Summer 2025

Family picnic at Coyote Point, June 2025

Summer holidays are here!!

After a hectic but fun year, our schools closed on June 12th for the summer. Our last Family Night of the year, a family picnic at Coyote Point Park, was a smashing success with over 200 people - families and students, attending. Parking was generously waived for the event by the Parks and Rec department, who also conducted a brief survey of community members on the park and its use. We had pizza, cookies, fruit, and an exciting raffle with many giveaways including the grand prize, a bike. A wonderful way to end the school year! CuriOdyssey had another end of the year picnic on their grounds for our families.

Every year we select one “student of the year” from each of our nine classrooms — not necessarily the most academically gifted, but one who has grown emotionally, socially and academically, helps others, and is a positive influence on class mates. Congratulations to them!

It was bittersweet to see our graduating fifth graders leave for middle school and beyond, and we wish them all bright futures. We have had many of them for three or even four years, every school day, and hope we have added to their elementary school experience — academic support, science, art, music and all the extras to expose them to a variety of new experiences; hopefully, in the process, we boosted their skills and self-confidence.

A couple of the “Student of the Year,” awardees, 2025

Board Member Spotlight

Meet Liz Sanchez, an attorney, and Homework Central’s newest board member, who has already been a very active member.

Liz Sanchez Santiago’s lifelong dream of becoming a lawyer was fulfilled with the support and encouragement of a network of teachers, mentors and friends who were invested in her success as a first-generation college student. Her hard work and dedication helped her realize her dream of graduating from Stanford Law School and pursue a career in law. Beyond academic work, Liz appreciates that her network of teachers and mentors helped her (and her parents) see that education was not just about attaining a degree but about the freedom to explore a world to which she would not otherwise have been exposed. And this is how she connects to Homework Central's mission and work, especially the family engagement component.

In addition to serving on the Homework Central’s board, Liz is a volunteer mentor for Legal Education Access Pipeline (LEAP), where she helps prospective law students with their applications and career planning. She also volunteers with Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto (CLSEPA) as a pro bono attorney to help tenants during mandatory settlement conferences with their landlords. 

A warm welcome to Liz as she joins the HWC board!

Our Kids, Our Future Fundraiser (April 2025)

“Our Kids, Our Future”

On April 26th we hosted our annual fundraiser and community showcase. Our keynote speaker Christabel Pinto spoke of the work done worldwide by Room to Read, which not only provides books but also works with publishers to promote authors writing stories in their native languages. She eloquently spoke of the local work of organizations like Homework Central as well large organizations like hers do in promoting much needed literacy and education, one student at a time, to communities who face challenges in getting access to resources. The board chair Matt Feuer and I spoke of the scope of the need, our progress during the past year, and shared stories of our students. A big highlight of the evening was beautiful artwork done by our students, which we framed and asked our attendees to “buy” at whatever price they saw fit, and pretty much all of the artwork was gone by the end of the evening — so now our young students are artists who have sold their work!

The “Fund-a-Need” of the evening which was the fundraiser component was fairly successful and we are very grateful to all the attendees who generously gave. We got pledges even from people who could not attend. The HWC board and I want to give our heartfelt thanks to our entire community! We did well but fell about $10,000 short of our $65,000 goal for the evening. So, if anyone in our generous community can contribute in any way to help us get to our goal, we deeply appreciate it!

A big thanks to our corporate sponsors who helped make the event a success!

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Homework Central is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization | Tax ID 94-3368576