Thank you to our community for your overwhelming support on Giving Tuesday! It was a record-breaking day with more than $75,000 raised! Your annual gifts impact our campus life daily. We are grateful to all our families who have gone ALL IN and participated the 2022-23 Laguna Fund!

It’s not too late, click here and participate today!

Foodbank of Santa Barbara County

Cabrillo Pavilion Arts Center at East Beach

This event is $10/person. The price includes a tasting of 5 select wines. 15% of all wine and food purchased at the event will be donated to the Family Association.

Interested in volunteering for this event? Please click here to sign up.

Kindly click here to RSVP.

Alumni families should RSVP to Alumni Relations & Special Events Manager Jen Trupiano.

No RSVP necessary.

Laguna's athletic fields and gym were packed the Saturday after Thanksgiving with enthusiastic and competitive alums and current students for our annual alumni soccer game, followed by basketball! Soccer players ranged from John Adams '70 to current student Aden Meisel '23 with alumni family members playing as well. Team Blue won with an ending score of 5-3.

Basketball was a fierce match between current students and alums. An early 19-point alumni lead was erased when it was tied at 34-34 early in the 3rd. Led by Pierce O'Donnell '16, the alums pulled away late for a double-digit win! 

Back row: Coach Phil Sherman, Eka Nayak '24, Jose Espinosa '16, Devin Hernandez '21, Rymer Popovich '22, Ganden Walker '24, John Mayfield '24, Charlie Sheldon '24, Carson Stewart '25.

Front row: Michael Wang '23, Foster Smith '22, Miles Sedlin '22, Blake Dorfman '02, and Pierce O'Donnell '16

Back row: Robbie Brown '21, Will Holbrook '96, John Adams '70, John Schuyler '76, Nicholas Miller '98, Michael Proto '97, Finn Walker '21, Henry Otte '22, Aden Meisel '23, Owen Pryor '22

Front row: Iyla Holbrook, Paul Chiment (Faculty), Jackson Holbrook, Santiago Monroy, Trevor Pontifex '08, Katherine Monroy '20, Kevin Shertzer (Faculty), and Yoni Dolev' 05

Check out the new merch on the Laguna Wear site and get some great gifts for the holidays! Order by December 16 to have your items in time!

Reserve your free ticket HERE! With over 50 students involved in the show and limited seating capacity in Spaulding Theatre, we are asking student performers and crew members to limit guests to immediate family members only. Tickets must be reserved in advance for this show and any remaining seats will be offered to Laguna students, faculty, and staff to join for the festive occasion.

November 17 marked an exciting event on our Hope Ranch campus as we hosted a Multi-School Musical Review featuring Laguna, Bishop, Anacapa, and Providence. We were so excited to welcome these students and families to our campus and to hold our first Spaulding performance with our phenomenal new sound equipment!

Congratulations to Ms. Hwang, Ms. Caldwell, and the 7th-12th Grade Vocal Ensemble as well as to Mr. Deux-L and our student tech crew for representing Laguna and our Performing Arts Department so well!

On Thursday, November 17, Laguna Blanca sixth graders headed to LA for an interdisciplinary field trip to the LaBrea Tarpits, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Immersive King Tut exhibit at the Lighthouse Artspace in LA.

This fun day served as a launch for the sixth grade ancient Egypt unit, supplemented the art program, and laid the foundation for the interdisciplinary archeological dig project in the spring semester. It was a fantastic final experience before the Thanksgiving break!

To add depth to their learning experience, students participated in a culminating event on Thursday in which Maria Salguero, a working attorney in Santa Maria, zoomed in for a special presentation. Maria spoke with our students about the work she does at the Santa Barbara Immigrant Legal Defense Center in the Santa Barbara community. Students prepared for this event with class work and formulated meaningful questions that provided a link between their Interdisciplinary class work on the Q1 theme of “Belonging” and real-world application.

The SOCK Club, Laguna's Middle and Upper School outreach club for those experiencing homelessness, is hosting their Annual EK-12 Warm Things Drive, beginning on Monday, 12/5 through Wednesday, 12/14, at 2:45PM! On Thursday, 12/15, the club will bring collected Warm Things to the weekly Alameda Park Meal Sharing that they participate in under the mentorship of Jeff Shaffer and Kayla Petersen of Westmont College and Kingdom Causes and Katherine Soto-Vasquez and Eric Meyer of SB ACT.

