The awards are inspired by the life of Elna Flynn (1930-1987), the consummate Pacifica volunteer who spent her time in classrooms and served as president of the PTA at Portola School and of the Laguna Salada PTA Council, served on the 17th District PTA for San Mateo County, and was a founder of the Oceana Scholarship and Activities Foundation.
The Elna Flynn Awards dinner, which will now be held in spring, took place on Friday, May 31, 2013. This award celebrates those individuals who volunteer countless hours of time in the name of education. Below are the peer recommendations provided by the school representatives:
Cabrillo School
Simone Burns has been married to Dave for 25 years as of this year and has four children, Ashley (24), Bryan (20), Alexys (17), and Vincent (10). Simone has been volunteering in classrooms for the past 19 years. She started in her daughter Ashley’s classroom at the old Oddstad School. When her son Bryan got into Cabrillo in 1998 for kindergarten she was so excited and fell in love with the school, its program and the way the school was run.
She dedicated her time and love to the school. She started working in the classroom, driving on all field trips, which lead to field trip coordinator, party coordinator, classroom liaison for several years, volunteering in the library, and teaching Drama and Art under the creative arts program in her early years at Cabrillo. She has been an upper grade liaison, helped organize and coordinate two of her children’s 8th grade years with dinner dance, Catalina trip and graduation.
Simone has served on the PTO board for several years now. One of her most important roles at the school has been in a Co-Chair position as Fundraising Coordinator and running the upper grade fundraising program along with her sister Natalie Ackroyd. These programs have helped the children raise money for their study trips to off set the cost to parents. Simone started helping with fundraising back in 1998 with Debbie Quinn who taught her everything she knows about fundraising. She now shares the position with her good friend Jill Macedo.
She has put countless hours into the fundraising efforts - namely gift wrap, cookie dough, and See’s Candies. Tasks include coordinating sales, all the paper work, putting together orders, and coordinating volunteers. When the orders come in you can find Simone, Natalie, Jill and their families at the school until the late night putting everything together. Simone has never had a job outside the home until 4 years ago when because of her fundraising at school she landed a job at See’s Candies in the fundraising department, which she loves.
Simone says, “Cabrillo school has been such a wonderful experience for me and my family. The teachers have been so wonderful to work with and after being at the school for 15 years they have become more than teachers to me, they have become our friends. My favorite people at Cabrillo are the school’s secretaries Sandy Franco and Mary Griggi; they hold everything together nicely. I love them.”
Natalie Ackroyd is married to her high school sweetheart and has four children, Michael (17), Marissa (14), Johnny (7), and Joey (3). Natalie started volunteering at Cabrillo school a few years before her son started kindergarten, helping out with her nephew and her sister, Simone Burns.
When her son started kindergarten she worked in the classroom, drove on field trips, and helped with classroom parties. She moved on to field trip coordinator and taught PE for the creative arts program. She served as classroom liaison for several years.
About 7 years ago she took on the Escrip program coordinating invoices and making sure families were signing up to the program. Natalie has also been an upper grade liaison helping to plan the dinner dance, Catalina trip and 8th grade graduation.
The 8th grade graduation was one of her most memorable experiences at Cabrillo School because it was so personable, which confirmed why choose Cabrillo school for her children. Natalie has played a big role in helping the school earn money by serving on the fundraising committee. Natalie, along with her sister, has run the school’s giftwrap, cookie dough, and See’s Candies fundraisers for several years. These fundraisers help the students earn money for their study trips. The hours she puts in are countless.
Natalie says all her hard work is worth every minute to her. She enjoys working with the students, staff, and the teachers at Cabrillo School. Her children’s education means everything to her and she wouldn’t change anything; it has been such a wonderful experience being part of the Cabrillo community.
Ingrid B. Lacy Middle School
It’s four o’clock on a Saturday morning. You may glance at the clock, turn over and drift back to sleep. Cristal Pepin, however, is up and ready. Cristal will pack her car with muffins, fruit, hot chocolate, cheese sticks, water, a grill and all the fixings for a hot dog lunch to feed 75 people.
Cristal is a dedicated parent with a son in the IBL-Ocean Shore marching band and drum line. At 5 a.m., she will drive to IBL, possibly add 5 more students to her minivan, then drive to the East Bay where she will spend the day feeding, caring for, photographing and videotaping the band. Cristal will do all this with an easy smile and relaxed attitude, and that is why she is IBL’s Elna Flynn Volunteer of the Year!
At Ingrid B. Lacy, the band has about ten Saturday competitions a year. They travel to Fairfield, Vallejo, Pleasanton, Alameda, and sometimes as far away as the Sacramento area. Since they start early in the morning, parents provide breakfast, lunch and snacks. For the past two years, Cristal coordinated chaperones, carpools, planned the menu and did any necessary food shopping and preparation.
