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No stranger to the dais, Gilroy City Council candidate Daniel Harney was appointed to the council in January after former Mayor Don Gage resigned a month earlier, fallout from the since rescinded 721-acre housing proposal that threw the legislative body into a moment of chaos and led to the successful urban growth boundary petition campaign that resulted in Measure H.

It’s here we come, Moscow, for a group of Christopher High School drama students who have been invited to participate in a Shakespeare festival.The teens received an enthusiastic go-ahead from the Gilroy Unified School District Board of Trustees for a 12-day trip that includes a short stay in London and most of 2017 spring break in the land of the Bolshoi and borscht.“It’s an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” CHS principal Paul Winslow told trustees before they voted at their Oct. 6 meeting to approve the March-April field trip.And there wasn’t a nyet among them.“It’s a fabulous and wonderful opportunity for students, I wholeheartedly approve of this,” said trustee Linda Piceno.Colleague Mark Good echoed her sentiments. He added that his son spent three months studying the Stanislavsky acting method in the same Moscow program while earning a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Harvard.Gilroy High School grad Steven Good is now a working actor, singer and musician in Los Angeles. He has performed at the famed Mark Taper Forum and in a feature-length movie for Lifetime television, among other roles.CHS drama director Kate Booth and Gretchen Yoder Schrock, CHS Sister City/International Club Advisor and Spanish teacher, will accompany the 14 teens to London and Russia. Twelve of the students are seniors, one is a junior and one is a sophomore.They are: Jacob Yoder Schrock, Grant Schaper, Jacob Flores Lopez, Owen Emerson, Devan Corini, Brandon Quirke, Annemarie Hayes and Cassidy Andrews.Also traveling to Russia are Samantha Drews, Melinda Colbert, Adaline McCaw, Michaela Hawkins, Brenda O’Connor and Sabine Yoder Schrock.Booth outlined for the board a busy schedule for the eight girls and six boys who auditioned for and won roles in the production being readied for the trip—Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.“Aside from an extraordinary opportunity to grow as artists and learn history, language, literature and culture from a unique perspective, the trip to Moscow is a true exchange,” she wrote in the 18-page application for student travel.“I am jazzed that they approved us,” she later said. Because the board has denied closer trips, including to Oregon, there was worry that Moscow might not be approved.Booth and Winslow said that rather than seeing the trip as missing four days of instruction, they view it as an opportunity for unique instruction during the spring break and of a nature that can only be had by a cultural exchange.The trip could have been undertaken under the auspices of the theater group’s booster club, but it has more weight and is better for both cities and schools for it to be an officially sanctioned GUSD field trip because “the whole point is to do a student exchange,” Booth said.The host school in Moscow is called the Slavic Anglo-American School Marina. Specializing in graduating students who are fluent in English, it hosts an annual international high school Shakespeare festival with all-English performances.CHS will represent the United States and there’s a Canadian school in the festival, too, Booth said.It’s not the first meeting of the Russian and CHS students. Marina students have visited CHS twice and are keen to create a long-term sister-school relationship, according the field trip supporters.In addition to attending a performance at the famed Globe Theater in London, CHS students in Moscow will participate in theater workshops, shadow their Russian hosts to classes, spend two days at the Moscow Art Theater Conservatory and attend a theater festival and four stage performances.Twenty-two advanced theater students in the Catamount Actor’s Theater (CAT) at Christopher High School auditioned for the slots. The number who can travel was limited by the host’s ability to transport the group around Moscow—their bus is too small for a larger group, Booth said.As it is, CHS will send one more person than they originally thought could be accommodated, she said.Of the performances CHS students will see, one will be either a ballet or opera at the renowned Bolshoi Theater, another will be an avant garde drama and one will be what Booth said provides a “new twist” on Stanislavski.Constantin Stanislavski was a Russian actor and director who created a naturalistic acting technique commonly known as method acting.Trustees said that their overarching concern in reviewing the proposal was student safety.Their approval includes a condition that if the U.S. State Department issues a travel warning for Russia, the trip will be off.Insurance and liability issues also were reviewed and not considered an obstacle. CHS officials assured trustees that students will be responsible for all classroom work missed during  their absence.And cost is not an issue, either. By law, Superintendent Debbie Flores pointed out, students cannot be charged for such field trips, assuring equality in access to educational opportunity regardless of ability to pay.In this case, the CAT booster’s club has raised in excess of $27,000 for travel expenses, more than enough for tickets, and the host school will cover many Moscow expenses.Per-student expenses are estimated between $1,500 and $2,500, which includes round-trip airline tickets between $700 and $800, according to the field trip application.  

SAN JOSE – A full house, 17,562 fans at SAP Center at San Jose, came away happy Wednesday night as the Sharks opened the 2016-7 NHL season with a 2-1 victory over the Los Angeles Kings.

On one side of the Gilroy Garlic Farm Travel Center, hundreds of truckers from all over the country fill 150-gallon tanks with diesel at $2.63 a gallon, while locals and travelers pay a bargain $2.53 for regular gas.

In the tradition of the excessive parties thrown by Jay Gatsby—the character from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby—The Gilroy Foundation named its 27th annual dinner and auction, held on Oct 1, after that famous book and encouraged guests to indulge and give generously. The foundation has been raising funds for local charities and providing scholarships for local students since 1980.

The landmine-like potholes on First Street are on the way to being fixed, years ahead of schedule and after years of complaints.Mayor Perry Woodward, with support from Councilman Dan Harney and former city traffic engineer Henry Servin worked out a clever system to have license registration fees that go to the state shifted quickly to Gilroy’s street of most need.Without their efforts, the work might not have begun until 2021, but it will now be finished—if the last hurdle is cleared—by the middle of next year.“It’s the worst street in town,” said Woodward. “This needs to happen. It should have never gotten this bad. It’s been neglected by Caltrans for so long, we have a crisis. I’m glad we will get this addressed when the rain stops.”The potholes on First Street are one of the biggest complaints by the city’s residents. The trouble is, the street—which is also known as Highway 152—is maintained not by the city, but by the state, and it isn’t as big a priority for them as it is for the locals.Caltrans didn’t even include the street on its current list of repairs and it couldn’t be added until 2020-2021. The three Gilroyans, led by Woodward, who sits on the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority board, are in the process of getting the board to front $5.5 million for the repairs, which will then be repaid by license fees, speeding up the process.The roadway will be worked on into the spring, as the state adds water, sewer and electric lines under it. Then, beginning in April, new pavement will be added.“It’s fantastic news,” said Harney, who is running for council in Nov. 8. “It s a big deal. If Perry and I hadn’t done that, we’d still be stuck where we were. The way it is now, we can’t even repave the potholes.”While the proposal has been approved by the VTA, it still needs Caltrans approval, which Woodward is working on. He is optimistic about that final step.The city also set aside $2.5 million to fix some of the other worst streets in town at last week’s council meeting. Those streets are being decided by a computer model that ranks streets most in need of repair.

Local Scene

The year was 1971 when two young college freshmen at San Jose State University would meet. Evelia Morales and Pedro “Jaime” Rosso didn’t yet know it, but they had found their hearts’ desire, unmistakable partners in life and business.The two young lovers, each with a different story and background—together would make an immeasurable mark in their community. They own the biggest local premium furniture retailer in the South Valley, with locations in Gilroy and Morgan Hill.

A candidate has dropped out of the race for three seats on the Gilroy school board but missed the deadline for removal, so his name will be on the ballot.