By Brody Moller

The 2021-2022 school year brought many changes to the Upper Campus, including a move for all OVS athletic teams from the Condor League to the much larger Omega League. The move has been very good to the Spuds. In their first full year in Omega, the Spuds won league titles in four sports: boys cross country, boys soccer, baseball, and golf. Three of those teams — cross country, soccer and baseball — went on to complete in CIF playoffs.

OVS sports teams also earned CIF playoff appearances in girls and boys volleyball, boys basketball, and girls individual cross country. Read more about the 2021-22 sports season.

By Zimo Zeng

This week the OVS community will be able to enjoy the first in-person musical staged by the Upper Campus since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when the theater program presents a new musical, Trouble in Oz.

The play is inspired by three stories, Wicked, The Wizard of Oz, and The Wiz. Due to the fact that the Wicked script was unavailable, theater director Carmen Doane-Barkan created a new story that combines elements from all three stories. Her original script follows some of the plot lines from the original stories, but more is revealed. For example, the protagonist in one story became the antagonist in the new musical. 

“In terms of this play, I wanted to bring that element directly into the whole narrative,” said Mrs. Doane-Barkan. “Because it’s often seen that Dorothy is the protagonist, and they’re doing the world a service by helping to destroy this wicked witch. But the story is much more complex than that.”

The theater program this year is led by Mrs. Doane-Barkan, who has acted in several large shows in Hollywood and other parts of Los Angeles throughout her adult life, and biology teacher Lisa Boyd, who has been a voice coach at OVS since 1986 and passionate choir singer since she was in high school. The program is being run differently this year with the new H block elective class built into the daily schedule. Previously the after-school elective period was used for the musical, but with the new allotted academic time, the program has been able to give high school credit as a Theater 2 semester program. 

A variety of music styles will be brought to the audience, including classic Tin Pan Alley songs from the original The Wizard of Oz, Broadway pop music from Wicked, and then R&B and soul rhythms from The Wiz.

Performances will be held at 7 p.m. on April 28 and 29 in the Greenberg Center at the Lower Campus.

January 2022 – After two years of pandemic delays, 22 fourth graders and 16 high school students will venture to the Channel Islands National Park on Monday, January 17, to continue restoration work started years ago as part of the school’s “Hands on the Land” program.

Although OVS students visit the islands  for camping trips, the restoration work across grade levels is the direct result of an ongoing partnership between OVS and the Channel Islands National Park. That partnership started back in 2016 when the school secured a $4,000 “Hands on the Land” grant funded by the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) and the Environmental Protection Agency. OVS was one of 22 institutions nationwide to receive the grant,  part of a national effort to connect students, teachers and volunteers with public lands and waterways.

The grant specifically covered the cost of boat trips to make it possible for OVS students and teachers to access the islands and use them as living laboratories for projects that included working on-site in nurseries, removing invasive vegetation, gathering seeds, and compiling plant restoration data. Although the NEEF funding is no longer available, the school is continuing the Hands on the Land restoration work though Annual Fund support while pursuing new grant opportunities. 

The trip to Anacapa Island on Monday holds the possibility of spotting dolphins, whales, and orcas on the passage across the Santa Barbara Channel, and it dovetails with interdisciplinary coursework our fourth-graders have been studying in the language arts, science and social science curriculum.

“We study the Channel Islands all year long,” said fourth grade teacher Hadley English, whose students are just completing their reading of Island of the Blue Dolphins.

The Anacapa trip is one of three service projects OVS students are tackling on Monday as part of the National Day of Service, commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The group will be accompanied by teachers, work group leaders and park service personnel. MLK Day is the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities.

After weeks of planning, hypothesizing, testing, and recording, this week our 3rd through 8th grade students presented their projects at the OVS Science Fair! Projects covered topics that included gardening, sports, psychology, chemistry, acoustics, and much more.

At OVS, the Science Fair is intended to be a fun, rewarding, and educating experience. Projects encourage students to develop a question that they have about the world around them, and then design and carry out an experiment that aims to answer that question.

The school has a long history of teaching students through the Science Fair how to identify and research innovative topics and then present their findings with well-written reports, colorful project boards and oral presentations.

In past years, many OVS students went on to compete at the county and then state level at the California State Science Fair. Former Science Teacher Matt Inman kept several of their original science boards in his classroom years after the students graduated, examples of award-winning inquiry in fields of bio-engineering, hydrodynamics, zoology and materials science.

