Zev News – June 2007
Jonathan started high school (ninth grade) this year. Our home school (Chatsworth) has a reasonable honors program, but we applied to two other high schools to keep his options open. We applied to the Reseda Science Magnet program and to Granada through both the SAS (honors) and the open enrollment programs. The Reseda magnet gets fewer white applicants than they have slots, so Jonathan was accepted to Reseda. The Granada SAS program had 250 applications for 50 slots. The Granada open enrollment program had 750 applications for 50 slots. When Granada had its drawing, Jonathan was the 44th name picked on the SAS list and the 132nd name drawn on the open enrollment list. So he was accepted to Granada. We did not apply to either the Granada Science Magnet or to the North Hollywood Gifted magnet. We didn't apply to the Granada magnet because Jonathan didn't have enough points to be accepted. We didn't apply to the North Hollywood (which is where we expected him to go to high school when we sent Jonathan to Portola Middle School) because Jonathan wants to use Hebrew for his language but North Hollywood would require him to take a year long intensive course in both Spanish and French. Plus they don't let out until 3:35 so Johnson would always be late to Hebrew at four.
So Johnson was accepted to Granada, the Reseda Magnet and Chatsworth. Academically. the programs seemed equable, so we based our decision on social factors. Jonathan’s two closest friends would both be attending Granada, and that tipped the scale and Granada's favor.
The Saturday before Jonathan graduated from middle school, he rode his bike to Granada to take the English placement test to verify his eligibility for Honors English. There, he discovered more kids than he knew that were going to Granada.
Two days later Jonathan graduated from Portola middle school. His whole family and all his grandparents (except grandpa Shel, who is undergoing a colonoscopy) attended graduation. One of the advantages to attending a magnet is that Jonathan could invite as many people as he wanted to graduation.
The very next day Jonathan went off to camp. This year, a friend of Jonathan’s had convinced him to attend camp Hilltop, a Jewish camp that has a four-week residential program.
It seemed like no sooner had Jonathan left than we found out that Jackie's dad had colon cancer. Fortunately, there was no sign that it had metastasized. He underwent surgery, which was a success and, proving himself to be the block off of which Jackie is chipped, recovered fairly quickly.
The following Monday Benjamin started a one-week summer camp at EATM. EATM is an exotic animal training management program for adults at Moorpark College. They run a summer camp for elementary school age kids. Benjamin had attended their spring break camp and enjoyed it tremendously. We had signed Benjamin up for a one-week session at EATM, a five-week program at CSUN, another one-week session at EATM, and then he had a few weeks off before school started
The last four days in June were consumed by Marc's birthday. First Blanche took him out to dinner and then Jackie did. Then we went to see a marvelous performance of the play “Children of a Lesser God.” Then Al took him out to dinner, and finally we celebrated his birthday (and Don's birthday and Rhonda’s birthday and Sharon and Shel's anniversary) at Sharon and Shel's house.