A half-dozen IUSD educators will be recognized at next month’s Orange County Music and Arts Education Awards program.

Patricia Goheen, a sixth-grade teacher at Eastshore Elementary School, will be honored as the top educator for Elementary Visual Arts during a special ceremony on May 6, while Henry J. Miller, the instrumental music teacher at Sierra Vista Middle School, will be presented with the Irene Schoepfle Award.

Goheen and Miller are also set to be recognized as Outstanding Art Educators for 2013, along 35 others including Rancho San Joaquin Middle School art teacher Sue Anello, Sierra Vista art teacher Colleen Cosgrove, Northwood High TV and video production teacher Tina M. Murphy and district music teacher Hee Jeong Przytulski.

Presented by Orange County Music and Arts Administrators, the Orange County Music and Arts Educator Awards annually spotlight exemplary teachers and administrators who oversee instrumental, vocal, theater, dance and visual arts programs at schools throughout the county. This year’s ceremony will be held in the Samueli Theater, located at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

IUSD announced this week that Laguna Beach administrator Mike Modeer has been selected to serve as the next principal of Rancho San Joaquin Middle School. His expected start date is July 1.

An innovative leader who is well-versed in educational technology and the new Common Core curriculum, Modeer has served the past seven years as an administrator at the middle school level, and he has an extensive background with college-readiness support systems as well as the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support program.

At Rancho, he’ll succeed Scott Bowman, who was tapped to serve as principal of the new Jeffrey Trail Middle School, which opens in September.

“Though we had a number of highly qualified candidates to choose from, Mike emerged as the No. 1 choice for Rancho, embodying the characteristics that were articulated in the collective feedback from staff and parents,” Superintendent Terry Walker said. “Most important, he is committed to the long-term success of Rancho.”

Modeer began his career as a teacher of math, college readiness and technology in the Rowland Unified School District in 2002. He most recently served as assistant principal at Thurston Middle School in the Laguna Beach Unified School District.

A graduate of IUSD’s Woodbridge High School, Modeer earned his bachelor’s degree in managerial economics from U.C. Davis and his teaching credential from Cal State Fullerton. He later earned his master’s degree in educational leadership and administration from Chapman University.

Think your child is too young to join the Irvine Unified School District? Well, maybe not.

Registration started Monday, April 15 for IUSD’s brand new fee-based preschool, as well as its state-funded preschool for children of income-eligible families. The programs are open to kids ages 3 to 5 and administered by the team of professional educators at the district’s Early Childhood Learning Center.

Established in 2002, the Early Childhood Learning Center has worked collaboratively with local families to build a world-class learning community to support each child’s social, emotional and pre-academic needs.

The ECLC campus is located at 1 Smoketree in Irvine. To learn more, visit the center’s website, or call 949-936-5890.

We just learned that a limited number of tickets are still available for the 31st annual Donald Bren Honors Concert, which will be held at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 24.

Considered a signature event for the Irvine Unified School District, the showcase is once again being presented by the Irvine Public Schools Foundation, and it will feature nearly 700 of Irvine’s finest young musicians in grades three through 12.

Over the years, more than 18,000 IUSD students have participated in the concert, which generates funds to support music education in Irvine. Performers are selected based on their ability and level of dedication.

Those who still hope to catch this year’s show better not wait too much longer to book their seats as organizers are anticipating a sold-out performance.

To purchase tickets, contact the Segerstrom Center for the Arts by phone at 714-556-2787 or online at www.scfta.org.

The IUSD Board of Education on Tuesday adopted a resolution calling for changes to the governor’s plan to overhaul education funding.

Under Governor Jerry Brown’s “Local Control Funding Formula” proposal, supplemental funding would be provided to school districts based on their proportion of English-language learners and students who are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches. However, base funding would be benchmarked at levels from 2007-08, and there are no provisions to restore billions of dollars in recent cuts to separate categorical programs.

While board members agreed that the system for funding education should be improved and applauded the governor’s efforts to address the greater needs of specific student groups, they acknowledged that the first priority of educational leaders is to ensure that base revenue is sufficient to deliver core content and services to students.

The resolution adopted by the board recommends restoring the losses public schools have endured before earmarking new funds for specific needs. It also states that any reallocation of funds should target students who need additional resources rather than districts or schools that serve a percentage of students in need.

In March, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services John Fogarty shared revenue and expenditure assumptions with the board and outlined the potential impacts of Governor Brown’s proposal.

Under Brown’s plan, Fogarty said, IUSD would receive $2.2 million less in 2013-14 than it would under the current Revenue Limit calculation, and that number swells to $31.5 million in 2021, when the Local Control Funding Formula is projected to be fully implemented. Fogarty noted at that time that the formula was a starting point for state deliberations, and it could be altered significantly through the legislative process.

Meanwhile, the board on Tuesday also adopted a separate resolution opposing the governor’s plan to merge funding for regional occupational programs and career technical education with base revenue for school districts. The move would effectively eliminate the dedicated funding for both programs, putting them at risk in many districts.

“The real issue that we are concerned with is that if the ROP dollars are mixed in with base dollars then, statewide, we are going to be reducing the number of ROP courses that are offered to students,” said board member Sharon Wallin, who also sits on the board for Coastline ROP.

“It’s ludicrous that we would be willing to decimate ROP in the state,” added board member Michael Parham.

