Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff
C o m m u n i t y l e a ders joined together today to celebrate the midway construction point of La Clínica’s new state-ofthe-art health care facility in Concord that will more than triple patient capacity when it opens in early 2012, serving more than 15,000 patients annually. The 17,000-square-foot clinic, La Clínica Monument, will replace a 5,000 square-foot facility in Pleasant Hill that currently serves 4,000 patients each year.
The new Monument Clinic facility is an important achievement for La Clínica as it celebrates 40 years of providing care to low-income residents of the Bay Area. The new medical facility will have expanded medical, dental and vision services as well as health education, chronic disease management and senior services. The clinic will also provide care for a population at high risk for potentially life threatening but easily treatable conditions, which will reduce costly non-reimbursable emergency room visits. New facility is an important milestone as La Clínica celebrates 40 years of service in the Bay Area.
City of San Francisco poised to become a “Summer Learning City”
Three San Francisco supervisors have co-sponsored a resolution set to pass the Board of Supervisors on June 21, 2011 seeking broad cooperation between government agencies, the private sector and youth-related non-profit organizations to coordinate and focus on stemming the summer learning loss through proactive summer educational programming.
According to the National Summer Learning Association, the country’s leading experts on summer learning, a phenomenon called “summer learning loss” results in a significant loss of academic skills between the end of the school year and the beginning of the next when children do not engage in learning activities during the summer.
•€ €Most students lose about two months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months.
· Low-income students also lose more than two months in reading achievement, compared to their middle-class peers who make slight gains.
· During the school year, low income children make academic gains at about the same rate as higher income children during the school year, BUT
· More than half of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities. As a result, low-income youth are less likely to graduate from high school or enter college.
· Summer learning loss accounts for about two-thirds of the difference in likelihood in pursuing college-preparatory path during high school.
M a y o r u n v e i l s new community street p a r k a t o p B e r n a l
San Francisco, Ca – Mayor Ed Lee announced the completion this morning of a brand new communitydriven Street Park project on Bernal Heights, which is the culmination of a twoyear public space greening effort that partneredthe Department of Public Works (DPW), San Francisco Parks Trust (SFPT), and community leaders and neighborhood beautification advocates. The ribbon-cutting ceremony marked the opening of the newly created, vibrant Vista Pointe Street Park and invited residents and visitors to utilize the transformed public space with its unique, sweeping views of the city skyline.This latest public space development is at the corner of Bradford and Bernal Heights Boulevard, where the Friends of Bernal Gardens made several transformations to the space.
Improvements include weeding and landscaping of the 5,000 square feet of land, grading the soil into plantable terraces, installation of several retaining walls, the addition of new soil and several species of native plants, the creation an ADA accessible stone ramp and pathway that all leads to a granite bench made of recycled materials that offers breath-taking views of the city’s skyline.
