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ARTS AND CULTURE COMMISSION GETS NOD FROM CITY
August 22, 2024
Healdsburg, California Healdsburg, California
Date, Date, 20202020
NEW 7-MEMBER COMMISSION TO INCLUDE YOUTH MEMBER By Christian Kallen
➝ Commission, 3
Photo by Christian Kallen
Starting next year, a new city commission will take its place in the structure of local government—an Arts and Culture Commission, to join the Planning Commission, Parks & Recreation Commission and Senior Citizens Advisory Commission as an advisory body to review policies and programs under its purview. The City Council evaluated the final draft of a proposed structure for the body from Mark Themig, the community services director, at the Monday, Aug. 19, meeting. The development of the commission took five years, dating to 2019 when the city launched an “arts and culture master planning process,” led by a communitybased Creative Leadership Team, an ad hoc group of almost 30 members. A consultant, the Cultural Planning Group, also helped develop the master plan. That Creative Leadership Team, or CLT, held a number of community meetings and discussions in 2019 into 2021, leading to the City Council’s adoption of the Arts and Culture Master Plan in August 2021. Since that time, city staff continued to work with the CLT to develop an implementation plan. The proposal for the Arts and Culture Commission represents the latest step by the CLT and city in this implementation. At the Monday meeting, three members of the
HOUND AGAIN The high school’s homegrown new principal, Tait Danhausen, says he’s ready to re-establish his roots in Healdsburg.
HHS Alum Returns as Principal TAIT DANHAUSEN IS BACK IN TOWN AFTER 15 YEARS IN TENNESSEE By Simone Wilson
Last Thursday was the first day of school for the Healdsburg Unified School District. After two and a half months of hibernation, campus hallways and schoolyards once again exploded with life. And at Healdsburg High School on Prince Avenue, where art teacher Linus Lancaster greeted fellow staff and students with his signature bagpipe performance in a kilt, a fresh but familiar face showed up for his first day as principal: 44-yearold Tait Danhausen, HHS Class of 1998. “We are very excited to welcome Tait Danhausen back to HUSD,” Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel told the Tribune last week. “He grew up here, graduated from HHS and … wanted to give back to the community that invested in him.” The high school’s new
principal is a fifth-generation Sonoma County native—and third- or fourth-generation Healdsburg native—who’s been overseeing a charter-school system in Tennessee called LEAD Public Schools for the past decade and a half. He now returns home to fill what has become something of a musical principal’s chair at HHS, which has churned through three different principals over the past four years. District officials hope this time will be the charm. The outgoing principal, Francisco Manriquez, only stayed for one year, stepping down due to “personal reasons,” according to Superintendent Vanden Heuvel. His predecessor, Amy Jones-Kerr, departed after two years to take a promotion as superintendent of the Rincon Valley School District in Santa Rosa. Before that, Bill Halliday served four years as HHS principal after a long stint at the junior high. Danhausen believes the trend will stop with him. Speaking to the Tribune from his new office on the
teacher workday before the first day of school, his sleeves rolled up and his brow glistening from hours of backto-back meetings, he said that returning to his hometown of Healdsburg, now with a wife and kids in tow, was “always the goal.” He added: “Turnover is hard, right? You want someone who is going to be here long-term. That’s the plan.” Danhausen comes from a long line of local educators. Two of his grandparents taught within Healdsburg’s public school system for decades, and his mom taught at the Mark West Union School District just south of town. “I was at the district kickoff and three people in the transportation department came up to me and said, ‘I had your grandpa as a teacher at the junior high,’” Danhausen said. “And then I was talking to Kim Thompson, the head of the Boosters, and I didn’t know this, but he’s related to my grandpa. He’s a second cousin. Like, we are literally related.” Danhausen joins a new wave of fired-up HHS
SIMONE SAYS A BRIEF RUNDOWN OF WHAT ELSE IS COOKING IN LOCAL BIZ By Simone Wilson
Here are some highlighted stories from recent ‘Healdsburg Today’ e-blasts.
Photo by Simone Wilson
SELFIE Simone Wilson produces the email newsletter ‘Healdsburg Today,’ for the Healdsburg Tribune.
A childcare center and preschool just opened in town. It’s an outpost of the YWCA at the Healdsburg Community Center— the org’s sixth location in Sonoma County, and the first to accept infants. “The center offers year-round care, Monday through Friday, from 7:30am to 5:30pm, with half-day options available from 9am to 12pm,” the city says. “Don’t delay! Email
alumni returning home to pour their skills back into the school that raised them—including new football coach Criss Rosales, Class of 2013, and recently hired math teacher Matthew Lopez, Class of 2017. Lopez said he loves that the school’s new principal is another alum. “I find it wonderful that we have such a wide range of alumni at HHS who are teaching the next generation of Healdsburg students,” he said. “In my interactions so far, Tait has been an approachable listener; it’s nice.” Football coach Rosales, too, said he was heartened to see the new principal “asking questions regarding logistics, goals and how we can improve in certain coachesto-admin processes.” Superintendent Vanden Heuvel said of hiring Danhausen: “While he’s been out of the community for a while, his historical knowledge and dedication to the students and parents of Healdsburg elevated him above the rest of our applicants. I am confident that Mr. Danhausen will provide dynamic and
consistent leadership for our high school for many years to come.” Danhausen’s education and career have taken him from San Diego to New York City to the Bay Area to Nashville, where—according to Healdsburg’s superintendent of schools—he was “able to transform two middle schools from being identified by the state as low performing to high performing.” The superintendent said he heard from some of Danhausen’s former colleagues that he was “one of the strongest, most dynamic principals they had worked with.” He also served for many years as an English-as-aSecond-Language (ESL) teacher and administrator at schools with large Latino populations, like HHS. Danhausen said he’s excited to bring everything he’s learned back to Healdsburg. “We can really use those lessons from there—the way we communicated with families and built community and built trust,” he said. “If that’s something we need to do here, we’re ready for it.”
enrollment@ywcasc.org to secure your child’s spot in this nurturing and enriching program.”
Our new downtown movie theater might not be far off, either. At last, construction kicked off this month on the True West Film Center near the plaza, behind the old Bear Republic brewpub space. The two-story theater, which will show a mix of artsy and mainstream films on three screens, is reportedly now slated to open sometime next year. “This is the start of more than just a movie theater— this is a revolution,” the True West team writes on Facebook. Showbiz, baby!
Healdsburg is also getting a new dance studio. And it’s inside a barn at a flower farm! A local group called the Healdsburg Dance Collective, founded by four ex-pro dancers early last year, is building out its own physical space. Sounds like a pretty idyllic setup: The studio will be located inside a converted barn on the Dragonfly Farm & Floral property on Westside Road, everyone’s favorite local flower emporium. The collective is planning a big “studio reveal” and fundraising event to help with finishing touches on Sept. 7 at the farm. Attendees are encouraged to “wear their favorite twirly, s parkly dance wear and try out their own moves in the new studio.”
The Healdsburg Museum’s latest exhibit is an ode to Fitch Mountain. The exhibit—called “Trails to Fitch Mountain: The Land. The People. The River.”—takes a deep and interactive dive into the history, culture and nature that makes our little mountain so magical. Check it out ➝ Simone Says, 6