One of his former students, Sierra Stingl (L09, U13), engineered a form of bio-diesel for her project. Another alumna, Bella Slosberg (L17, U21), raised mealworm colonies to determine if they could safely ingest and breakdown troublesome polystyrenes such as Styrofoam. Both students won top honors at the state level. They went on to attend UCSB and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, respectively, after graduating from the Upper Campus.

Sierra and Bella are just two examples of students whose keen interest in science was developed by participating in the Science Fair. We look forward to seeing a new crop of OVS Science Spuds develop their problem solving and critical thinking skills!

December 13 – Final exams for high school students began this week. Students were encouraged to prepare well in advance for these tests, which end the first semester. To assist students, OVS teachers hold review sessions before and during finals week. Those review sessions begin last Friday and continued through the week. First semester grades will be sent to high school families in late December. The second semester begins January 10, 2022

This week marked the triumphant return of Spudfest! It’s our annual day of celebration where 7th-12th graders come together at the Upper Campus to compete in spike ball tournaments, dunk their classmates in the dunk tank, play laser tag, make tie-dye t-shirts, feast on build-you-own nachos and milkshakes … and tons more fun activities! It’s a great way to blow off some first-quarter steam, make new friends, and forge new memories. Photos in gallery below by Catherine Larkin (L18), Misty Hall and John Boyd.
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Ojai Valley School formally dedicated three new signature buildings at its high school campus in August, nearly four years after the Thomas Fire devastated the hilltop campus. The dedication took place during an outdoor ceremony of alumni, parents, students and faculty members and came just ahead of the opening of the 2021-2022 school year.

“So much has been achieved in such a relatively short period of time,” school President/CEO Michael J. Hall-Mounsey said at the dedication. “This not only demonstrates the OVS spirit, but it speaks to the generations of people who over the past 110 years have made this school great.”

The $16.5 million rebuilt Upper Campus includes three new permanent structures totaling 37,000 square feet: the Aramont Science and Technology Center, the Grace Hobson Smith House dormitory, and the Littlefield Student Commons dining and library complex.

The 2017 Thomas Fire destroyed two buildings, the girls dorm and the former science and technology center, on the Upper Campus site. The school’s desire to rebuild was immediate and administrators reached out quickly to Los Angeles architect Frederick Fisher to start the process. Fisher’s firm was originally contracted in 2015 to develop a master plan to chart a course for future growth at the school and had a solid understanding of the school’s architectural character as well as its academic and co-curricular programs.

“OVS showed great resilience in transforming the tragedy of the Thomas Fire into a reimagination of the Upper Campus,” said Fisher, Founding Partner and Design Principal of the project. “We reset from our previous planning with the OVS community and seized this rare ‘blank canvas’ opportunity to create a functionally and aesthetically unified state-of-the-art learning, living, and gathering village interwoven with the extraordinary landscape.”

The three new buildings respect the existing campus architecture while also forming a village of pavilions that connect learning, studying, and student living.

The single-story Aramont Science and Technology Center supports a growing science and technology curriculum with various classrooms and labs, as well as a maker space for advancing technology and a multipurpose room for the arts — all of which feature an integrated indoor-outdoor profile. The two-story Littlefield Student Commons comprises a dining hall, library, and student center, creating a space used for special events, and with a second-story library with views over the Ojai Valley.

The project also includes the rebuilt Grace Hobson Smith House dormitory for resident girls along with faculty apartments organized around its own central courtyard.

Together, the Upper Campus project is anticipated to achieve LEED Gold status through a combination of passive cooling design, photoelectric power generation and a lithium-ion battery energy storage system that will dramatically eliminate CO2 emissions and allow the campus to operate off-grid during normal operations.

The site has also been extensively fireproofed through the incorporation of flat roofs without eaves, plaster (stucco) finishes, enhanced sprinklers and improved site access, all of which are in accordance with Ventura County’s strictest guidelines for defensible landscaping.

On Saturday, August 21, the school formally dedicated the three signature buildings as well as the following dedicated areas:

Ordway Park
Boswell Hall
JB Close Jr. Memorial Library
Larry and Kathie Fisher Family Mezzanine
Lin Family Lab for Biology and Environmental Science
Black Family Foundation Makerspace
The McCarthey Family Multipurpose Room
Carol Burnett Media and Digital Arts Lab
Garrett Family Steps
Carl and Jody Cooper Oak Dining Terrace
Ordway Art Studio
Robert E. Chesley Physics Lab
Frances and Robert Ferguson Chemistry Lab
William H. Hair Meeting Room

“Let it be known that on Saturday, August 21st, 2021, these magnificent dorms, labs, classrooms and signature Student Commons were dedicated for the benefit of future generations of OVS students,” Hall-Mounsey said. “These magnificent new buildings will bridge the old with the new, respecting the scenic mountain vistas with high technology and sustainability.”

