MISSION VIEJO : School Honored for Weather Program

Viejo Elementary School’s “Viejo Weather Watch” program has been selected by the National School Boards Assn. as one of 10 first-place winners of the association’s “Profiles in Excellence” awards for innovative educational programs.

The school’s program, begun last year, was selected over 600 other nationwide entries for top-10 honors.

The Viejo program turns students into local weather forecasters as they measure Orange County weather conditions each day at the school’s weather station. The students then broadcast a noon weather report from the school on radio station KSBR, which operates out of Saddleback College in Mission Viejo.

A different student reads the weather report each day. Throughout the year, at least 180 students, from kindergartners through sixth-graders, are given the opportunity to be weather reporters, Principal Dick Campbell said.

“It’s a terrific program and has taken on even more meaning recently with all of the storms that we’ve been having,” Campbell said. “It’s a program that has real meaning, function and purpose because the kids feel they really are performing a public service.”

The weather station features an anemometer and different kinds of thermometers which are used to measure weather conditions.

It was built with a grant of about $6,000 from the California Educational Initiatives Fund and with an additional $2,000 raised by the school’s PTA.

Viejo Elementary and the other first-place winners will receive a computer and printer and a trip to Orlando, Fla., for April award ceremonies.