Chatsworth Ca Schools

Ten minutes before the graduation ceremony, and all 20 kindergartners at Chatsworth Park Elementary School had to go to the bathroom. Teacher Stacie Lauer was insisting. "You must go to the bathroom," she said. "If you don't have to go, you have to try. Does anyone know why this is important?" Cody Merchan's hand shot up. "This is very, very important because we don't want to go to the bathroom when we're graduating," he said.

Diego Ricardo Baza, a third-grader at St. John Eudes School in Chatsworth who suffered from a rare heart condition, was remembered Wednesday during a campus memorial service. Diego died Sunday from complications associated with primary pulmonary hypertension, a disorder caused by above-normal blood pressure in the pulmonary artery, which carries blood from the heart to the lungs. He was 8. About 500 mourners, including many of the school's 260 students, gathered Wednesday morning at St.

On the theory that delving into facts instead of feelings will help them cope with the trauma of the Northridge earthquake, students at Chatsworth Park School are attending geology workshops instead of counseling sessions this week.

Ten minutes before the graduation ceremony, and all 20 kindergartners at Chatsworth Park Elementary School had to go to the bathroom. Teacher Stacie Lauer was insisting. "You must go to the bathroom," she said. "If you don't have to go, you have to try. Does anyone know why this is important?" Cody Merchan's hand shot up. "This is very, very important because we don't want to go to the bathroom when we're graduating," he said.

The trees looked a bit sickly, but for the teen-age boys who have spent the last two weeks planting them on a lot next to William Tell Aggeler High School, the brown leaves and skinny trunks were easily overlooked. Sixteen-year-old Rudy Martinez of Highland Park confidently predicted that the dozens of birch trees donated from Sperling Nursery in Calabasas would soon begin shooting upward, providing a green canopy over the hot, weedy vacant lot.

The group that assembled for a lesson under an ash tree at William Tell Aggeler High School in Chatsworth was not made up of what you would call model students. Some had committed crimes. Others had been expelled from other schools. But at least for one hour Tuesday, the students listened raptly to a wide-ranging lecture that covered topics as diverse as zoology, history and sports.

With the unshakable concentration typical of Olympic athletes, Chucky Huenergardt, 7, jumped rope along with his classmates Wednesday at a jump-a-thon to raise money for the American Heart Assn. "You can't stop," Chucky said to himself, getting a little tangled up in his rope, but persisting. "I think I can make it. Come on, come on," he cheered himself on.

The Rev. Jeff Utter, a United Church of Christ pastor in Chatsworth, will represent the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council on Monday at a congressional subcommittee hearing in Palms on school prayer. The House Judiciary Committee's Constitutional Subcommittee has been holding hearings around the country on a proposed Religious Equality Amendment.

An arson fire over the weekend caused $25,000 damage to John Sutter Middle School in Canoga Park, authorities said Monday. No arrests had been made in the fire that began about 9:15 p.m. Sunday at the 7330 Winnetka Ave. school, said Los Angeles City Fire Department spokesman Bob Collis. About 30 firefighters battled the flames, extinguishing them in about 15 minutes, he said.

For the staff and students of Lawrence Middle School, three long years of holding assemblies, dances and performances in the gymnasium, cafeteria and wherever else they could find space has finally come to an end. In three ribbon-cutting ceremonies Wednesday--one each for the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade levels--the student body celebrated the opening of the school's renovated multipurpose room.

Eleven-year-old Trevor Waters can make a robot do his bidding. So can scores of other students who are getting an early initiation into the 21st century world of manufacturing technology in a mobile lab at Ernest Lawrence Middle School in Chatsworth. As part of a push to educate youngsters in science and technology, the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley brought the $400,000 Manufacturing Technologies Laboratory to the school for a three-month visit.

Students from Granada Elementary School celebrated Earth Day on Thursday by marching along Chatsworth Street, picking up trash and displaying signs reading, "Honk if you care about the Earth." The second- and third-graders enthusiastically snatched up litter, carried balloons and wore silver party hats in recognition of the day to celebrate ecology and the environment. Gray skies and a brisk breeze couldn't cool their fervor to clean up their neighborhood.

A committee has selected a new principal for Chatsworth High School, but it will lead to the transfer of one of its other administrators. On Tuesday, the principal selection committee at Chatsworth High picked Dan Wyatt, an assistant principal at Sylmar High, from a pool of four finalists. However, Wyatt's wife is a Chatsworth assistant principal, and administrators traditionally prevent situations where immediate family members would supervise one another, said Lawrence H.

As eighth-grader Jennifer Sherman read verses Tuesday morning relating the biblical account of creation, creatures great and small barked, squawked and wriggled on the quadrangle at Chaminade College Preparatory Middle School. The menagerie of pets, including a rat named Al and a parrot named Sadie, along with their owners and about 600 students gathered for the Catholic school's annual Blessing of the Animals.

Barbara Champion always wanted a marquee when she was principal at Chatsworth Park Elementary School. Letting parents know what was going on was important, she implored, and it would bring more attention to the school. "She wanted to put the school on the map," said Becky Dodd, the school's booster club president. Champion died suddenly of an aneurysm in December 1995 at age 42. With donations coming in it wasn't difficult to come up with an idea to memorialize Champion, Dodd said.

For Neils and Ann Willden Johnson, "home sweet home" in 1867 was a two-room tent in Soledad Canyon, one half reserved for the family quarters, the other for a grocery store they operated. Having moved from Utah a few years before, the young couple drifted throughout Southern California before settling in the San Fernando Valley. In 1870, the Johnson family homesteaded 160 acres in the dense Chatsworth chaparral, making them one of the first settlers and English-speaking families in the area.

Chatsworth Park Elementary School's booster club will launch a fund-raiser this month with a disturbingly modern twist. Instead of raffle tickets or Christmas candy, the booster club has decided to market personal security devices to raise money for air conditioners and computers at the school, said Michele DeGaetano, head of the club. Barbara Champion, principal at Chatsworth Park, admitted that when the booster club floated the plan, the idea of selling hand-held alarms seemed "really weird."

Eleven-year-old Trevor Waters can make a robot do his bidding. So can scores of other students who are getting an early initiation into the 21st century world of manufacturing technology in a mobile lab at Ernest Lawrence Middle School in Chatsworth. As part of a push to educate youngsters in science and technology, the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley brought the $400,000 Manufacturing Technologies Laboratory to the school for a three-month visit.

For the staff and students of Lawrence Middle School, three long years of holding assemblies, dances and performances in the gymnasium, cafeteria and wherever else they could find space has finally come to an end. In three ribbon-cutting ceremonies Wednesday--one each for the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade levels--the student body celebrated the opening of the school's renovated multipurpose room.

From the outside, it looked like any other school auditorium--a colorless cube of brick and plaster. On the inside, however, the spacious room teemed with the exotic flora and fauna of a South American rain forest, complete with a burbling waterfall. Created by students and faculty at Pinecrest Preparatory School in Chatsworth, the colorful floor-to-ceiling display was the showpiece of a daylong fair designed to teach students the importance of caring for the planet.