Students, teachers and parents are urged to attend a Town Hall meeting regarding the future of CTE programs on the evening of Wednesday, October 21 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Catalina High School auditorium.
Auto Program at Pueblo would be affected by budget cuts.
This meeting will discuss the recent funding cuts approved by the Governor’s Office for the 2016-2017 school year and how this will negatively affect Career and Technical Education programs throughout the state.
State senators Steve Farley and David Bradley will be present to discuss how the cuts will affect school districts, including Pueblo Magnet High School.
Please plan to attend this meeting. Your voice and opinions will definitely count.
YOTO, also known as Youth On Their Own, was established in 1986 by Ann Young at Amphitheater High School in hopes of helping homeless teens. This program was made possible with the help of local churches, local foundations and many concerned citizens in Pima County.
Today, YOTO continues to help financially unstable students who are invested in academics. Pueblo’s Learning Support Coordinator, Ms. Veronica Vironet, who has worked with YOTO for three years described the way the program has grown throughout the years.
“Today we are doing a better job of promoting the program and giving more recognition to its purpose and what it does to help students,” said Vironet.
Veronica Vironet – Learning Support Coordinator
Due to higher recognition, the program has increased in student numbers in recent years.
“This year alone [2015] there are already 22 students in the YOTO program,” said Vironet, “and applications are still coming in.”
She added that the program provides financial aid to the students who are enrolled at Pueblo. This includes a stipend for satisfactory grades [A’s and B’s] and regular daily attendance.
This stipend helps students with the money they require for paying bills and/or sports or club enrollment. Besides providing financial assistance, YOTO also offers a food pantry and access to a clothing bank.
“The only requirement that students need to verify to be in this program is to prove that they are living away from their parents through no fault of their own,” Vironet said.
She said that her door is always open in the main office and that she will walk students through the process of applying for YOTO, which is now exclusively completed on-line. (www.yoto.org)
Among several new faces at Pueblo, the Warriors welcome our new counselor, Ms. Rachel Bopp, who comes all the way from northern Virginia to join the Pueblo community.
Bopp worked as a counselor for five years at Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia prior to her big move to the Southwest. She said that the arid desert weather in Southern Arizona was a huge factor in her decision to move three thousand miles to Tucson.
Bopp said, “I love helping our youth population and helping them achieve their goals. I really want to help them remove any barriers that are in their way of achieving these goals.”
She added that so far she loves it here at Pueblo. However, she did express concerns about “juggling all her tasks while being available to 500 students.”
“The staff and students are very respectful, helpful and welcoming,” Bopp said. “I plan on staying here for a long, long time.”
As the 2015-16 school year began, Pueblo gained many new teachers including Dr. Raul Gonzalez, who teaches CRC Mexican-American Point of View.
Born in Dallas, Gonzalez left for college at 18 to pursue his career in teaching which took him to many places around the United States and Mexico. After all of his travels, he became a student-teacher at Desert View High School for one year.
Upon completing his student teaching, he decided to apply at Pueblo.
Gonzalez said, “I wanted to work somewhere with a lot of quality teachers, and I heard that Pueblo is that place to be.”
He said that he loves Pueblo’s school spirit, and he looks forward to teaching here for many more years to come. Gonzalez also hopes that he can get the opportunity to learn more from his students.
“My goal is to ask students ‘Why?’ as often as possible,” Gonzalez said. “They may not be able to answer the question every time, but at least I’m going to keep asking the questions.”
More than one thousand Pueblo students participated in this year’s Card Castle Building Leadership activity on Friday, Aug. 14, during all seven periods, in an effort to increase team work, bring about self-awareness and learn campus responsibility.
Ms. Marie Little, auto teacher, brought this activity to Pueblo from previous trainings at various other schools. A year ago, she asked her CTE (Career and Technical Education) colleagues to take it on as a group lesson in order to reach more students.
“Mr. Mario Reyes [an intervention specialist at Pueblo] and I did this same project at Howenstine High Magnet School with the entire campus as part of a community-building activity, and it was wildly successful,” Little said. “It made a lot of sense to bring it to Pueblo.”
Mr. Pete Pederson, who teaches graphic arts and yearbook, delivered the debriefing at the end of each period, which provided our students a deeply meaning of the day’s activities.
Junior Alejandro Carrazco said, “After Mr. Pederson debriefed us, I fully understand the learning objective of the activity. We were here to learn and understand that we can overcome our obstacles. We weren’t able to talk, but we learned through other means to communicate.” He paused and said, “We learned that there are alternative ways to talk to one another.”
All students of CTE teachers and Ms. Kari Warner [student council advisor/science teacher] participated in this event.
You have probably seen her—Ms. Ana Berube, Pueblo’s new resource officer. Pueblo is one of nine schools that received a grant from the Arizona Department of Education to have a school resource officer, and if Officer Berube has her way, she will be staying for a while—at least three years, she said.
Berube, a graduate of the U of A, has a bachelor in fine arts. She worked two years in the crime scene unit and as a D.U.I. patrol officer at night for seven years.
“I witnessed a bad [car] accident which made me switch gears to become a patrol officer in D.U.I enforcement,” said Berube.
Berube no longer patrols because her sole assignment is to be a school resource officer at Pueblo High School, from Tuesday to Friday, and she is enjoying interacting with students and staff.
“I was told that Pueblo would be a horrible school and that I shouldn’t be here,” said Berube. “That negative perspective about Pueblo is way off.”
Berube does admit that her job can be a bit stressful, so she makes time to relax—and she finds that in baking. Earlier this school year, she committed to enrolling in a culinary school in Canada for two months.
Berube said, “When I returned from [culinary] school, I found my office door decorated with flowers to welcome me back—all of those negative stereotypes about Pueblo are definitely false.”