The resolution notes that ROP and career technical education courses are integral to a comprehensive instructional program. In addition, research has shown that these programs contribute positively to academic motivation, engagement and performance, resulting in increased high school graduation rates.

Each year around this time, Stonegate Elementary School spotlights a different part of the world for a two-week cultural lesson and celebration. This year, the focus is on Latin America.

We dropped by the campus on Friday and discovered that students, parents and staff had transformed the media center into a virtual museum packed with art, crafts, historical texts and food. Meanwhile, the school also staged a pair of morning assemblies featuring music and dancing.

We talked to Principal Stan Machesky and others about the event and captured some of the festivities in this brief video.

For the third time in eight years, Northwood High has earned the state’s highest level of recognition for a public school.

Northwood was one of 218 middle and high schools announced as California Distinguished Schools on Thursday by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. Each of the sites will be honored in May with a special plaque and flag, both signifying a prestigious designation that lasts four years.

And to think it was just four years ago that Northwood High hung its 2009 California Distinguished School banner, which of course followed on the heels of its 2005 banner.

That’s a lot of banners for a campus that opened in 1999.

“Fourteen years ago, Irvine Unified created a new high school with the intent of having it live up to our district’s history of great schools,” said Dr. Gavin-Huntley Fenner, president of the IUSD Board of Education. “Northwood has not only met those expectations, but it has exceeded them in nearly every category.”

“As a school board we could not be more proud of the students, parents and staff for this recognition,” Huntley-Fenner said. “They exemplify the best of our school district to the rest of the state.”

The California Distinguished School program has been around for nearly three decades now, recognizing exemplary elementary and secondary sites in alternating years. More recently, the program has also sought to spotlight schools that have made great strides in closing long-standing achievement gaps.

Sites that met specific accountability objectives in 2012 were once again encouraged to submit an application for the distinction. That application had to include a comprehensive description of at least two signature practices, which were were later verified by county-led review teams.

“This is a tremendous honor that really validates the hard work and dedication of our teachers, students, support staff and volunteers,” Northwood Principal Leslie Roach said Thursday. “We are extremely proud of the opportunities we are able to provide our students, and we don’t do this work for the accolades. Nevertheless, it is extremely gratifying to be recognized by your peers and by the state of California as a model for academic excellence.”

Northwood and the other award-winning schools will go on to serve as mentor sites for campuses hoping to replicate their successes, and the California Department of Education plans to help by updating a database of Distinguished School practices.

“These schools have gone the extra mile to provide high-quality instruction that puts their students on the right path toward career and college,” State Superintendent Torlakson said. “Given the enormous challenges schools have faced in recent years, it is inspiring to see this kind of success in so many schools. Our future depends on meeting the needs of every student no matter where they come from or where they live.”

For more information about the program, check out the California Distinguished Schools website. Oh, and here’s a list of IUSD’s Distinguished Schools to date.

Irvine High School’s student-athletes aren’t just getting it done on the court and on the field. They’re also making the grade in the classroom.

The CIF Southern Section has once again announced the winners of its annual Academic Awards program, honoring sports teams that boast the highest grade-point averages, and 18 of IHS’s 22 eligible teams were recognized for combined GPAs of at least 3.0.

In fact, boys soccer at Irvine High earned first place among Southern Section soccer teams from larger schools, earning a GPA of 3.59. Four other Irvine High teams ranked in the top 10 for their respective sports, with the IHS girls golf team (3.68) placing fourth, the girls basketball team (3.67) and boys golf team (3.57) each placing fifth, and the girls swim team (3.65) ranking eighth.

Again, these awards are based on the combined grade-point averages of each team’s players, and the squads had to post a collective GPA of at least 3.0 during the first half of the year to be considered. CIF officials say they received nearly 1,600 entries, which were divided into two categories, separating schools with 1,500 or more students from those with 1,499 or fewer.

“We are extremely proud of our programs,” Irvine High Principal Monica Colunga said this week. ”This recognition highlights the hard work of our coaching staff, teaching staff and students, and it reinforces our commitment to the concept and importance of being a student-athlete.”

This year’s CIF Academic Awards program was sponsored by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Ford. The winners are set to be honored during a pregame ceremony before an Angels home game on April 24.

OK, where were we?

With all Irvine schools closed last week for the spring recess, the NewsFlash team opted for a brief hiatus. But that doesn’t mean IUSD students weren’t making news elsewhere.

In fact, much to our surprise, a Turtle Rock Elementary fifth-grader showed up on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” chatting about his latest invention with the popular comedian and daytime talk host.

Yegor Polakoff, 11, had the presence of mind to offer a shout-out to both his school and his city on national television before unveiling “The Flying Sleep,” which prevents weary airline passengers from toppling over as they nod off. Yegor was actually one of three students who got a chance to showcase their super-cool inventions during a segment on the syndicated show, which taped in Burbank on Thursday, April 4, and aired the following Friday.

You can watch it here.

Here’s an opportunity for K-8 students we thought we’d pass along: Registration for the Irvine Public Schools Foundation’s 2013 Summer Enrichment Academy kicked off this week.

Classes will be held at six Irvine elementary schools and two Irvine middle schools from July 1 through July 26, and enrollment is open to students of all districts.

This year’s course catalog should feature something for just about everyone, with classes for reading, writing, math, science, music, art, drama, sports, technology and more.

For information or to check out the catalog, visit IPSF’s summer programs webpage. To enroll online by the June 2 deadline, click here.