Lorraine Paul will take the reins as assistant principal for curriculum and assessment at Jesuit High School this summer. She plans to evaluate every aspect of the prestigious high school’s educational programs. / Photo courtesy, Jesuit High School

Paul, who currently serves as principal at St. Gregory Elementary School in San Mateo, brings more than 25 years of experience in Catholic school administration with her to Jesuit. She has worked as both the assistant principal for academics and the dean of studies at Junipero Serra High School, an all-boys school in San Mateo. During her career, she has served as dean of students at Moreau Catholic High School in Hayward; as director of development at both Junipero Serra and Charles Armstrong School in Belmont, a kindergarten-eighth grade school for students with dyslexia; as a high school counselor at St. Paul’s High School in Santa Fe Springs, and as a teacher of social studies and theology.

Paul has a bachelor’s degree in social sciences, a master’s in educational technology, and credentials in social sciences and administration. She also is a member of the board of directors at Mercy High School in Burlingame.

In a phone interview, Paul said she is eager to get to Sacramento and start her new job at Jesuit High School.

“My husband and I moved to Dixon about two years ago, and I’m tired of commuting to San Mateo,” she said. “I had hoped to get back into working at the high school level again, and when this job came open, I knew it was something I wanted to explore. Then at the interview, I came away so impressed with the school and the community that I was really hoping to get this job.”

An educator for three decade, Paul said she was inspired to go into the educational field by some of her high school instructors.

“In high school, I thought so highly of some of my teachers and how hard they worked and how they gave back to their communities, that I knew then that teaching was what I wanted to do,” said Paul.

As assistant principal at Jesuit High School, Paul’s job will focus on improving the school’s curriculum.

“We will be assessing everything, asking ourselves, ‘Is what we’re doing effective for our students?’ Paul said. “We’ll be looking at everything from the classes to the school personnel to the resources available on campus to make sure we come together for the needs of this school in the future.”

Paul said she is particularly eager to start working alongside Brianna Latko, Jesuit High School’s principal.

“I came away from my interview really impressed with (Latko),” Paul said. “She is a woman of vision and commitment and she brings great leadership to the school.”

In a Jesuit High School news release announcing Paul’s hiring, Latko shared Paul’s enthusiasm for their new partnership.

“Lorraine brings extraordinary experience and commitment to Catholic Education,” Latko said in the press release. “She will be a great asset to our community.”

Finally, in other Jesuit news, Jordan Blair, the school’s director of communications, briefly addressed the latest rumors that the all-male JHS might be going coeducational.

“That rumor is not true,” Blair asserted. “We here that rumor a lot, especially with the recent closure of Loretto High School (an all-girls Catholic high school that closed in 2009), but it’s not true. We plan to remain an all-boys school.”

In 2005, Vince Xiong was confronted with an alarming statistic from concerned parents: children of Hmong descent were graduating from college at a lower rate than they were dropping out of high school. Instead of simply dismissing the statistics, Xiong and associates set out to find out why. Five years later, a school is in place that hopes to flip those statistics around.

School breaks are shorter and school days are longer at Yav Pem Suab Academy. / Valley Community Newspapers, Danny Kam

Xiong, now the principal of the Yav Pem Suab Academy charter school in Sacramento, detailed some of the concerns raised by parents over the last few years. The main barrier to learning for the children was the long summer break, according to Xiong.

“The kids would spend the year learning, then they would have almost three months off at home and forget a lot of what they learned,” Xiong said. “The first two and a half months of the following year was spent re-teaching what they studied the year before.”

The initial reasoning for such a long break was for farmers who needed their children home during the summer months to help with the harvest. With that tradition all but out the window, the school went ahead and made a change.

The academy, which opened Monday, has remedied the problem by making schooldays longer and the summer break shorter. The children attend classes from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Kindergarten runs from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The summer break has been shortened from three months down to one month. In addition to the regular curriculum of English, math, science and social studies, students will take part in a class called Hmong language development.

The school has a large Hmong enrollment, and the goal is to make all children, not just Hmong, competent in speaking, reading and writing the l

Kindergartener William Vang pays close attention to his teacher, Chue Lo, at the Yav Pem Suab Academy. Students at the charter school will study the Hmong language, in addition to their studies in English, math, science and social studies. / Valley Community Newspapers photo, Danny Kam

anguage. The Hmong community, which was largely skeptical that such a program would actually be installed, has been calling up the school to ask about enrollment to the point that some grades are filled to capacity.

“We have a year one capacity of 300 students,” Xiong said. “Next year we will have a capacity of 360 and our goal is to have 420 students in year three.”

The Hmong language is especially difficult to learn for people who have never heard nor spoken the language, said Xiong.

“It’s difficult to learn because it is a tonal language,” he said. “There are eight different tones that they need to learn and listen for.” Because it is a tonal language, saying the correct sounds in a different tone can mean something entirely different.

Another way in which the school plans to make learning easier for its students is by letting them touch, taste, hear, smell and see what they are going to be learning about in the form of frequent field trips.

“Most of the Hmong students are descendants of Laos and Thailand,” Xiong said. “They can learn in their vocabulary books how to say apple, but in Laos there is no such thing as an apple. They don’t know what it is, what it tastes like, what it smells like.”

Dream. Believe. Inspire. Achieve. Principal Vince Xiong hard at work in the office that was only a dream not too long ago. Xiong and leaders of the Hmong community worked for five years to establish the Yav Pem Suab Academy. / Valley Community Newspapers photo, Danny Kam

To remedy this situation, the kindergarten class will take a trip to Apple Hill this year prior to their unit on plants. They will also visit a number of flower farms. When they start their unit on ‘my community,’ the class will travel to the local library, a fire station and a police station.

All grade levels will take part in field trips of their own. First graders will travel to the train museum and the Sacramento Zoo; second graders will visit places with butterflies and will dig for fossils at another site; third grade will visit a strawberry farm in Vacaville, the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the ocean in Bodega Bay; fourth grade plans to go on airplane rides to Lake Tahoe, Indian reservations and the Monterey Bay Aquarium; Xiong didn’t have the fifth grade trip schedule at hand during the interview, but the sixth graders will visit the UC Davis agricultural department and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose.

With the longer schooldays, shorter summer, language development and hands-on field trips, the school is looking to make sure the information given to students is easy to retain. And if early trends are any indication, filling up to 420 students in year three should be no problem at all.

The Yav Pem Suab Academy is located at 7555 South Land Park Drive at Lisbon Elementary School. The school is free of charge and those wanting more information about enrollment can call the school at (916) 433-5057.

benn@valcomnews.com