Sunday, November 07, 2010

Parade today: 5th Annual Northeast L.A. Veterans Day Parade

PARADE

Today's scheduled parade- the "5th Annual Northeast L.A. Veterans Day Parade"- will begin at 1 p.m. and it looks like the weather will be good but you can never be sure lately. The route begins at York Blvd. and Eagle Rock Blvd. and continue north on Eagle Rock Blvd. up to Merton, a block before Colorado.
OTHER EVENTS

Before that, there will be a solemn ceremony at 11 am at the Eagle Rock City Hall at Colorado and Maywood. A USO Stage Show will begin after the parade at 2:30 p.m. at the parades's end at Caspar and Merton.


PARTICIPATION of local NE area high schools:

LINCOLN HIGH- At last check, there's no information on whether Lincoln HS will have any showing of the band, cheeerleaders, drill team or ROTC or any other LHS organization.

EAGLE ROCK HIGH-
Eagle Rock High has been notably absent in the past parades. According to ERHS Principal Salvado Velasco, there are no plans for participation in this parade as he referenced this topic arising at a faculty meeting. The activities are managed by a director and the scheduling apparently had some date conflict.

ERHS's representation in this, the only parade held entirely in Eagle Rock each year, is pretty strange but that's what was explained to me last week by Principal Velasco.

FRANKLIN HIGH-
So it looks like it will be Franklin High School from Highland Park as the only expected Northeast L.A. High School represented here, now having put in some fine appearances over the history of the parade.

There will still be a lot of other participants from local schools that will be present but you would expect the high schools to take opportunities to show what their performance groups can do in a public event like these. So far, there's no certainty on LHS' entry in the Lincoln Heights Christmas Parade next month. I was told that there is not entry fee like some parades have and there should be no issues on transporting students so maybe they are just taking their time to act.

LATE FOLLOW UP: It turns out that Franklin High sent their ROTC Color Guard as the schools only FHS entry in the parade. LHS and ERHS were non-participants as earlier mentioned. There may be some explanations for this but I still think a school needs to take every opportunity possible to get in some performance time to give the students maximum exposure since many will be graduating in June.

I think this shortchanges them in not allowing friends and family to see them do what they are practicing for in the first place. Just my opinion and I don't have the other side of the story for Lincoln or Franklin. There could be many other reasons that make sense but I find this to be dissappointing.