New this year - Run for Education Brew Crawl!

Join us as the San Ramon Valley Education Foundation journeys through Danville and San Ramon in celebration of the Run for Education being back in person! We start at Danville Brewing Company on September 21 from 3-9pm for a dine in and registration event. We continue to Canyon Lakes Golf Course & Brewery for a dine in and registration event on September 29 from 11am-7pm. We culminate in a bib and shirt pick up on October 7 from 4:30-6pm at Fieldwork Brewing Co.

Show your support for these local businesses and the Run for Education by joining us at any, or all, of these events!

NEW - Live Band at the finish of the Run!

The Gumbo Band will be at the Expo on Sunday, October 9 to greet our 5K and 10K finishers and their supporters! This local band features co-leaders, Jazz Drummer Paul Tillman Smith and Trumpeter, Dr. David Hardiman Sr., both well known and highly respected music teachers and historians.

Science Alliance Sign Ups

Calling SRVUSD 5th Graders!!

Science Alliance is an after-school program, available in all SRVUSD high schools, created to pair curious and motivated 5th grade students (buddies) with high school students (mentors).

Mentors encourage and guide their buddies on a journey of science and methodical inquiry under the guidance of a credentialed teacher at one of the high schools. 

The year-long journey includes six buddy-mentor meetings, interesting lessons and learning opportunities. The program concludes with a district-wide Science Fair to be held on April 15, 2023, where buddies share the project that they worked on throughout the program. The program has been widely recognized as helping to prepare the 5th graders for middle school lab science and teaches positive role-modeling skills to high school mentors. 

Parents and Guardians are invited to attend a parent meeting to learn more about Science Alliance for the 2022-2023 school year. Parent meetings will be held in-person on Tuesday, September 13, 2022 at 7 pm at each of these high schools: California High School, Dougherty Valley High School, Monte Vista High School, San Ramon Valley High School. We recommend you attend the meeting at the high school your 5th grader will likely attend in the future. This meeting is intended for parents only; students are not required to attend.

For those who are not available to attend the in person meeting, there will be a virtual parent meeting on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 7 pm. bit.ly/22sameeting

Program registration will open for all students on Tuesday, September 20, 2022 at 7 pm.

If you have any questions, please contact us at sciencealliance@srvef.org

Meet Science Alliance Lead Instructor - Minu Basu

Minu has been a biology and an AP Biology teacher at Dougherty Valley High School since 2012. She is the lead advisor for Science Alliance with SRVEF. She has also taught a biotechnology class for the Summer Imagineering Program. She is the Curriculum Representative for all Secondary Science teachers in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District.

Minu and her family moved to San Ramon from Fremont in 2009. Her two children attended Quail Run Elementary School, Gale Ranch Middle School, and Dougherty Valley High School. They both currently attend UC Davis. Minu graduated from the University of Mumbai with a master’s degree in genetics. She also has a degree in education and taught undergrad college biology in India. She moved to the United States in 1999 and worked in a vaccine research lab at Dynavax Technologies in Emeryville.

After taking time off to raise her children and volunteering at local schools, she returned to education to follow her passion for teaching and science. Since she started teaching at Dougherty Valley High School, she has also been involved with Science Alliance, a program that pairs fifth graders with high school mentors that guide them through a science project. She has advised the club for many years and successfully organized the district-wide science fair for the fifth grade students to present their projects. She was promoted to lead advisor for the Science Alliance program across the four high schools in the district. She believes that hands-on learning is the best way to do science and foster the community through partnerships.

News from SRVUSD

The support of our community is imperative to our success. As the primary fundraising organization for SRVUSD, the SRVEF has been a partner and champion for our students since 1982. Through grants, major endowments and gifts, and programs like the Science Alliance and Imagineering, we are confident that our commitment to excellence for all students will be achieved because of our partnership with the SRVEF.

The first month of school has already provided me with the opportunity to see so many schools and classrooms in action. Every week when I visit schools, I see our students engaged in their learning and connected with their peers. I have so much confidence not only in how our students achieve what success means for them in the classroom, but in the community as well. This year, as we broaden the definition of success and what it means for our students, we are focusing on connecting, celebrating and creating:

Connecting - because the last couple of years have been tough, and we know as a community we can and must come together to best serve our students and staff.

Celebrating - what happens in our schools is exemplary, there are many different ways our students are successful, and our students are something to celebrate.

Creating - we need to and will continue to create opportunities to improve; built on our foundation of academic excellence, we will redefine the definition of success.

The Access to Excellence (a2e) initiative launched in February 2022, with a focus on “Success Reimagined”, and celebrating what our schools mean to our community. This initiative is one of the many things that will help us reach our goals as outlined in SRVUSD’s Strategic Directions - the District’s foundation and framework for everything we do. 

Get Involved Today!

Go to www.srvusd.net/a2e to learn more about how community members can support and partner with us, and provide feedback that leads to improvement. the initiative and our strategic goals, and how to join us in this important effort. There are opportunities to:

• Become an a2e Ambassador
• Participate in our Thought Exchange
• Distribute posters
• Share information on social media

Thank you for engaging and partnering with us to support our amazing students and schools. We hope to see all of you at the SRVEF Run for Education on October 9th!

Take Care,

Dr. John Malloy

Superintendent, SRVUSD

Upcoming Community Events

Please stop by our SRVEF tables at these great events:

• 9/10/2022 - Street Smarts Bike Rodeo and Festival - Iron Horse Middle School Blacktop



• 9/18/2022 - Devil Mountain Run - Railroad Avenue in Danville

Auction for Education

The Online Auction for Education is coming November 1-9, 2022. Complementing the San Ramon Valley Education Foundation’s Run for Education, the Online Auction for Education is the San Ramon Rotary Club’s biggest and most visible fundraiser of the year. All proceeds support education in the San Ramon Valley with SRVEF as the largest benefactor. This year, many of your Auction favorites are back, including:

• Tickets for the Wine Bus Tour (and Tasting) of the Livermore Valley with 40+ people;
• 4-course gourmet meal for 8 prepared at your home and paired with fine wines from Livermore Valley.
• Bartender 101 event for 12 people featuring the two lead bartenders from LB Steak in San Ramon;
• Vacation homes including a beautiful Lake Tahoe vacation stay;
• Relaxing day at a nearby ski lake;
• Aerial tour of the Bay;
• Golf and wine tasting outings, professional photography sessions, and much more!

The San Ramon Rotary Club is currently accepting auction item donations and cash sponsorships. We accept all typical auction items including sports tickets and memorabilia, golf certificates and of course, gift cards or certificates for local shopping and restaurants. For more information, or to donate an auction item, contact Terry Koehne, Rotary Auction chair at tkoehne11@outlook.com. Thank you for your support of this long-standing community fundraiser!