Lydia Williams graduated two months early this past month! We are so proud of you! We will miss you and all the fun conversations we would have. Boyfriend, sisters, mom, staff members and other students cheered for her at her Bell Ringing Ceremony. Lydia plans to go to SRJC and then transfer to the University of Colorado to become a veterinarian.

We are also excited for senior Loralai DePriest who will be our next Bell Ringer - Congratulations, Loralai!

Sophomore Ian Peracca was unanimously chosen by all staff members to be our March Bright News! student. Ian was given a candy lei and his photo is now hanging on our Bright News! wall. All staff created a Bright News! letter that was mailed to his family. We are proud of you, Ian! All students who have demonstrated academic excellence in the past month are discussed at staff meetings and one is chosen to be honored. Our Bright News! form letter is posted on our school website.

Freshman Brenda Amador is university bound! To help fulfill her language requirement, she decided to do the Credit-by-Exam option at SRJC. This past month she took the test for Spanish 1, and will now have both 4 units of college credit on her college transcript and 13.2 high school credits! Congratulations, Brenda!

All native Spanish speakers and any student who has studied Spanish successfully for two years in junior high might want to consider doing this as well. Senior Felipe Jimenez is very happy that he did this last year. He said the test took a little over an hour.

Sophomores Jayley Jackson and Teja Burgess made photosynthetic chambers for spinach disks in syringes, hypothesized the effect of different lighting, and measured rates.

Senior Ethan Carbone says he has always been interested in astronomy and space travel - ever since he was a young child! While working with Ms. Halsey in U.S. History, Ethan was able to choose his project topic and decide how he would design his project. Ms. Halsey, our social science teacher, is a big advocate of giving choice to students when it comes to projects. You can look forward to this when you take courses with her! Ethan expressed his love of outer space to her which then became his project topic. Ethan happily researched the 1969 Moon Landing, wrote a report, and used his other passion, art, to create a huge red poster board artfully loaded with details and photos. Ethan recently saw the new movie, Apollo 11, and really liked it. He says he doesn't understand how some people can believe the Moon landing was a hoax!

7th grader, Harland McCready's past experience with gutting fish helped him to be especially comfortable with doing the frog dissection. He studied the frogs external anatomy and internal anatomy.

Senior Jessica Rue Coulman has worked for the last year and a half at Sprout grocery store not far from VOS. She prefers not to be a checker but rather to work in the back unloading, organizing, managing, and stocking incoming shipments. She enjoys her co-workers.

Jessica is also enjoying her last high school lacrosse season and they are on a winning streak!

Last month, it was Opening Night at the Petaluma Wednesday Night Drags for drag racing and Jessica won 1st Place! She has been doing this fun activity for the past two years and so she has had some good practice. What she had to do is "estimate her drive time and do well with the lights". She had to watch and go at the green light which requires great reaction time to win 1st Place! Any car can compete. Hers is her '96 Chevy Impala SS. She says that just high school kids compete against each other. Adults compete against each other and win money.

Junior Holland Nieuwboer-Bas just started at VOS at the end of February. His last name is really striking - he says that it is both Dutch and Puerto Rican! He and his sister are named after a place. Holland came from PHS and has grown up in Petaluma. His plan is to attend a university after first going to SRJC. He has a strong interest in psychology and enjoyed his Advanced Placement Psych course at PHS, and his father studied psychology, so that may be the direction his career takes. His hobby is building cars though and his biggest goal right now is to one day fully build his own car! He has worked on engines with his uncle and says that his favorite type of car is late '90's Japanese Domestic Market ("JDM") cars. What makes these cars so attractive to Holland is that "they are unique and they can be tuned up without replacing any expensive parts". Holland also goes mountain biking whenever he can - at Putnam if he doesn't have a ride but at Anadel or Mt. Tam if he does have a ride. His favorite thing about VOS so far? - "being able to awaken at a decent hour and then doing his work"!

Junior Jade Polaski has been enjoying being a VOS student for the past year, is university-bound, and currently is co-enrolled in French at SRJC. She is one of our rare students that lives at the local giant Coast Guard Base just east of us. When asked about what it is like to live there she said it is a bit isolating since she doesn't drive yet. If she lived in town she could walk downtown to multiple teen hang-out spots but on the base she walks to the one base coffee shop and sees friends there. There are many teens and youth that live on the base, according to Jade, because the two buses that come from PHS and PJHS are always full! There is a pond that always has birds and she sees deer all the time. Houses like hers on the base are townhouses - 4 or 5 houses that are connected. Jade says she definitely feels very safe since the base is completely surrounded by high fences and guarded at its one entry-exit point. For Coast Guarders like her father, there is a cooking school to learn that trade, a Chief's Academy, and a technical school. There is a gym and a pool, a movie theater and a "corner store" called the Exchange, and many miles of scenic walking paths. Jade says the number of turkeys is impressive!

