Willow 4th-Grader Wins Poster Contest

With her depiction of fluffy, pastel-colored clouds and encouragement to “Use Water Wisely,” an Agoura Hills fourth-grader was named 1997 winner of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District’s Water Awareness Poster Contest.

Jacquie Schaeffer, a student at Willow Elementary School, was one of 10 finalists whose artwork was chosen to represent the district in a contest to appear in the 1998 Water Awareness calendar, sponsored by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

The artwork may later join that of several other winners from past years on display at the district’s headquarters on Las Virgenes Road.

To mark their achievement, the students received commemorative certificates and T-shirts imprinted with their posters at a district board of directors meeting Tuesday.

Other finalists were Jenna Gershen, a third-grader from Bay Laurel Elementary School; Kelley Louise Anderson, a first-grader from St. Jude the Apostle Catholic School; Jonathan Kukawka, a second-grader from Willow Elementary School; Brandon Hyman and Kevin Robertson, fifth-graders from Willow, for a collaborative piece; Jennifer Paul, a fourth-grader from Willow; Desiree Bick, a fifth-grader from Lupin Hill Elementary School; Rebecca Mines, a fifth-grader from Round Meadow Elementary School; Michael Esgro, a third-grader from Bay Laurel; and Janis Bukowski, a fourth-grader from Willow.

The contest was open to students in the district’s service area, including the cities of Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills and Westlake Village, as well as several unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County.

Willow Elementary, which had the most finalists in the contest this year, will keep the water district’s trophy, a Waterford crystal bowl, for another year, as the home school of the top winner. It is the third consecutive year the school has been able to display the perpetual trophy bowl.