Photos by Logan Hall and Misty Hall. Darius Sabbaghzadeh contributed to this story.


August 5, 2021

Good news from the Ventura County Department of Public Health: more than 73% of Ventura County’s population ages 12 and up has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine! We continue to monitor  COVID-19 case rates locally and updates from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) nationally.

Please review the new COVID Guidelines as we approach the opening of school — August 30 for Upper Campus and August 31 for Lower Campus.

Last year, we safely operated with in-person classes, five days a week, during most of the 2020-21 school year. This was accomplished by wearing masks, reducing class sizes, moving to outdoor classrooms, regularly testing students and staff, and following other safety measures. We learned much about how to adjust our program to provide in-person classes and remain virus free.

These lessons continued during OVS Summer Camp 2021 (No COVID!!) and will continue into the new academic year. Please call 805-646-1423 and connect with either Lower Campus Head of School Laurie Clark or Upper Campus Head of School Craig Floyd if you have any questions or concerns.

Freshman Ben Manning led the way for the Spuds, finishing in 19:49. Photos by Ted Tambakis.

By Adam Pepper-Macias (L17)

For the first time in nearly a year, Ventura County high school students lined up Wednesday to compete in a CIF-sanctioned sporting competition: a cross country race, and a memory of a time before COVID.

The competitors included runners from three Ventura County schools in the Omega League: Ojai Valley School, Newbury Park Adventist Academy, and Hillcrest Christian School. The field was small — only 17 runners total. But for the athletes, coaches and supporters in attendance, the competition was monumental as it offered a glimpse of life post-pandemic.

“It’s just making it normal in some little, little way,” OVS cross country coach Fred Alvarez told his socially distanced runners in a pre-race huddle. “We are just lucky to be running.”

The meet was only possible because it followed all California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) and state and county health guidelines with full COVID protocols in place. Cross country is one of six designated sports that are permitted to compete during the “widespread” or “purple” tier of county COVID precaution. All of the schools represented in the meet have student bodies split between in-person and distance learning programs and thus the teams were small; in total 14 boys and just 3 girls competed.

But other than that, the meet was a semblance of normal in decidedly not normal times.

“It’s exciting,” said runner Alexander Manning, a junior at OVS. “It’s good to have people around you getting back into the sport.”

Newbury Park Adventist freshman Ryan Rosaasen won the boys race in 18 minutes and 52 seconds, an excellent time on OVS’s tough three-mile course. Hillcrest Christian senior Cameron Spach took second place in 19:38.

Brothers Alexander and Ben Manning (left to right) lead the OVS boys team.

The OVS boys won the meet, taking the third, fourth, fifth, seventh and ninth spots. Freshman Ben Manning (L20) led the way for the Spuds, finishing in 19:49. He was followed by his brother, Alexander Manning, seniors Gabe Weisiger (L17) and Mark Pindur, and sophomore Emanuel Zagata-Jacobsen.

On the girls side, OVS sophomore India Getty-Pruss (L19) took second place, posting a personal best time on the 3.14-mile Pi course.

But as with many of the other athletes, time and place took a backseat Wednesday to the simple notion of putting on a uniform and toeing the line in competition.

“I think the meet gave us all a glimpse of our old normality and that made it extra exciting for everyone,” India said. “I am very grateful to be one of the three girls who competed. Overall the meet was a great experience and I’m looking forward to more in the near future.”

Wednesday’s meet was one of four Omega League cross country races scheduled to take place at OVS in the next month, with the last of those — the league final — scheduled to take place on March 3. While only a handful of the 12 Omega League teams took part in Wednesday’s meet, OVS’s coach Alvarez is hoping that more teams will join as this race serves as a positive example of COVID-safe athletic competition.

“It helped to get this first one under our belts,” he said. “We showed that we could keep good protocols in place and provide a safe outlet for our student-athletes to get back to business.”

OVS sophomore India Getty-Pruss took second place in Wednesday’s cross country meet, posting a personal best time on the 3.14 mile Pi course.