Freshman Henry Wilson had to take the state-mandated Physical Fitness Test this past month along with all the other 5th, 7th and 9th graders in the school district. Pictured here is the mat for the curl-ups. As a rower who works out nearly every day, this test was not too difficult for him! He had a sub-6min. mile pace for the first lap but then found out he had to do 3 more laps! So sorry, Henry! It was still the fastest VOS mile time we've had - and done in a button-up shirt, jeans, and skate shoes!

Being on a sports team has limitless benefits! All students should seriously consider joining a team at either Casa or PHS. You can become good friends with the other team members, you can travel, you can get really good at the sport, you can develop your competitive spirit, you can improve your health, and you can really enhance your high school experience! One additional benefit is that you can earn P.E. credit too! Pictured here is junior Madison Cathcart. She was on the Volleyball team and then the Track team and then realized that she could get PE credit and so she filled out the PE Wavier which can be found here and on the Casa Grande website . She said it was really easy and she got 5 credits of PE. It is called the Physical Education Exemption Wavier and a new form is posted by Casa each year because the due dates change each year. Go to the Casa website, choose "Counseling" and then choose "Forms". Turn it in to our school secretary, Trisha.

Finally a sunny afternoon on March 29th! Pictured here are Freshman Brenda Amador, Sophomore Ian Peracca, Freshman Cyrus Olsen, and Junior April Adelman. P.E. Group Work Outs are casual and non-pressured and happen every other Friday from 2:30 - 4. There is an alternate assignment for students who prefer to not attend. :)

Junior Flynn Loveless is one of our VOS a-g college prep students. Since he just transferred in January, he is not co-enrolled this semester but he plans to take Geology with a lab at the SRJC in the fall. He has already taken Spanish 1, 2, & 3!

Flynn is especially easy going and open-minded, skills that will make him successful in any career. In addition, he is very humble and I could not get him to state anything that he would brag about! He is not sure yet which university he would like to get into but knows that he wants it to be in California. He has a family friend who is a counselor at Petaluma High School so he gets lots of advice. Happy for us, Flynn plans to stay with Valley Oaks and be a VOS grad! What he likes best about VOS is the flexible hours. He sees it as a huge benefit that he and all students have the opportunity to create nearly any schedule wanted - it can incorporate sleeping until 8am, co-enrolling, day hobbies, and having a job. Flynn's main hobby is video gaming with, primarily, Fortnite. He says he doesn't have the problem of overplaying hours of the game because he "does his work first and then plays". This is why VOS students like Flynn are unusual and somewhat rare - they know how to manage their time! Flynn's favorite food is chicken enchiladas with mole sauce. He has two dogs (a black lab and a Husky mix), and while he has been to Mexico, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, he would like to possibly do a university junior year abroad in Italy - a fantastic plan!

Sophomore Kailey Kroyer is also one of our VOS a-g college prep students and she is keeping herself well on-track to transfer to a 4-year university after graduating from VOS. She is co-enrolled in BYU and Honors courses now, has nearly straight A's, and has courses already picked out for this summer at SRJC. The university she will choose she says, does not have to be in California, in fact, she plans to apply to Ivy League colleges. She visited Hawaii recently and is now drawn to the beauty of the University of Hawaii. A career in the medical field is what she is thinking about right now and this interest was sparked by watching movies and shows. She sees herself being happy working in a hospital. She says she loves animals but being a vet and watching animals die all the time would be too hard. What she thinks will be the most fun about being a freshman at a university is living in the dorms with a bunch of friends and being able to walk to campus classrooms. Being away from her parents and not having to ask permission to do every thing is another thing that sounds really fun to her! Kailey started in January at VOS but she said that since 6th grade she had wanted to be home-schooled. She wanted more control of her schedule. She was at Harvest Christian Middle School and then considered Newman but the long drive was too much. Besides thinking about fun future college life, Kailey regularly plays basketball with friends and family!

Beautiful Addie Bender, who graduated last June, is one of our greatest VOS supporters and advocates! We were so pleased that she stopped by a few weeks ago to say hello to everyone. She is very busy working a fun job that she has had for over a year while going to the SRJC. We love getting to see former students and learning news of their lives - it makes us really happy and encourages us to keep being the best school that we can be - Thanks, Addie! We hope that every student knows that we will always welcome a future visit from you too!

We were not too shocked that it rained on our scheduled Garden Party date (10 - 11am on March 5th) since it has been raining so much. We had no students show up which is understandable, but Ms. Parker and Ms. Abelli-Amen enjoyed the fresh air in spite of the rain and in an hour we did clear a patch of weeds in preparation for Ms. Kesseru's mulch delivery. Once all the weeds are cleared from the large middle rectangle, Ms. Kesseru will bring in the donated mulch from Sonoma Compost in Nicasio. Thank you Sonoma Compost!