Venado Middle School

Venado Middle School is part of the Irvine Unified School District and is located in Irvine, California, United States. It is a national Blue Ribbon School (as of 2005). With Deerfield Elementary School and University High School, it operates Orange County's Regional Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program. Venado's mascot is the medieval knight.

History

The school was opened in 1974. Designed by a Newport Beach-based architect William Blurock, it has a unique two-story architectural layout and outlined with three stories of buildings with most of the second story open to the first, connected by a series of wooden bridges between classes on the second floor. Although a two-story structure, the building actually has three different floor levels, as some of the classrooms are slightly "sunken" off to the sides of corridors and larger classrooms.

The band and orchestra program at Venado Middle School, as with the rest of the Irvine Unified School District, benefits from the fact that music is required in grades 4-6 in IUSD schools.

In the year of 2006, Venado was recognized as one of the top Blue Ribbon schools in the IUSD. Dr. Keith Tuominen, who was the assistant principal from Irvine High, became Venado's new principal in 2008. At the beginning of the 2010-11 school year, Craig Hauke took the roll of Venado's principal. After a few months of the job, he was replaced by the Assistant Principal at the time, Bob Valdez, who became the interim principal. Venado's School Psychologist for 5 years, and IUSD's Lead Psychologist, Luis Torres, took the job as interim Vice Principal. During the middle of the 2010-11 school year, Bob Valdez became the official principal, and Luis Torres became the official vice principal.

Music

Since 1990, Brendan McBrien,^[1] has been the director of instrumental music at Venado Middle School. He has been the recipient of the Teacher of the Year award in the Irvine Unified School District, First Music Teacher of the year from the Orange County Music and Art Administrators Association, and has multiple listing in Who's Among America's Teachers. In addition to his teaching duties, he is also a published composer and arranger with numerous works for band and orchestra published with the Alfred Publishing, Kjos,^[2] and Warner Brothers Music Companies.

Festival Scores

References