News & Updates

The Ventura Unified School District (VUSD) is excited to announce that the VUSD District-Wide Student Art Show will be held at Vita Art Center from May 25-29, 2023. The show is made possible through the efforts of the Ventura Education Partnership, Vita Art Center, and the Ventura Arts Collaborative, a cooperative program of Ventura Unified School District. The juried show will highlight our incredibly talented high school, middle school, and elementary school student artists. Over 50 works by high school students have been selected from hundreds of submitted pieces made from various media. Members of the media are invited to attend the Opening Reception and view art from 5-7 pm and for the VUSD High School Arts Awards presentation from 7-8 pm on Thursday, May 25. 

Ventura public schools offer an incredible array of art education, beginning in elementary school with curriculum-aligned art instruction for all students. This continues in middle and high schools, where students explore a variety of artistic mediums. Students at Buena, Ventura, and Foothill High Schools study diverse artistic styles, art history, contemporary and classical artists, as well as ceramics, clothing design, and digital photography. The caliber of these student artists is a testament to the community's investment in preserving and expanding arts education.

The partnership between the school district and Vita Art Center directly results from the community's commitment to the Arts. Ventura is a city where art and artists are celebrated and welcome.

"Through three consecutive parcel tax measures - Measures Q, R, and H – the citizens of Ventura have made it very clear that they believe art education is a critical need in our public schools. Preserving and supporting diverse educational opportunities is very important to us as a school district, particularly as we look to help students recover from the past few years of upheaval. This is nowhere more evident than in our continued support of Arts education for all students," stated Sabrena Rodriguez, VUSD board president, and longtime Arts Collaborative member.

Vita Art Center Founding Director Mary Perez stated, "As a community art center, we are proud to showcase the creativity and imagination of our young artists from the Ventura Unified School District. Their works are not just expressions of their individual talents but also a testament to the power of Arts education in shaping and enriching our communities. We believe this exhibit is a celebration of the next generation of artists, and we are honored to provide a platform for their voices to be heard and their visions to be seen."

The VUSD Art Show will run from May 25-29. Opening night reception is Thursday, May 25, from 5:00-8:00 pm. All are welcome, student chefs will provide hors d'oeuvres during this event. High school student awards will be presented at 7:00 pm after the viewing. All proceeds from this event support VUSD's art programs. Check the Vita Art Center website for gallery times https://www.vitaartcenter.com/. 

The Ventura Unified School District Food & Nutrition Services Department has been hard at work implementing exciting changes we'll start to see in some schools in the 2023-2024 school year. Most VUSD middle and high schools will implement a sandwich bar, allowing students to have customized sandwiches made on-site daily. They'll also have new tilt skillets that the Food & Nutrition Services Department has invested in. Tilt skillets enable kitchen staff to cook large batches of food quickly and safely at an even temperature. Once all required staff training to use this new equipment is complete, these tilt skillets will significantly increase every participating school's capacity to serve hot meals from scratch.

We visited the Foothill High School Cafeteria earlier today with local media for a sneak peek of the new equipment and to meet VUSD Food & Nutrition Services staff and cafeteria staff, including employee worker Ethan Oritz who enjoys learning food service and serving meals to his schoolmates. "It's a fun place to be," said Ethan...

It's a good setting to kind of get used to the professionalism of learning what you have to do…using that and my past experience allowed me to get a job over the summer. I'm going to be a state lifeguard, and I feel like this really helped me. Ethan Oritz, Student Employee, VUSD Foothill High School Cafeteria

The part we're most excited about: VUSD Food and Nutrition Services is establishing a student advisory committee to assist in meal and menu planning. Student inclusion will help ensure that VUSD schools serve meals and snacks students want and will eat. Connecting with our students and learning with and through them is vital to the health and longevity of our schools, and we can't wait to see how much brighter our cafeterias will get with their input. VUSD Food and Nutrition has been building a better food system for years, implementing fresh salad bars and pivoting to safely pre-packaged foods and Universal Meals to address public health and food security for our community during the pandemic. They're eager to roll out these new and exciting changes with more student-approved fresh foods as we shift towards healing.  

Full 2023-2024 school year menus will be published on the VUSD and school websites at the start of the Fall semester. 

VUSD Foothill High School cafeteria staff hard at work

The District has made finding enrollment information as easy as possible on our new websites. For more information, visit one of these resource pages.

School Locator (find out which school is your homeschool) 

Pre-enrollment application 

Transitional and Kindergarten Information 

Schools and links to websites 

Enrollment requirements 

Enrollment forms 

Current student looking to transfer to another school for the fall 

Still cannot find what you are looking for? Call the District office at 805-641-5000 today!