20 San Francisco Schools with low income kids receive federal academic achievement awards; SF Muralist Josef Norris/Kid Serve's newest school mural

Bravo to 20 of our San Francisco public schools that have been named as recipients of the federal Title I Academic Achievement Award for the year 2006-07! My daughter's school which is over 75% low income [free or reduced lunch eligible] families and mostly English learners is one of the awardees.

Each award-winning school qualifies for Title I funding, a federally-funded program designed to improve the academic achievement of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. There are nearly 6,000 Title I schools in California.

The criteria to qualify for the award have become more rigorous each year. Title I schools must demonstrate the achievement level of twice the schoolwide Academic Performance Index (API) growth target and twice the API growth target for the socioeconomically disadvantaged subgroup for two consecutive years. Schools also must have made Adequately Yearly Progress for two years in a row, and at least 40 percent of the enrolled students in each school must meet the
poverty index.

SFUSD schools receiving the award for 2006-07 are:
Frank McCoppin Elementary - Francis Scott Key Elementary - Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary - Sheridan Elementary
Garfield Elementary - Sherman Elementary - George R. Moscone Elementary - Spring Valley Elementary
Glen Park Elementary - Sunnyside Elementary - Gordon J. Lau Elementary - Sunset Elementary
Guadalupe Elementary - Sutro Elementary - Harvey Milk Elementary - Ulloa Elementary
John Yehall Chin Elementary - Visitacion Valley Elementary - Lafayette Elementary - Yick Wo Elementary

For more information about the Title I Academic Achievement Awards, please visit
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ti/awardsprogram.asp

Josef Norris/Kid Serve Mural Sparkles at Frank McCoppin Elementary School in San Francisco's Ricmond District - District One
That's not Diego Rivera. It's local San Francisco muralist extraordinaire Josef Norris of Kid Serve putting the final touches on a sparkly new mosaic school mural at McCoppin Elementary School in San Francisco's Richmond District. Students in 1st and 3rd grade classes, parents, community volunteers, and a few community artists all lent a hand to create this amazing piece of public art in our City.
As a muralist, Norris is best known for the "Performing Arts Mural" located at the Performing Arts Garage at Gough and Fulton Streets. He just completed a huge mosaic mural overlooking the Kid Power Park at 67 Hoff Street (near the 16th & Mission Street BART Stations.) See his Woody Guthrie Mosaic to the right. Josef Norris has been a recipient of the California Arts Council Artist in Residence Grant for three years from 2000-2003. He has supervised youth murals for the California Consumer Services Agency, California County Fairs, Marin Arts Council and the Ninth District Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Check out Josef Norris' work at: http://www.josefnorris.com.
Norris has created murals at 6 of our San Francisco middle schools, one high school and 13 elementary schools. For a map of his incredible work including the Jefferson Elementary School mural on 19th Ave at Irving, Franklin Middle School/Gateway High School Mural off Geary Blvd in the Fillmore District, or others at Flynn, Moscone, Harvey Milk, Starr King, Visitacion Valley, Buena Vista, Bessie Carmichael, Junipero Serra, Sunset, E.R.Taylor Elementary Schools, Horace Mann, Denman, James Lick, Enola Maxwell, Aptos and Vis Valley Middle Schools - see http://www.kidserve.com/map.html.

The McCoppin Mural began with a field trip to San Francisco's Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park in January and ended today with the finishing coat added to the mural and clean up. Over the past few months I and hundreds of other parents, students, and community members contributed to the public art piece.

More on Kid Serve Murals - http://www.kidserve.com/index.html
The kids and parents and teachers loved working with Josef. Below Mccoppin PTA president Danny Mangin and Norris work on the huge 2 story mural earlier this week. We took the scaffolding down this morning and will hopefully unveil the mural sometime soon.