hiking, exploring interests, and disconnecting from the outside world.  On February 27, our 8th graders participated in Future Warriors Day at Fallbrook High School where they received information and participated in a variety of activities that will build school spirit and anticipation for high school.  We also partnered with the Vista Community Clinic during February to provide much needed dental screenings for our students.

On the athletic front, our students are performing very well compared to their regional counterparts.  The Vallecitos Vikings dominated the football, volleyball, and soccer tournaments that they participated in during fall and winter.   Most recently, our students visited Borrego Springs on January 25 to compete in their annual basketball tournament.  Our students are currently training for the cross country tournament at Hamilton School in Anza to close out our year.  Coach Hanbeck is doing great work with our Viking athletic program and we appreciate his hard work and dedication to our student athletes.

Lastly, we are very excited to bring Guided Reading back to Vallecitos.  In years past, the school district received statewide recognition for this initiative and we are eager to bring this intervention back to Vallecitos to ensure that ALL of our students are able to read upon promotion to Fallbrook High School.  I appreciate the great work and dedication of our entire team to make this program a success.

In partnership,

Meliton Sanchez