Page 15 - Mid Valley Times 6-11-20 E-edition

By George M. Villagrana
Mid Valley Times
Dinuba High School seniors totaled $628,196 of scholarship money for the academic year. The school annually holds a scholarship ceremony but due to COVID-19 a virtual ceremony took place on May 27.
DHS senior and ASB President, Maria Dominguez-Martinez, was the recipient of the prestigious Dell Schol- arship. The award in- cludes a $20,000 schol- arship, a Dell mentor to help her with questions about academic, finan- cial, and emotional chal- lenges, a Dell laptop, college textbook credits, and tutoring.
The Dell Scholars program was created by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Thousands of students apply for the scholarship and only 500 are selected to be Dell Scholars.
"I was very excit- ed and speechless. In shock," Dominguez-Mar- tinez said.
Dominguez-Martinez followed in the foot- steps of her older sis- ter, Briseyda, in earning the Dell Scholarship. Briseyda was a recipient in 2017.
Dominguez-Martinez said she never thought about college until the 8th grade. As a first-
Contributed Photo
Maria Dominguez-Martinez, Dinuba High School senior and the school's ASB president for 2019-2020, was the re- cipient of the prestigious Dell Scholarship worth $20,000. She also received a Dell mentor, a laptop computer, col- lege textbook credits and tutoring. She received the scholarship during a virtual ceremony in May 27.
for the scholarship
"I went to pay a debt
and vice principal Adri- an Gutierrez told me you need to apply. There was only a few weeks before the application was due," Gonzalez said.
Fortunately, Gonzalez met the deadline and it paid off.
Gonzalez said he re- ceived a phone call noti- fying him of his scholar- ship award.
"I was in the quad af- ter school and I got the phone call," Gonzalez re- called. "I was ecstatic."
Gonzalez plans to ma- jor in mathematics with an emphasis on statistics. He said one of his goals would be to take and pass two Actuarial Examina- tions, land internships and as he stated, “move up the ranks”.
Auggie Sanchez, counselor/scholarship coordinator at the school, said she is proud of the seniors.
“Despite being away from school they man- aged to apply and get applications done,” she said. “We are thankful for our donors support- ing our students.”
For a complete list of scholarship recipients visit www.midvalley- times.com.
have been Ontiveros, who ac- cused the city of being selfish with the budget cuts.
“With all these cuts, it seems our tax payers are the ones who get the butt-end of it,” Ontive- ros stated. “What I see before me is an act of selfishness.”
His words sparked a tense moment between he and May- or Pro Tem Daniel Martinez, who asked Ontiveros, “You do understand that a pandemic is
what caused this financial ca- lamity? Every city in the en- tire world is in the same boat. I don’t like being accused of being financially or fiscally irresponsible. This was a pan- demic that caused this.”
Ontiveros responded by saying the city should have cut pay raises instead of cut- ting taxpayer funded grants. At which point, city manager Tim Chapa interjected to pro-
vide further clarity on the budget cutting process.
“The budget cuts that were made were from a practi- cal perspective,” Chapa ex- plained. “It would not have been appropriate for us, with- out direction from the council, to present something like re- ducing or retracting salaries. It has nothing to do with inten- tion, selfishness or anything like that. It is impractical to
Thursday, June 11, 2020
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Mid Valley TiMes
BUDGET Continued from page A1
citizens via videoconference were Diane Carbray, Director of the Sanger Boys and Girls Club, and Jerry Valadez, CEO of SAM Academy.
“This is crucial to the Boys and Girls Club,” said Carbray of the grant funds. “To cut us off is really going to be dev- astating. We provide the gang prevention services that Mea- sure S calls for.”
Valadez echoed the senti- ments, noting that his acad- emy serves as many as 600 children from throughout the community.
“We are here to serve the community,” said Valadez. “The kids are waiting for us to come back.”
Citizens were not the only ones who opposed defunding the gang prevention grants.
Council members Eli On- tiveros and Humberto Garza both voted against the new Measure S budget. Though Garza expressed that he un- derstood the need to make difficult cuts, he felt the need to serve the local youth out- weighed cutting the gang- prevention grants.”
“I’m in favor of keeping the kids off the streets,” he said.
But the harshest critic may
Rick Curiel / Mid Valley Times
The Sanger SAM Academy (pictured) and the Sanger Boys and Girls Club were slated to receive $100,000 in Measure S gang prevention money as part of the 2020-2021 budget. The Measure S Citizens Advisory Committee approved the city's proposal to cut the funding last month.
suggest that there is a simple process, a simple matter to address salaries that are al- ready in place. This budget only presented what is practi- cal and not impractical.”
Mayor Frank Gonzalez also chimed in by reminding the council of a projected $7 billion revenue shortfall this year in the state of California.
“Those are the numbers, and we are going to be short, that’s the bottom line,” said Gonzalez. “We don’t know what’s going to happen with our revenue right now.”
He also mentioned that the League of California Cities released a study showing that 90 percent of cities may need to cut or furlough city staff and over 70 percent of cities reported the need to possibly cut or furlough staff along with cutting public services.
“That’s real,” he added. “We don’t need to point fin- gers or anything. We just need to get this job done.”
The council voted 3-2 to approve the city’s proposed budget for the 2020-2021 fis- cal year, along with the Mea- sure S budget cuts, but will revisit the matter in October when they have a better un- derstanding of the economic impact caused by the COV- ID-19 pandemic.
Dinuba High students receive more than $600,000 in scholarship money
CELAYA Continued from page A1
the campus. Celaya hit the ground running and made made contact with faculty and staff at OHS.
“My first thing to do is getting to know the staff,” she said. “I spent Friday meeting with them one-on-one. It’s really important a new principal doesn’t come in and try to make changes and shoot from the hip. I made it a point to hear from the staff and their concerns.”
Celaya said it’s an unprecedented time due to COVID-19.
“We’re having to maneuver through all the incomplete grades, summer school meet- ings, and cleaning up transcripts,” she said.
Celaya admitted she never imagined she would be in an admin- istrative position.
“When I became a teacher at the age of 22, I never thought I would go into adminis- tration,” she said.
Celaya needed a lit- tle encouragement to apply for a vice-prin- cipal position at DHS from Dinuba Unified School District Super- intendent Dr. Joe Her- nandez and mentor/ teacher Jeff Harris. After 11 years at DHS, the opportunity for a principal position at El
Monte popped up two years ago.
“I feel like God just really opened up doors for me,” she said. “I never saw myself as an administrator, I wanted to be teaching math forever and stay in the classroom.”
She said she grew as an administrator at El Monte.
“I had instructional coaches and assistant principals who were open and honest with me. We became a very close knit team.”
When asked if there would be students in the fall, she replied, “this is the million dol- lar question. At this rate, everything is changing. I’m very op- timistic we are going to have kids in some form, whether its 100 percent or not.”
Celaya said the school is preparing for in-person summer school session that got underway on June 9.
“We went over the safety procedures on how that’s going to roll out. Kids and teachers will have masks, we will make sure we don’t have cross contamina- tion with materials and supplies. We’re not go- ing to bring in 1,100 students, we’re starting with 100.”
She said students will be distanced six feet apart.
generation student, Dominguez-Martinez will set her sights on attending Fresno State where she will major in business.
Isaiah Gonzalez also landed a major schol- arship as a Smittcamp Family Honors Schol- arship recipient worth
$46,300.00. The scholar- ship is awarded to 50 incoming freshmen per year.
Gonzalez said he had no intentions of applying
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