News from the OPA Central Office

Contributions to future newsletters are always welcome, please send stories you feel are worth sharing with the OPA community, to communications@opaschools.org.

Congratulations to all of our Spelling Bee participants! There was some fierce competition this year, but ultimately winners were chosen from each school. Middle School finalists advanced to a second round of competition at the Orange County Department of Education where Aarav Ragoonanan placed 10th in the county!

Congratulations to every champion who participated, we are so proud of everyone!

It was Top Chef - OPA style! As part of our food vendor search, a food tasting was recently hosted to gather feedback on the taste and quality of the different options available to serve our students. The menu included pizza, tamales, mashed potatoes, salad, grapes, peach cobbler, and so much more!

Thank you to our students and staff for taking the time to eat a ton of delicious options and helping with school lunch selections!

One of the many favorite OPA traditions is the celebration of the Lunar New Year at each campus. This year was no different with engaging educational activities throughout the week aligning with the celebration. As tradition warrants, the week ended with a dragon dance and the dragon collecting red envelopes as a symbol of good luck.

On March 24, 2024, OPA is participating in the Rube Goldberg competition in Long Beach! We have 12 students from SV and SOC competing for prizes in the competition.

The Rube Goldberg competition invites students to imagine, design, and build whimsical chain reaction machines. To enter the Rube Goldberg contest, teams must design a machine to complete a simple task. This year the task is to put toothpaste on a toothbrush! Good luck to our champions - we know you will do amazing!

Using classroom transformations to create real-world connections helps to engage and motivate our champions, which can lead to a deeper understanding of the material.

Transformations can be found in OPA classrooms everywhere! Recently Mrs. Crozine (SV 5th grade professor) transformed her classroom into Corzine's Culinary Challenge - using math to understand recipes and having a "tasting" of different types of book genres. Bon appetit!

Our entire OPA community is invited to join us Thursday, May 9, 2024, for an evening of baseball and fun as our Middle School Eagle Regiment Marching Band will perform the National Anthem.

Learn more and purchase tickets here: https://opams.opaschools.org/apps/news/article/1897823

Recently Mrs. Butler's class (SV 1st grade) used thinking maps to write about symbols and the American Flag!

Thinking maps are a set of 8 visual patterns used by OPA professors that correlate to specific cognitive processes. They are a regular staple in OPA classrooms, used across all grade levels and content areas to build the critical thinking, comprehension, and communication skills necessary for academic success in every domain. For examples of additional thinking maps, click the thinking map image.

Kindness Week this year ran February 13-19th, with all three schools participating in the celebration. Events included themed dress-up days, activities within the classroom, and opportunities to practice spreading kindness to each other.

Kindness Week is a celebration of all the ways we can become a positive influence in each other's lives. Even one small act or gesture of kindness can go a long way and mean the world to someone.

Open Enrollment is officially closed!

OPA had another record-breaking year for applications! It is a testament to the hard-working professors, staff, students, and the entire community that OPA continues to be the school of choice for so many families.

For those families who submitted applications, the lottery will be held on April 25, 2024, and will be available to watch through Zoom. A link to the lottery will be available on our website on the day of the lottery. ​For additional information, including our sibling preference and priority lists, please visit our Admission and Enrollment Information webpage.