Neighborhood Notes

ALMADEN>> Stratford School Almaden is among three new Stratford School campuses opening in the Bay Area this month. The independent private school is also launching Stratford Online Academy.

The new preschool campus, located at 5200 Dent Ave., will open for the school year with five renovated classrooms. By the 2023 school year, Stratford Almaden intends to have 12 fully renovated preschool classrooms on campus.

For more information and to register for an Oct. 23 open house, visit https://www.stratfordschools.com/schools/ northern-california/southbay/san-jose-almaden. WILLOW GLEN>> Girl Scout Nell Callahan recently received the Silver Award— the highest award a Girl Scout cadette can earn— from the Girls Scouts of Northern California. Nell, a member of Girl Scout Troop 62061, earned the award for her garden renovation project at Willow Glen Middle School, where she led a team to make the garden a usable space for students and teachers.

Nell began working on her project as a sixthgrader in 2018 and was nearly ready to finish the project in March 2020 when the school was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Girl Scouts of Northern California extended the deadline by a year to allow her to complete her project, which took 75 hours over three years.

Nell led more than 20 volunteers to remove overgrowth, prune trees and trim roses, and to find an organic solution to the garden’s weed problem by installing 1,800 square feet of landscaping mesh, 450 cardboard boxes and 11 cubic yards of mulch. She recruited her Girl Scout troop to help paint decorative pavers and install a new bench to make the space inviting. She also designed a number of games so that teachers could integrate gardening themes into their classrooms.