West Sacramento
News-Ledger Wednesday, August 26, 2015 Page 1
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Local head shaving fundraiser for children’s cancer By Johny Garcia johny@news-ledger.com The Beckman Coulter Foundation will be hosting one of the St. Baldrick’s Foundation’s signature head shaving events at the Yolo Brewing Company on Sept. 23. The free fundraising event will feature at least one food truck, activities for the kids, and three local barbers who will be shaving heads at 1520 Terminal Street. “The head shaving is about awareness,” said St. Baldrick’s Foundation Volunteer Event Organizer Suzanne Goodwin. Afterwards, people “usually ask if you have cancer, but you can say you did this for children’s cancer research.” Goodwin said she hopes the event will raise both awareness and research money for childhood cancer. “My goal right now is $50,000 and I’m only at $4,500, so I’m pretty shy of that,” Goodwin said. “Hopefully the community will come and back it up.”
Beckman Coulter has hosted 5 of these head shaving events in the past, but this will be the first time that the foundation will open it to the public. “It’s growing a little bigger than I expected, but I like that,” Goodwin said. “I hope we can get 150 to 200 people here.” Each St. Baldrick’s fundraising group is asked to sponsor a child who has cancer as a way of putting a face to the cause. Beckman Coulter Foundation is sponsoring Sawyer R., an 8 year old who lives in Lincoln and was diagnosed with Burkitt’s Lymphona in April of this year. “He has his own Facebook page and I’ve been trying to watch his progress on the page but it makes me cry,” Goodwin said. “He’s in the hospital every day with tubes and struggling but he’s got this great attitude and he’s dancing with the I.V. bags… I just can’t even imagine what the parents go through.” Goodwin said she hopes more people will sign up to
Photo courtesy of St. Baldrick’s Foundation, by Craig Mitchelldyer Photography.
shave their head. “I have six women and no men right now, shaving their heads,” she said. “I would like 15 to 20 people shaving.” And though people who have more than 10 inches of hair length can choose to donate their hair, all hair lengths are welcome. “We’ve had some confusion about that,” Goodwin said. “You really have to have long hair to donate it.
Most of the people shaving don’t donate.” Goodwin said that those with shorter hair can receive “little spots” or “something fun” from the barbers. For more information about this event, please visit www. stbaldricks.org/events/ beckmancoulter. For more information about Sawyer R., please visit www. facebook.com/sawyerswarriors2015.
Photo courtesy of St. Baldrick’s Foundation, by Casie Photographics.
Washington Unified School District to receive nearly $50 million for upgrades By Johny Garcia johny@news-ledger.com The Washington Unified School District recently announced that voter-approved Measure V will help finance local school facility improvements over five years with more than $49 million in bonds sales. The District’s Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Scott Lantsberger said the $49.8 million bond is “the first in a series of needs that need to be addressed.” “We had a group of consultants come in, and they went through every single school site that the district had and came up with a list of needs,” Lantsberger said. “That list of needs is $220 million worth of work. That does not include any new schools. That’s just fixing the current schools that we already have.” Some projects to be completed with the voter-approved Measure V money will be the Bryte career tech education modernization, River City High School classroom building, expanding Bridgeway Island, district wide roofing, and district wide safety upgrades, according to an Aug. 12 press release. One of the first of these Measure V upgrades to be completed is the modernization of Bryte Elementary School, which will have a groundbreaking ceremony on Sept. 11. How-
ever, not every upgrade will be followed by a groundbreaking ceremony. “The reason we’re doing groundbreaking at Bryte is because it’s a complete modernization of the campus,” Lantsberger said. “A lot of this stuff is going to be hard to see because it’s infrastructure stuff. It’s not necessarily something that you’re going to be able to visually see because it’s in the background.” The district wide roofing upgrade, for example, will not receive a ceremony. “No groundbreaking, just teachers that are coming back who are going to be very happy this winter when they don’t have to take a bucket and put it in a particular spot because that roof’s not going to leak anymore,” Lantsberger said. Another key Measure V upgrade will be replacing portables with more permanent structures. “Portables have about a 20 year lifespan before you have to start redoing walls and roofs and stuff like that and they were being used as permanent space,” Lantsberger said. “We’re trying to get away from that.” River City High School will also receive upgrades after WUSD “missed the window” to perform upgrades a couple of years ago. “If you don’t build within 4 years of an approved design then it goes stale and you have to bring it back and it
goes through the entire design review process again,” Lantsberger said. “Well, we missed that window in 2013.” WUSD Administrator of Communication and Community Outreach Giorgos Kazanis said each site will have a white sign with information regarding the improvements being made. “Each sign is specific, so if folks are curious they can go to the sign and actually look on there and it will list them off in bullet points,” Kazanis said. Lantsberger stressed how appreciative he and others at WUSD are for Measure V. “We appreciate the public trusting us to move forward and make improvements on their behalf,” Lantsberger said. More information regarding the Measure V upgrades can be found online at www.wusd.k12.ca.us.
International Talk Like a Pirate Day Walk The Sacramento Walking Sticks club will be hosting an “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” walk on Saturday, September 19, according to a press release. Registration for the free event will take place from 9 am to noon, with the walk ending at 3 pm. The walk will begin at the California Automobile Museum, at 2200 Front Street in Sacramento. The self-paced walk will be along the Sacramento River and through Old Sacramento, featuring both a 5 and a 10 kilometer route. Guests are invited to attend the walk while wearing pirate attire, and are even welcome to bring their dogs - provided the dogs are leashed and picked up after. Everyone who walks will a receive a ticket that, when combined with $5, will give them entrance into the California Automobile Museum. International Talk Like a Pirate Day began in 1995 when John Baur and Mark Summers began talking like pirates while playing racquetball. “They decided the fun needed to be immortalized and thus they dedicated a special day, September 19 - because nothing ever happened on that day anyway,” according to the press release. Twenty years later, the event is celebrated throughout the United States, in Brazil, in England, and even in Australia. For more information about the internationally celebrated day, please visit www.talklikeapirate.com. For more information about the Sacramento Walking Sticks, please visit www.sacramentowalkingsticks.org.
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