UPPER LAKE — If a show of hands at Thursday”s awards ceremony for the fourth and fifth-graders at Upper Lake Elementary School is any indication, Mendocino College”s Lakeport campus will enjoy a boost in enrollment in about seven years.
When Mendocino College Foundation Executive Director Katie Fairbairn asks the students, “Who”s going to college?” nearly all of them raised their hands.
Two of them already have a foot in the door. Indira Duncan and Madison Hicks were awarded $700 promissory scholarships, which are expected to be worth $1,000 at Mendocino College by the time they graduate from high school.
It”s called the “Adopt a Fifth-Grader Program” — a collaboration this year between Lake County Friends of Mendocino College, which put up the money, and the Mendocino College Foundation, which handled the administrative end.
Hicks is one of three ULES fifth-graders — all in Linda Sheffert”s class — with a 4.0 grade-point average this year (the others are Corrin Johns and Wasif Hussain).
On hand to award the scholarships to Hicks and Duncan were Fairbairn, college board member Lori McGuire and Lake County Friends of Mendocino College Chair Wilda Shock.
The award winners were selected by the students” principal and teachers.
“These are two students we know have the potential to go to college,” ULES Principal Valerie Gardner said.
Seven fourth and fifth-graders went through the school year without being absent or tardy, including twin brothers Mark and Blaine Dutcher and brothers Arthur and Richard Bruhn.
Counting second-grader Emilee, the Dutchers have three children who didn”t miss a day.
The others awarded for not missing any school were fifth-grader Lillieanna Cabrera and fourth-graders Cody Snider and Laelani Simmons.
Rich Mellott is a staff reporter for Lake County Publishing. Reach him at 263-5636, ext. 14 or rmellott@record-bee.com.
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