A spirit of festivity filled the District Board Room on Tuesday, May 16, for the celebration of this year’s student winners of the annual César Chávez & Dolores Huerta Commemoration Contest.
This year’s contest prompt asked students to consider the issue of school segregation and to learn about Sylvia Mendez’s life and how her family successfully fought to end school segregation in 1947. The case known as Mendez vs. Westminster resulted in the order to desegregate California’s public schools, the first in the nation to do so.
The contest, open to all students in grades 2-12, featured winners in art, essays and poetry:
- Art & Essay group winner – Megan AbramsonWard’s 2nd grade class – Thousand Oaks Elementary
- Art – Marcia Gonzalez – 3rd grade, LeConte Elementary
- Essay – Lola Taylor-Wang, 2nd grade, Emerson Elementary
- Essay – Lucilla De Anda-Casteneda, 8th grade, Longfellow Middle School
- Essay – Laird Schiller, 2nd grade, Thousand Oaks Elementary
- Poem – Luca Adnan Mirza, 5th grade – Jefferson Elementary
- Honorable mentions
– Group: Lisa Rossi’s 2nd grade class – Jefferson Elementary
– Art: Luis Gonzalez, 9th grade – Berkeley High
Big congratulations to the winners. The contest is sponsored by BUSD and the César Chávez Dolores Huerta Commemorative Committee.