Calabash Marks 1st Year as LEARN School

Students, families, school staff and supporters will gather at Calabash Street Elementary School in Woodland Hills tonight for an end-of-the-year barbecue, which will conclude with a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the school’s new, red barn.

Calabash is celebrating its first year as a LEARN school within the L.A. Unified School District, said Nancy Levin, parent representative to the LEARN governance board and the mother of two Calabash students.

Under LEARN, schools become semiautonomous, with the freedom to make more decisions regarding curriculum, hiring and other operations.

“We’re a small school with about 315 students,” said Levin. “We don’t get the funds or grants larger schools get. So we have to go to the community.”

She said the school has received strong support from the Woodland Hills Chamber of Commerce and its members.

The first fruit of that partnership, an 8-by-12-foot red barn, will be dedicated at 7 tonight. The barn, which replaces a dilapidated playhouse, will be used by Calabash kindergartners.

The next big school-community project is to open a technology lab, Levin said.

Calabash Principal Loretta Norwalt said the LEARN plan has been a boon to the school.

“I’ve seen more parents involved than ever before on a solid basis,” she said. “We have had wonderful cooperation from the entire school community and the Woodland Hills chamber, assisting in whatever way they can. I couldn’t ask for anything more. Our children couldn’t ask for anything more.”