Community Auction Needs YOU!Last year, thanks to tremendous parent support, the Community Auction raised $33,000 for essential programming like Spanish, Handwork, Eurythmy, and Strings! Thanks to everyone who made this possible, especially the Auction Co-chairs, Sarah Botz and Alex Tickle.

Sarah and Alex created a road map for the school to benefit more by relying on volunteers instead of staff. The Parent Survey taken in the fall indicates that there is interest in moving forward with the Community Auction again this spring.

We’re happy to announce that we have identified four “Quad-Chairs” willing to lead the effort. Genevieve Bertone and Laura Gilbert will be auction co-chairs, and Christina Woodworth-Pow-ell and Amy Hui are captains of procurement and close-out respectively. We are very excited about this year’s auction, but the reality is that our enthusiasm alone is not enough to make the project move forward. We need your help!

Here’s how you can get involved:• Become an Auction Coordinator: Coordinators oversee

specific tasks and needs of the auction and provide overall support for their team. Time commitments will vary de-pending on the upcoming Auction Coordinators meeting on January 19th from 9am – 10am in the Guayaki Mate Café, located in the Barlow. If you cannot attend the meeting, but are interested in learning more, please email co-chair Gene-vieve Bertone: genearth@mac.com

• Sign Up to Volunteer: If you can volunteer between 5-10 hours in the spring, please sign up on the Sign Up Genius that will be sent via email and Charter Notes shortly following the Auction Coordinators meeting on January 19th.

The Community Auction is an important part of closing the gap in state funding and supporting our extraordinary curriculum guided by the core principles of Waldorf education, K-8 Charter School. It also provides an opportunity to work together in sup-port of the community we love. Stay tuned for auction updates and more ways to get involved!

SEBASTOPOLCHARTERNOTES

Upcoming Events Jan 18: Enrollment TourJan 25: Waldorf at Weill Hall, Sonoma State University, 6:30pFeb 2: 6th Gr. Play, 6pmFeb 3: Enrollment Event, Assembly Room at the Main St. CampusFeb 6: Board Meeting, 6pmFeb 7: All-School Assembly, Sebastopol Community Center, 1:30pFeb 10-11: Kim John Payne Parent Lecture, 6:30p and Workshop, 9-1p

January Issue Highlights

Community Auction Pg. 1

Pledge Program Update Pg. 2

School Board Candidate Pg. 3

Sip and Donate Pg. 4

Ginger Compress Pg. 4

Notes from the Office Pg. 4 Kim John Payne Pg. 5

January 2017Monthly Edition

2 CharterNotes January 2017

January Pledge UpdateHappy New Year! Thank you all for reaching 79% participation in our pledge program. We are getting closer to 100% participation. Class 1 is in the lead, followed by Class 4, and tied for 3rd are Sunflower Kindergarten and Class 5. Warm thanks to all who have taken part in the effort to support our dear children and school via your gift of pledge. For those who haven’t yet, we need you! Let’s bring in 2017 together as a parent body knowing we are all doing our part to keep Sebastopol Charter thriving.

Heartfelt thanks, as always,

Anna and the Charter Foundation

Class Pledged RK 77% SK 83% 1st 88% 2nd 78% 3rd 77% 4th 84% 5th 83% 6th 77% 7th 79% 8th 66% School 79%

Special thanks to our former Sunflower Kin-dergarten teacher, Theresa Roach Melia, for promoting her new book, The Adventures of Scoochie Mouse, at our campus before Win-ter Break. This small fundraiser was a huge success! Theresa sold out her entire supply to our community. If you happened to miss the sale and still would like a copy, the book is available on Amazon.com (Amazon Smile if you would still like to contribute to the school) or through steinerbooks.org. And, if you were one of the lucky ones to pur-chase a book on this day, Theresa would be thrilled if you could leave a review on Ama-zon of your experience reading the story.

Notes from

the Directorby Chris Topham, Executive Director

I have received many questions about when we will move to the new campus. It’s still possible that we will be on the campus one year from now. We won’t really know for sure until construction has begun. There is a lot of preparation underway

for the construction to begin in March (when the county permits us to start after the “rainy season.”) The contractors and the construction management team have very set plans when we break ground in March. It is fully possible that we will be moving in December of 2017, but it is also impossible to predict the progress of construction.

What’s exciting to me is that it’s not a matter of “if ” we’ll move, but it’s a matter of “when.” Credo High School planned to move to their new campus during the recent win-ter break, so their calendar had a three-week break to give extra time to move. Their move was delayed, but they still had a three-week break. Similarly, we may have a three-week winter break (and a one-week spring break.) If we know before the due date for distributing a calendar for 2017-2018 about the construction progress, we’ll reflect that in the calendar.