Cristal also organized fundraising events such as the wrestling band slam, the teen dance and car washes. She attended every Fog Fest parade, winter and spring concert, January Jazz performance, All-City concert, and band BBQ. That’s a lot of performances! And, if you know Cristal, the one thing she carries in all her travels, is her camera.
For 5 years now, she has created beautiful posters depicting the band competitions so that we can see them in action. Cristal captured important events such as the Rob Schneider Music Foundation Dinner and Year End Concert and helped create a photo book to thank the Schneider family for their 15 years of support. Cristal also photographed IBL events such as the 6th grade Greek Fest, 8th grade dinner dance, and the Chocolate Fest.
Videos of band performances, including the Vallemar-Cabrillo band and Terra Nova band, are available on Cristal’s You Tube playlists at http://musicmattersinpacifica.org/5.html. She has over 200 videos and 16,000 views!
Cristal advocates music education, but especially band, because it has a positive effect on student self-esteem, strengthens social ties, promotes teamwork and encourages creative individual and group expression. She goes on to say that studies show an increase in math and science abilities when a child learns music.
While watching students blossom in band, Cristal enjoyed getting to know and work with many wonderful parents, teachers and administrators.
This is Cristal’s 12th and last year with the Pacifica School District, but she will continue to support music education and students via the Terra Nova High School Band and as a founding member of PEF’s Music Matters in Pacifica.
Ocean Shore School
Marguerite Rodigou Stack exemplifies the Elna Flynn spirit of volunteerism. She has been a parent volunteer at Ocean Shore for eleven years. Her eldest daughter, Emily Stack, is now a sophomore at Terra Nova and her youngest, Susan Stack, is graduating from the eighth grade this June.
Marguerite has extended her abundant energy to Ocean Shore and its students in a myriad of ways. She has aided in her children's classrooms, driven and chaperoned field trips, including her recent five days in Yosemite with the eighth grade class, supported the band and helped to raise funds for our parent teacher organization. But as a credentialed and experienced educator, Marguerite has also been invaluable as a classroom aide and assisted in teaching both fourth grade and eighth grade math.
What makes Marguerite special, beyond her sharp wit and great sense of humor, is her generosity and willingness to offer her time and assistance when the unexpected arises. She has driven field trips for classes that were short a driver or provided hands-on support with a theme day that would otherwise have been cancelled. It is not uncommon for Marguerite to pass a classroom and to say, "Good morning, do you need any help?"
Her latest endeavor has been to renovate our paleo -shark, exhibit because it was in need of repairs. Marguerite is a gem. She is a valued and appreciated member of the Ocean Shore community.
David Bradley has been an amazing volunteer for Ocean Shore School for over 15 years. David is a rare find. He is community member who adopted Ocean Shore School and spends countless hours working here every week. David has worked at multiple sites as Ocean Shore has grown and has shown a commitment to the school and students far beyond a typical volunteer.
David is involved in every layer of technology at school. He runs his own business and has the ability and willingness to be at school at a moment's notice. David is here so much people often think he is a staff member. David has taught every child at OSS technology skills at one point or another. In addition to building and maintaining our school computer lab, he teaches students keyboarding, word processing, sketch up, and now Google docs, along with many other technical skills.
In addition, David runs a tech crew by teaching students in the middle school grades how to run the tech, sound, and lights for stage performances. He also teaches after school classes such as scratch and robotics and is involved in helping out in boy scouts as well.
David is a true community volunteer. He is kind, considerate, and work tirelessly to keep technology up and running at Ocean Shore. Aside from teaching and volunteering, he continues to work with companies to locate tech donations to our school. If needed, he will not only donate time, but also donate money to complete a project. David understands the complexity of Ocean Shore School and makes decisions from this frame of reference. We have grown to depend on David for all of our tech needs and we never want to take for granted the dedication that he has shown our school over the years!
Ortega School
It began with popcorn and popsicles, and then a tsunami warning changed everything.
Esther Im, one of two recipients of the Elna Flynn Outstanding Volunteer Award from Ortega Elementary School, first began helping out at the school when her oldest child, who is now 13, started kindergarten. Im helped out with class projects, and soon after agreed to sell popcorn after school, a seemingly simple job that requires a deep reserve of patience and the ability to manage and serve a herd of VERY EXCITED children jumping up and down like the popcorn in the machine.
Since then, she has served as room parent in nearly every class her two children – the youngest of whom is now 8 -- has attended, dutifully performing an array of tasks from throwing parties (her not-so-secret favorite job) to gathering materials for a project, organizing a field trip or making a zillion copies. She’s volunteered in the library, helping kids find books, and worked on numerous versions of the school’s annual Walk-a-thon and Field Day. There have been sunburns.
