Excitement in the Air--and Students in Class--at New School

OPENING DAY: About 225 kindergartners and first-graders showed up Wednesday for the first day of classes at Hermosa View School, the newest in the Hermosa Beach Elementary School District.

Excited children and nervous parents gathered as school district administrators led a colorful ribbon-cutting ceremony amid the smell of fresh paint. The school site, leased previously to a Japanese language school, had received a massive face lift with help from parents and local residents, who painted walls, refinished cabinets and planted grass and flowers. The district spent $800,000 to renovate the school and to purchase furniture for the classrooms, books for the library, and 14 computers for the computer lab.

District Supt. Gwen Gross said that Hermosa Valley School, until now the only other elementary school in the district, was becoming overcrowded. The opening of the second school, she said, has freed Hermosa Valley to make improvements.

“Now, at Valley, we have an art lab, a new computer lab,” Gross said. “We were able to reapportion a lot of space.”

Parent Laurie Byren said she was as excited as her son about the first day of school. “There is a new energy in our school district,” she said as her son David, a kindergartner, pulled on her arm. “We’re really lucky to have these two schools now.”

MERIT SCHOLARS: Forty-five South Bay high school seniors have been named semifinalists in the 1994 National Merit Scholarship program. Nationally, about 0.5% of high school graduates reach this level.

The students will compete with the country’s other 15,000 finalists for about 6,500 Merit Scholarships, to be awarded next spring. In all, 2,000 of the Merit Scholarships will be awarded. Each is valued at $2,000 but in many cases can be supplemented by corporate scholarships linked to the National Merit program.

More than a million juniors in more than 19,000 high schools in the nation entered the program by taking the 1992 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which screened the initial entrants.

For the final round, the students must complete a detailed scholarship application that gives information about their educational goals and participation in school and community activities.

The semifinalists are: Alex Caro of California Academy of Math and Science; Sun H. Yoon of Narbonne High; Paul Barr, Elena Jenson and Jonathan Peterson of Mira Costa High; Andrew Davidson, Danielle Hitchcock and Gregory Paulson of Chadwick School; Amy Teixeira of Bishop Montgomery High; Karen Kim, Stewart King, Judith Lim, Shu-Yuan Liu, Ming-E.M. Ou and Jelin Yen of South High; Liza Bonilla, Jodie Hamamura, David Korka, Jason Musicer, Rohit Nand and Michael Youk of Torrance High; Angela Soon and Seung H. Yoo of West High.

Twenty-two semifinalists are from Palos Verdes Peninsula High: Edward Ahn, Vanessa Blum, Daniel Chen, Michael Chen, Elise Co, Mark Davis, Verna Guo, Jimmy Hung, Sarah Johnson, Rita Khurana, Alex Liu, Brandon Long, Faramarz Nabavi, Winston Olson, Lindsey Pei, Stephanie Pham-Quang, Deanna Ramsay, Robert Shih, Shana Wallace, Ellen Wang, Dajin Yang and John Yoon.

NEW DISTRICTS: Two new school districts on Saturday will celebrate their start. The Redondo Beach Unified school district will sponsor a community festival at the Redondo Union High soccer field. Music by a country and Western band, as well as carnival rides and food, will highlight the event, from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Information: Linda Mangers at 379-5449.

Manhattan Beach Unified will sponsor a family picnic at Mira Costa High from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Family activities and entertainment will be offered, and food will be available for purchase. Information: Janet Buckley at 318-2665.