Perhaps some people are wondering whether it wouldn’t be more convenient to move during the summer break of 2018. For financial reasons, it would be best for us to move as soon as possible. We’re paying a mortgage for the new property, so it would be good for us to start using the property and stop paying rent for our other facilities asap. We are renting out the residence on the property to help pay for the mort-gage.

As anyone knows, moving is both exciting and exhausting. We’ll need a strong team spirit during the move and to re-member the long-term benefit for the school to be on a uni-fied, permanent site (with adequate space!) We’ll also enjoy expanded facilities, such as having a classroom for handwork, after-care, science/math/technology, special education and music rehearsals (separately from the assembly building.)

We hope to have a groundbreaking ceremony, so we’ll let you know when that will happen. For a while, the campus will be a construction site only for the contractors, especially as they’re creating all the infrastructure for utilities. When there are opportunities to help with the new campus with land-scaping and building improvements, we will let you know.

January 2017 CharterNotes 3

Looking for a Qualified Candidate for School Board MemberThe Sebastopol Charter School board is looking for a 7th member to join during the spring semester. Excellent qualifi-cation for a school board member is to be objective and able to look at the big picture regarding a policy-driven governance. It’s a volunteer position, but with a big responsibility. The school board is bound to the Brown Act in procedures and meetings. An excellent way of finding out what the board does is by attending a board meeting – you’re always welcome.Interested candidates should submit a letter of interest and a resume to Essie Bishop, administrative assistant, by email (ebishop@sebastopolcharter.org). In the letter, please express the skills you bring to the board and the reason for wanting to serve. There is a Board Nomination Committee that consists of two school board members, a faculty member, a charter foundation board member and the executive director. The committee will interview the top candidates, vote to determine which candi-date to nominate to the board and then the school board will vote on the nomination. Following the approval of a nominee, the committee chairperson will write all candidates not select-ed, notifying them of the board decision.

Donor profile: Trixie and Kyle GambrellAs Trixie Gambrell looks forward to Sebastopol Charter School’s new campus, there’s one feature that excites her more than any other: space.

Trixie is an anthroposophic doctor with a practice in Santa Rosa and she knows how important it is for children to have the space to move their bodies so that they can be fully in their bodies.

“A child should be able to perceive everything down to their toes,” she says. “Once children have the time and space to fully move about movement can become “curative” for unlocking full sensory awareness, a critical part of their development.”

“While students and teachers do the best they can with the space available now, it’s not enough,” Trixie explains. “They need more room.” That’s part of the reason she and her husband Kyle, parents of kindergarten, first and third graders, have donated generously to the Breaking Ground campaign for the new campus. They’re also strong believers in a public Waldorf education.

“We believe in the mission (of Waldorf education) and the space for the kids to unfold,” she says. “But obviously that takes money.”

While the school received a loan from the Rudolf Steiner Foundation for the purchase of the 20-acre new school site, and will use proceeds from the fu-ture sale of the downtown campus to cover costs, there’s still a gap in funding. The Breaking Ground campaign is aimed at closing that gap for Phase 1 of the new campus.

“Beyond the space for play, gardening, sports and performing arts, the new campus will also provide the community the opportunity to build a school from the ground up,” Trixie says. “With a changing political environment and so much outside our control, that’s unique. This is our opportunity to create what we want.”

Our school’s string program is looking to ex-pand its instrument lending library. All of our

instruments are loaned free of charge to students at the school. If you or someone you know has a string instrument lying unused, please consider donating it! Your gift will give beautiful memo-ries and a lifetime of music to many students at the school, and help the strings program stay

strong and vibrant for years to come. Please con-tact Tim Zieminski with any questions at

tzieminski@sebastopolcharter.org

4 CharterNotes January 2017

Ginger Chest Compress

It is 10:00. The housework is done and you are just sitting down in front of the fire to enjoy your cuppa organic rose hip tea. As you take your first sip, you hear it. The cough. The barky, dry, hacking cough. You thought surely the locally-sourced echina-cea, elderberry and (New Zealand) manuka honey was going to send your child off to dreamland for some much-needed healing sleep. Alas, the coughing is turning into a series of persistent bouts of air-hungry ca-cophony.

Before your partner risks his/her life sug-gesting mucinex or robitussin, you remem-ber hearing about the natural remedy for persistent cough and think this is a great time to try it. This remedy works by taking advantage of the skin/lung connection. What is irritating on one end, is relieving on the other. By irritating the skin, it calms the lungs. Here’s that remedy. It’s called a Gin-ger Chest Compress, and it’s super easy and effective.