It’s fair to say that Esther Im is the sort of person who isn’t easily let out of the building. And it wasn’t long before she was drafted onto the PTO board as volunteer coordinator, wrangling other parents into vacant jobs that needed doing.
Not surprisingly, when Im’s son was in the fifth grade, she volunteered for the annual spaghetti dinner, a traditional event in which fifth-graders raise funds for a myriad of end-of-school activities by serving spaghetti to proud family members.
The spaghetti dinner was how she met Tenishia Kavanaugh, who also had a son in the fifth grade. They worked well together. And, good thing. In this particular year, the population of Ortega fifth graders and corresponding families was so large that the dinner had to be moved to the cafeteria at Ingrid B. Lacy Middle School in order to accommodate everyone. That was a great idea until there was a tsunami warning, the rare event serious enough to close schools.
But it takes more than a potential natural disaster to stop a school fundraiser, and the spaghetti dinner would go on. Problem was, the school was locked up tight for most of the day, throwing a monkey wrench into the plan and creating a situation that might have chased away weaker producers. This is the sort of scenario that separates the hobbyists from the serious players in volunteer service and Im and Kavanaugh recognized each other on the latter end of that spectrum immediately.
“I liked the way she worked,” Im recalls, with a smile.
She should know. A lot of people go home and relax at the end of the day. Im is a pediatric nurse at an after-hours clinic. So, after school, she goes to work …with sick kids…needy, snotty, cranky, wheezy, occasionally vomiting kids, and their exasperated parents. Capable as she clearly is, Im also is supported in the whole symphony of child-related activities by husband Mark Im, a San Francisco Police officer.
The year following the now-infamous “Tsunami Dinner,” Kavanaugh and Im agreed to work together on fundraising, solidifying one of the most successful partnerships in Ortega PTO history. In their first year, they brought in $90,000 for the school. This was much needed cash; state legislators whacked the education budget left and right as California sank further into economic recession. School fundraising is a full-time, largely thankless job, but one that Im embraced with characteristic grace and quiet humor.
“I love doing fundraising,” Im said (seriously, she said that), “because you can see the fruits of your labor immediately.”
Moreover, Im has emerged from all manner of stressful situations (try getting struggling families to write a check AGAIN) as beloved as she was the day she walked in that kindergarten door.
In fact, now that son Matthew has moved on to middle school, some smart people at Ingrid B. Lacy have recruited Esther Im to work on PE uniform sales and picture day and volunteer in the library. She’s also been a team parent for various youth sports teams.
“I love watching them play – I live through my kids,” Im says. “I really do.”
There is, though, one escape in Im’s life that has nothing whatsoever to do with school or youth sports or even sick kids. It’s no secret around school that Esther Im loves Hawaii, where the family goes annually to recharge. “I’m a Hawaiian wannabe,” Im says.
At the mere mention of the Aloha state, Im is awash in happy. A certain smile crosses her face and it’s pretty clear that she’s gone somewhere else for a minute or two… somewhere without a basket auction, a yearbook or cookie dough sales.
Tenishia Kavanuagh is all about the money. And, while no one in the Ortega Elementary School community can actually keep track of all the things she does, this much is clear: the school would be a much different place – one without a science program, library, art classes, physical education and the myriad other things paid for by the PTO -- were it not for the fundraising efforts of Kavanaugh and her counterpart, Esther Im. Both women are being honored as recipients of the Elna Flynn Outstanding Volunteer Award from Ortega.
Despite the well-known fact that Kavanaugh is “not a morning person,” she has started many days in front of the school, forcing fliers for one or another fundraising event onto parents trying to escape from the drop-off line. And, there have been just as many late nights wrapping baskets for the annual auction or some such task, all in the name of bringing in more for the school.
Kavanaugh has three children, who span, in school-terms, from Ingrid B. Lacy Middle School to pre-K. Ortega is the center of that spectrum, and she is steeped in “Ottertown.” This is not entirely surprising, when you know that Kavanaugh grew up in Sharp Park, graduated from Oceana High School, married a guy who lived around the block (Michael Kavanaugh, of the Pacifica Kavanaughs) and previously worked as a teacher at Babe’s Preschool.
She started Ortega when her oldest son, now 12, started kindergarten. Kavanaugh was a room-parent and things took off from there. She volunteered at various school events and chaperoned a LOT of field trips.
“Field trips bring you behind the scenes of everything,” Kavanaugh said. “I never knew there was a fortune cookie factory, or a firemen training center. We get to see all this cool stuff.”
