JULY 2014

Welcome to the first edition of The Urban School’s BluesNotes for Neighbors. As a school that derives its very name from its city setting, and as a proud fixture of the neighborhood since 1977, we, like you, identify strongly with our home in the historic Haight Ashbury. We know that as one of the larger institutions in the area we make an impact on the neighborhood. Perhaps you’ve wondered just what goes on at Urban?

As our newly graduated Class of 2014 steps into their collective future and we await city approval on plans for our new Academic and Athletic Center, we wanted to take a moment to offer you a glimpse behind the school walls. We will send further updates in the fall and spring of the 2014-15 academic year. Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy these highlights and wish you all a wonderful summer—perhaps with an occasional sunny foray out of the famous July fog!

Mark SalkindHead of School

BLUESNOTES for Neighbors

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T H E U R B A N S C H O O L O F S A N F R A N C I S C O

BluesNotes for Neighbors is a publication for the neighbors of The Urban School of San Francisco.For questions or comments, please contact us: info@urbanschool.org or 415 626 2919Editor: Kari Kiernan

JULY 2014

May and June were a flurry of trombones and trapezes, monologues and melodies. One of our favorite things about late spring at Urban is that more than at any other time of year, students in the performing arts step into the spotlight.

• The One Act Festival This year’s festival comprised eight short plays, written, directed, acted, designed and produced by students.

• Lunchtime Concert Series For a week, the entire student body as well as faculty and staff gathered in the backyard during lunch to enjoy a concert

series featuring a different musical group each day: Urban Singers, Modern Jazz, Blues and Bebop Combos, and the

Chamber Orchestra.

• Caberet A special project of some of our choral students in early June

brought a delightful cabaret program featuring selections from musical theater, including favorites by such well-known song-writers as Kander and Ebb, Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim.

• Circus Class Clad in bright Hawaiian shirts, the spring term circus class

presented a summer-themed event, delighting their audience with acrobatics, aerial acts, juggling, and even a flipper ballet. Preschool students from Pacific Primary attended the final morning class to watch the students rehearse.

Since our initial community meeting a year ago at St. Agnes Church, we have been moving ahead with plans for our new Academic and Athletics facility, to be built on the two parking lots adjacent to St. Agnes along Oak Street. We anticipate holding further neighborhood meetings in the fall when school resumes.Meanwhile, some updates:

• In early June, we submitted the paperwork for a revised CUP (conditional use permit) to the San Francisco Planning Department.

• We have completed the initial portion of a traffic study conducted this spring and will do another brief assessment in the fall, with the results of the report to be submitted to the city planning department.

• Our architects, Pfau Long, are continuing to develop the internal layout and more detailed plans for the Academic and Athletics facility.

• And finally, we are working with several local entities to provide parking for our faculty and staff, as well as St. Agnes parishioners for Saturday and Sunday masses, during the construction phase.

Should you wish to contact us about the Oak Street Campus project, please email us at oakstreetproject@urbanschool.org

At Urban, we strive to foster good citizenship in our students, both locally and globally. To that end, we are proud of our expanding Global Education Program. Currently, 15 Urban students and two teachers are on a three-week trip to China, which marks the second half of this year’s exchange with the Qingdao No. 2 High School. In February, Urban welcomed 14 students and four educa-tors from Qingdao to San Francisco.

Our students spent the first week of their trip with host families to practice their Chinese and to have a deeper experience of Chinese culture—early reports are that out students are amazed by the extraordinary hospitality of their hosts! After a week homestay, the group traveled and did some sightseeing and will return soon. You can follow their adventures at: chinatrip.wp.urbanschool.org.

Urban also offers a bi-annual trip to India and, in this fall, we will inaugurate an exchange between The Urban School and the Lycée Thérèse d’Avila in Lille, France. French students will visit in October and Urban students will travel to Lille in April 2015.

A long-standing part of the Urban curriculum is California Studies, a field study course for seniors, focused on an environmental issue impacting California (recent years’ topics have been agriculture and water). This year’s class investigated transportation—a topic of increasing relevance to us all as the population of our small city continues to grow.

Over the term, students traveled throughout Northern California learning about the topic directly from experts and from first-hand experience. The class set forth variously on foot, by bike, in buses, on boats and on trains to destinations as close as downtown San Francisco and as distant as UC Davis and Yosemite. Their findings on everything from bicycle safety and urban planning to high-speed rail and self-driving cars have been documented on a class blog: calstudies14.tumblr.com.

Of special note, students learned that the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council organized around the 1967 Freeway Revolt. HANC’s prevailing in this fight prevented a freeway from being built over the Panhandle and through the park to the Golden Gate Bridge. You can see the history of HANC by visiting www.hanc-sf.org/history.

TAKING A BOW CAL STUDIES OAK STREET CAMPUS UPDATE

BLUESNOTES for NeighborsT H E U R B A N S C H O O L O F S A N F R A N C I S C O

URBAN ABROAD

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JULY 2014

1563 Page Street | San Francisco, CA 94117www.urbanschool.org 415.626.2919

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BLUESNOTES for NeighborsT H E U R B A N S C H O O L O F S A N F R A N C I S C O

SUMMER AT URBANIf school is out for the summer, who are all those people on campus?

• Center for Innovative Teaching This summer marked our 9th annual Center for Innovative

Teaching, a series of classes offered by Urban faculty for teachers from other independent and public schools. This year’s Math at the Core curriculum included six classes on topics from middle school algebra to advanced-level high

school electives.

• Aim High Urban is a proud partner of Aim High, a program that aims

to close the opportunity and achievement gaps for low-income middle school students by offering an engaging, supportive

and tuition-free summer learning program. Urban has been an Aim High summer site for the past 24 years and opened its doors once more this summer to a group of 100 highly energized middle school students.