GINGER CHEST COMPRESS

A one inch piece of fresh, organic ginger, ground in a mortar and pestle.A cotton or flannel piece of cloth, about the size of a washcloth.A wool wrap or scarf.

Lay the wool wrap on the sleeping area where the child will be.Have child lie on top of the wrap.Combine the ginger with enough warm wa-ter to make a paste.Spread the paste on the cotton/flannel cloth.Check for temperature, it should be neither too hot, nor cool, but comfortably warm.Place the cloth, ginger-paste-side down, on the child’s bare chest, avoiding the nipple area.Check in five minutes to be sure your child is not too sensitive.Remove in ten minutes or less TOTAL time.

*** Red-headed children may need less total time. Check after 2 minutes initially, and leave on for no more than 5 minutes in this case. ***

In health,Dr. Gambrell

Waldorf Business Listing: Our Town DailyTake a look at the vendors who actively support our school. Check out our business directory. Kris Spangler, MFT536 So. Main Street, Sebastopol, CA 95472 USA707-829-8293 || www.KrisSpanglerMFT.com

Hours of operation: Various -- call or email any time.I am: A parent of a SCS Waldorf studentPrivate practice psychotherapy. I work with individual adults, ages 18 and up. I bring to my work values of simplicity, mindfulness, deep empathy and the uniqueness of each person.My clients are generally working on managing or healing from depression, anxiety, relationship issues, grief, life transitions, intimate partner violence, parenting and childhood difficulties. I have a specialty in gender and trans-gender concerns and I practice EMDR — a technique for processing trauma. People of color and LGBTQ people are warmly and expressly welcome.

See more at: http://waldorf.ourtowndaily.org/listings/kris-span-gler-mft/#sthash.Y9LmIfL9.dpuf

Notes From

the Office by Barbara Philipp & Carrie Heim

Happy New Year! What a welcome Moth-er Nature gave 2017 with an aus-picious down pour of nourishing rain. It was like she was washing away the residue of 2016 to make a clean path for 2017! We hope you feel renewed and ready to start the new year with optimism and hope.

With the turn of the year, the office becomes abuzz with inqui-ries for the following school year from prospective parents. If you know of anyone considering SCS for their child, please direct them to our website which has enroll-ment applications, tour dates, open house details and much more information about our school and future plans. Or, have them call the office to speak to Barbara, our Enrollment Coordinator.

Waldorf at Weill is held at Weill Hall at Sonoma State University. Tickets are free, but you do need to reserve tickets through the box office in advance. This is the link to reserve tickets: http://gmc.sono-ma.edu/WaldorfWeill/ If you have

extra tickets that you do not need, please turn them into the office so we can distribute to families who can make use of them. We always enjoy this evening out with our shared colleagues and fellow Waldorf schools.

If you can help with the 6th grade vision screening on January 24, please let us know. You do not need to be a 6th grade parent to volunteer. More volunteer op-portunites for vision and hearing screening will be available in Feb-ruary and March.

CAASPP State Testing dates for grades 3-8 are on the school goo-gle calendar on our website. Please mark these dates down to ensure family vacation or any unnecessary absences do not occur during your testing period. A lot of preparation goes into the state testing sched-ule, so we hope your child will not need to make-up the dates. We will send out reminders closer to testing.

Seventh and eighth grade mid-year reports were mailed on Friday. You should expect them early this week. If you do not receive your copy, please contact us in the of-fice so we can verify your address and give you a copy of the report.

January 2017 CharterNotes 5

How to be your best, when your kids are at their worst!

This topic will be explored with a parent lecture and workshop offered by ac-claimed author and counselor,

Kim John Payne. Sebastopol Char-ter School, Summerfield Waldorf School and Farm, and Sunridge School are pleased to present Kim John Payne’s parent lecture on Friday, February 10 from 6:30-8:30pm and parent workshop on Saturday, February 11 from 9-1pm. Tickets for each event will be available through Eventbrite soon with a slight discount giv-en for attending both days. The events will be held at Sunridge School and more information will be released via Facebook and posted at each campus. We hope you can join us for this amazing opportunity!

All School AssemblyMark your calendars for the All-School Assembly held on Tuesday, February 7 at the Sebastopol Community Center at 1:30p. Our annual tradition continues with 2nd through 8th grade performing and 1st grade attending. First through Eighth grade will walk over with their class teacher before the event and will need to be picked up at the Sebastopol Community Center at our regular pick-up time. Parents, grandparents, special friends and Kindergarten parents and children are encouraged to attend!