Eventually, Kavanaugh took over the after-school Popsicle operation, frequently with a toddler in tow. When her son reached fifth grade, Kavanaugh became more involved, coordinating end-of-school activities for the class, which is how she came to be charged with The Tsunami Dinner, an infamous event in which a freak tsunami warning threw a perfectly planned spaghetti dinner at the IBL cafeteria into chaos.
She emerged with Esther Im.
Together, they are the engine of a fundraising machine that brings in about $90,000 by direct donations, pizza and restaurant nights, the sale of everything imaginable and Ortega’s annual dinner and basket auction. Kavanaugh who, like Im, sits on Ortega’s PTO board, is relentless in her pursuit of money for the school.
“It’s a thrill,” she says.
“You work very hard and pour blood, sweat and tears into something and then there’s this big reward at the end.”
There’s more. Kavanaugh also volunteers at IBL, selling gym clothes and helping with picture day and other activities. During baseball season, she operates the PALL snack shack, and serves on that organization’s board.
And…three nights a week, she drives around town with the music cranked up and no kids in the car, delivering pizza for Round Table. It’s easy to get the impression that this job, the one for which she is actually paid, is as much about escaping all the unpaid jobs as it is about making some extra cash.
Sunset Ridge School
As we prepare to honor this year’s recipients of the Elna Flynn Volunteer Award, I am reminded of a quote from Margaret Mead. She said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Our honorees, Elizabeth Bucini and Naz Hussain, are on their way to changing the world by being a positive influence for our school children, faculty, and the greater community. Today, we celebrate two people that have quietly and gently improved Sunset Ridge Elementary by pouring their love and dedication into every single day.
Elisabeth Bucini has been volunteering her time in Pacifica Schools for many years. She began when her older children attended Sharp Park School and continues to generously offer her assistance on a daily basis. Elisabeth is a proud mother of six and grandmother of two, so we hope to see her continuing her volunteer efforts for many more years.
Each day, with her kids in tow, Elisabeth walks up the steep grade on Hickey Boulevard. Just like the mail carriers, wind, rain, sleet, hail, or a dense fog won’t stop her from reaching Sunset Ridge. Amazingly, she still has the energy to stay at school all day helping with everything from class projects to providing support to our Media Clerk and students in the library, as well as serving as a Room Parent. Over the years, Elisabeth has spent untold hours volunteering for tasks too numerous to list.
Elisabeth loves photography, Facebook, and friends. She enjoys snapping photos around the campus, capturing memories of school events and helping to record our school history and milestones. Elisabeth is a treasure and a valued member of our community.
Sunset Ridge is also pleased to honor Naz Hussain. Teachers have described Naz as their “angel”. She has such a quiet, soft-spoken nature and is willing to help with all projects big or small. Once she understands the classroom needs and routine, she operates like a stealth airplane. Naz will glide into the classroom and complete work on the projects pending before the teachers realize she was there. It seems like divine intervention when the work is mysteriously finished.
Naz began helping in the Kindergarten classroom when her eldest son entered school and soon branched out to spend a great deal of time assisting in the library and in class. She now visits several different classrooms, adding more teachers to her list each year as her two sons grow. The teachers are delighted to see her and have her support. Naz is also busy in the cafeteria daily, helping the children with everything from opening milk containers to properly sorting compost items and recyclables. She makes sure that if a child needs something, she’s there to help out.
Naz is an active member of the PTA, the School Site Council, and the ELAC committee. She is a treasured asset at Sunset Ridge.
Our success relies on dedicated volunteers like Elizabeth and Naz. They are the backbone and heart of our school community. We extend our heartfelt thanks for their constant support and dedication to our school.
Vallemar School
This year, Vallemar School is proud to announce Christina Solomon as our Elna Flynn recipient.
Christina has been a dedicated Vallemar parent for nine years. She has two sons, Brian in fifth grade and Shaun in eighth grade.
During her nine years at Vallemar, Christina has served as the Co-President for our PTO (Parent Teacher Organization), served as a classroom volunteer, PE volunteer teacher, classroom field trip organizer, completed the science lab inventory, worked on various classroom auction projects, created our citizenship banners for the school, and organized volunteers to help move several classrooms during a big transition at our school.
Christina has worked side-by-side with her close friend and Vallemar parent, Ofelia Lee. They are commonly referred to as the Dynamic Duo at Vallemar. They have completed many projects together throughout the years, but one that stands out was when they made over one thousand paper cranes for the “Million Cranes Project”. These cranes were sold at school to help raise money for the tsunami victims in Japan.
Christina Solomon is dedicated to our school, students, staff, and community. She has supported all of us in so many positive ways. We are lucky to have her and her children here at Vallemar.
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Please stay tuned for video and photographs from the dinner and be ready to post your own!
