School board to recognize outstanding teachers

The school board will recognize on Tuesday the Newport-Mesa Unified School District Teachers of the Year.

Costa Mesa High School’s Dana Kahawai, 30, and Newport Elementary School’s Terri Clarke, 31, will receive the honors.

Kahawai has taught English at Costa Mesa High for the past four years and spent one year at Estancia High School. She currently teaches regular and Advanced Placement English classes for sophomores and AP English literature for seniors.

The Santa Ana resident and Estancia alumna is the advisor to the senior class, the National Honor Society and the California Scholarship Federation. She also writes grants and is an AP coordinator.

Clarke has been teaching for seven years at Newport Elementary. The Costa Mesa resident has spent the last two years teaching second grade.

•In other action, trustees will consider paying out up to $125,000 to resolve an issue with a former employee.

The district is slated to approve revising the amount to settle a claim with a now 73-year-old cafeteria manager/baker over retroactive temporary disability from up to $100,000 to up to $125,000, according to the agenda documents.

A claim is the precursor to a lawsuit.

The board on Feb. 15 approved up to $100,000 to settle the issue and $33,320 to settle for permanent disability, which is an injury or illness, that prevents the person from working, according to documents.

The former employee allegedly continuously injured their neck, lower back, right hip, and left hand and wrist from the mid 1970s to February 2000, according to documents.

• There will also be a presentation on a grant that put laptops in the hands of fifth, sixth and seventh-grade students in Costa Mesa.

Administrators, teachers and students will showcase projects made possible through a $400,000 grant that enabled the district to purchase netbooks (small laptops) for about 600 students to use as their own throughout the school year.

All fifth- and sixth-grade students at Davis, Sonora, Paularino and Killybrooke elementary schools, and seventh-grade science students at Costa Mesa Middle School, received netbooks this year.

If you go

What: School board meeting

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Roderick H. MacMillian Board Room in the District Education Center, 2985-A Bear St., Costa Mesa

Info: https://www.nmusd.us