Because it is so cold right now, their community partners have asked to put a major focus this year on sleeping bags, either new or used. If you attach a name to a sleeping bag that you donate, your advisory will get a birdhouse point! Thank you very much in advance for anything you might be able to contribute—even the smallest donated items make an immediate and huge difference.

The CASA/Foster Care Gift Drive in the Middle School kicked off this week! This is our eleventh year of partnership with CASA of Santa Barbara. This community service endeavor is often one that our students look forward to and we are so fortunate to partner with CASA once again. We received requests from 80 children in foster care whose ages range from infants to 20 years old. Our turnaround time is short and if you choose to participate, all gifts are needed by Monday, December 5.

Our Middle School dance is tonight, December 2 from 6:30-8:30PM in Merovick Gymnasium. Join us for an awesome DJ and lighting, pizza, food, karaoke, outfit prizes, and dancing! For tickets ($20) and guest forms, please see Kim Valentine.

The Fourth Estate is excited to announce its first-ever podcast, "The Nest." The podcast aims to be an audible forum of discussion open to community members on topics ranging from politics to campus life. The debut episode hosted by journalism students Jack Andrews '23 and Luca D'Agruma '23 is out now and available to listen to on Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcast, and on the newly redesigned Fourth Estate website.

The Yearbook staff is always looking for more photos from the community. If you have any photos to share with the staff, particularly from sports games or performances, please contact Mr. Dorfman. You will receive credit as a contributing photographer to this year’s edition of the award-winning La Honda.

A big congratulations to Laguna alum and materials chemist Austin Abrams '12 who earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry this week at UCSB. His Laguna Chemistry Teacher Ms. Pointer was there beaming with pride. “It was an incredible privilege and pleasure to witness Austin's dissertation defense. It was clear from his presentation and the introduction given by his co-advisor, Dr. Pennathur, that Austin is the same smiling and friendly, but determined and hardworking person I knew him to be as a Laguna student. I am delighted to get to call him Dr. Abrams!” Austin is making the big move up to Berkeley in January, where he'll begin his next role as a Scientist at Mekonos Inc., developing a platform for cell and gene therapy. So proud of you, Dr. Abrams!

First graders shared sage wisdom with us about ways to deal with stage fright ahead of their Winter Concert last night!

Friday, December 2

Wednesday, December 7

Friday, December 9

Friday, December 16

Friday, December 16

Monday, December 19 - Monday, January 2

Tuesday, January 3

By Barry Punzal, Noozhawk Sports Editor

The Laguna Blanca boys basketball team won in the coaching debut of Phil Sherman on Tuesday night, beating Orcutt Academy, 64-47, at Lakeview School in Santa Maria.

Charlie Sheldon '24 buried four three-pointers in a three-minute span in the third quarter that allowed the Owls to open up a 22-point lead.

Carson Stewart '25 had a double-double of 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds to lead Laguna Blanca. Eka Nayak '24 scored 10 points and blocked four shots.

Sherman, who retired from the Santa Barbara Unified School District after several years as a teacher and basketball coach at Dos Pueblos, was hired by Laguna Blanca in the summer.

He praised the play of Michael Wang '23 in the season opener.

“I thought Michael Wang was outstanding tonight. He handled the press and controlled the game,” said Sherman.

The coach also lauded the rebounding of Ganden Walker '24 and the defense of Kent Dunn '23 and John Mayfield '24 on the press.

5950 Cathedral Oaks Rd, Goleta 93117

All Laguna families (Gr. EK-12) are invited to join authors Rick Clark and Brennan Barnard in Spaulding for a discussion of their book, The Truth about College Admission. See more event information below!

They will provide insight from both sides of the desk in working with students and their families, discuss recent trends, provide tips for your college search and selection experience, explain how schools make decisions, and what you can do to stand out. They inject much-needed levity and sanity into what can often be an uncertain or anxious time. They look forward to answering your questions.