The End of Elementary

Date: 2026-05-27

Submitted: 2026-06-17 21:22:48

Visibility: World-readable

Julian finishes fifth grade at Westlake Elementary with outdoor school, a math award, a music performance, and finally a graduation by another name

Five years ago this summer we moved to Santa Cruz, in the summer of 2021 just as the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine was finally rolling out to all adults. Julian started first grade at Westlake Elementary that year (I would say "that fall", except Santa Cruz City Schools starts the school year at the beginning of August (it's early semesters, but for elementary school) so it's really not fall at all). This year he wrapped up fifth grade, the highest grade the school offers before moving on to middle school, so the school had a series of special events to mark the occasion.

At the end of March, Julian attended an outdoor science camp organized by his school for the entire fifth grade class. (Like Calvin's fifth grade, the school spent all year talking about outdoor science camp. Unlike Calvin's fifth grade, a global pandemic didn't take over our lives in March, canceling outdoor science camp along with everything else. Calvin is still bitter about that.) They were gone for four days, and Julian seems to have survived the experience.

The exterior walls at Westlake are covered in murals painted by fifth grade classes. (The oldest mural I've seen at the school is from 1998, which if I'm doing the math right is the year my brother finished fifth grade.) At the end of every school year I'd see the mural take shape over several weeks, to be completed by the end of the school year. (We live on the central coast in California, with a mild climate year-round, so the separate buildings on campus are connected via breezeways open on the sides, which leaves plenty of exterior walls to paint murals.) It gave me something to look forward to at the end of Julian's time at Westlake, that he'd be able to leave a permanent mark on the school as he finishes elementary school and moves on to middle school. This year was no exception: the mural appeared on one of the exterior walls at the edge of campus, with the theme "We Grow Together!"

Each kid in fifth grade designed their own plant for the mural. The the kids had several chances to paint their plant on the mural. Some looked like normal plants; others were more fanciful. At least one was sports-themed, with a basketball ringed by baseballs and footballs. One showed a slice of pizza growing on the plant. Julian's plant looks like a cactus to me, though I'm not sure what he intended it to look like.

In the spring, Julian signed up for an after-school math club that culminated in a math competition on a Saturday at the beginning of May. (This turned out to be the same day that I was riding the D and visiting LACMA in Los Angeles.) A few weeks later (on the same day that I gave notice to quit the tech behemoth that bought and destroyed my startup) we got an invitation to an awards ceremony at the Santa Cruz County Office of Education. They told us that 202 students from fifth and sixth grade across the county had participated in the competition, and of those students 27 were being awarded. They gave out awards for the top three teams, in each of fifth and sixth grade; and the top three individual scores, also in each of fifth and sixth grade. The other team at Westlake got third place for the team (apparently there were enough kids that they could field two teams), and Julian got third place in the individual ranking, for fifth grade. He was announced individually and got to accept a medal and pose for a picture at the front of the room, with the county math contest coordinator on the left and the county superintendent of education on the right.

After the rest of the awards were announced everyone was called up to the front for a big picture.

After supper I took the kids to ice cream to celebrate Julian's achievement (and also my quitting my job).

Two days later Julian's fifth grade class held its end-of-the-year music performance at school, in the middle of the school day. (This was convenient for the school, and allowed all of the students to participate, but made it more difficult for parents with day-jobs to attend. Fortunately for me I had already quit my big-tech job so I had plenty of time to head across town in the middle of the morning at at time inconvenient for both drop-off and pick-up.)

We watched performances by the school band, then all of the fifth grade kids played a few songs on recorders. A select group of kids played ukulele; according to the program they played C, F, G7, and Am chords. The F chord is notoriously difficult on guitar (it requires laying the index finger across multiple strings at once, and no matter what I do I can't get both the fifth and sixth strings to sound right at the same time), so I couldn't help but hope that the F cord is easier on ukulele than guitar.

(The performance was at times a bit disorganized; the music teacher confessed that this was the first time all three of the fifth grade classes had been on stage together (presumably because music is unable to preempt "real" academic classes), and all three classes have music scheduled at different times. I couldn't help but think back to my fifth grade school music teacher, who demanded perfection from her students and usually got it. I still think about my school music performances, and my music teacher, thirty-five years alter. Mrs. Carlisle lives, rent-free, in my head.)

For one of the last songs, the kids sang a song that included the names of each of the states in the country. Julian volunteered to hold up a poster representing a state and got randomly assigned Nebraska. He didn't quite remember why Nebraska is important to our family so I filled him in on the drive home from school. (Kiesa was, at that very moment, in Nebraska to help out with our newborn niece.)

A week later Westlake celebrated its "promotion" ceremony, which turned out to be just like a graduation (including playing "Pomp and Circumstances", though not while the students were walking in), just for elementary. This was the class that started kindergarten in the fall of 2020, and I wondered whether anyone would mention it. The principal in her remarks opened with "instead of learning to sit on the floor, criss-cross applesauce, they learned to mute and unmute themselves" and there was not nearly as much nervous laughter from the parents as there should have been.

The ceremony included a number of student speakers, several from each class, who talked for about a minute each. Several of them mentioned starting kindergarten remote in 2020 and only getting seven weeks of school in-person at Westlake that year. (I think Julian had slightly more school in person that year, at our school at the top of the mountain, but not by much.)

Then each class stood up, and the classroom teacher read each kid's name as they walked across the front of the field to receive their certificate and greet the principal and the other fifth grade teachers.

After the promotion ceremony we dropped by the reception in the school courtyard, then headed back to the car parked next to Westlake Park, where I staged a photo of Julian in front of the sign next to the eponymous lake.

Four years ago, when I started working at Rivos, I started working fully remote, without worrying that I was going to get called back into the office several days a week; which meant I could pick up Julian every day when he finished school. (I recall Kiesa being positively giddy that we were able to split school drop-off and pick-up evenly. I eventually adjusted my schedule so I could drive into the office one day a week, on the informal in-office focus day centered around the office happy hour on Thursday afternoon.) Some days, if I needed an extra break in the middle of the afternoon, I'd drop by Westlake Park to take a quick lap around the pond. That era is closing in multiple ways: Julian finished elementary school and will be attending middle school, so I won't have the excuse to drop by the park and visit the pond; and I just started another big-tech job that wants me in the office across the mountain several days a week so we're refactoring our parental responsibilities again.

Julian's time in elementary school has come to a close. Now we're enjoying the summer before he starts middle school.