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TPES students in our CreativeCar, collaborated together to create
this canvas that was on display at the La Jolla Art and Wine Festival.
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“If you’re here, you’re family.”
Hello everyone. I’m John May and it is my privilege to serve as the president of the TPES Foundation Board for this year. It is hard to believe that this is our fourth year here at Torrey Pines. I still remember the first time I saw the Torrey Pines campus. My son had fallen asleep in the car (he was about 3 at the time), so my wife and I decided to drive by some of the local schools. We both preferred smaller schools and my wife thought Torrey Pines was "cute", which was enough to put it on our short list of schools to investigate. Shortly after that we bought our condo in the Shores, and soon enough our son started Kindergarten here. We didn't know anyone, but it didn't take long to start making friends and convince ourselves that we had made the right choice. Now our youngest is in Kindergarten, along with the younger siblings of several of our son's friends. And we all feel right at home. I hope you do, too. This is a very special place, our cute little school. It’s our community school, and it’s our school community. Like the commercial says; “If you’re here, you’re family”.
Back to school night was a lot of fun and we got to meet the teachers and find out what is happening this year in the classrooms. For new students and their parents, everything here is new. Even for those who are returning, there is change. The classrooms are familiar, but the kids have moved up a grade and have new expectations and challenges. The teachers are ready with their favorite techniques, but every new class is different and will require a few new tricks. All of us are trying to get into the rhythm of the new school year.
The Foundation activities will be a little different this year, too. Yes, we will still be raising money. In fact we will try to raise more money this year than ever before. And yes, we will be still be rallying the volunteer efforts to help the teachers and run Pizza Wednesday and the book fair and do Walk-a-thon and organize Field Days… But this year we will be trying some new things, too.
We are taking a break from the Carnival this year to help spearhead the inaugural La Jolla Art and Wine Festival. This event promises to become a new La Jolla tradition, and the profits go to the La Jolla elementary schools. To give you an idea of how big we expect this to be, there are more than 200 artists from California and Baja, 8 wineries, and a couple of microbreweries booked to participate. The event has been organized by pros, including the person who started the La Jolla farmer’s market, and one of the organizers of Street Scene. To pull this off, we need lots of volunteers, so there was no way we could do this and run the Carnival. For those of you, like me, that used to volunteer for the Carnival, please work on the LJAWF this year. If this does as well as we think, the second annual event next year could be huge. And it is not just a school event; it is a broader La Jolla community event. We all get together and have some fun—and the schools win.
There are going to be other, smaller, changes for us this year, too. We are replacing Sally Foster and the Entertainment books with a new fundraiser from Greenraising in mid-October, and we are planning more events for our school community that are just for fun. Some change is good. What doesn’t change is the huge commitment it takes from all of us to make this school a great place for our kids to learn and grow.
—John May, TPES Foundation President 2009-2010
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