Posts Tagged ‘High School’
Latino high school students claim racial profiling
October 10th, 2011
A group of Latino high school students filed a lawsuit Thursday against Glendale school officials, city police, the LAPD and the L.A. County Probation department, alleging the agencies engaged in racial profiling when they herded the students into classrooms last year.
Fifty-five students at Glendale’s Hoover High School said administrators and law enforcement officials separated them into two classrooms during lunch time on September 24, 2010. Students said police obtained their home addresses and phone numbers, photographed them, and questioned them about their associations.
The students said they had done nothing wrong, and that the only white student with them was allowed to go.The ACLU also said that the students weren’t doing anything illegal.
“It’s a textbook case of racial profiling,” American Civil Liberties Union Attorney David Sapp said.
Ashley Flores, 16, said she is an ‘A’ student who’s never been in trouble with the law.
“There were many police officers armed, and they were telling us to sit down,” she said. “I was just terrified.” Flores said officers asked if she was a member of a gang. She said she is not.
Other students said when they tried to question police about why they were being detained, officers aggressively told them to “sit down and shut up.” No one who was detained was charged with a crime.
“My parents at first were angry because they thought we had done something wrong,” Flores said. Now, she said, her mother is angry at police. Other parents are too.
Pablo Cipriano is a handyman whose son was among those detained.
“The police here in Glendale are doing a good job,” he said. “But in this case they abused the students.” ?Sapp of the ACLU said school administrators and police have given varying accounts of why they detained the students.
A spokesman for the Glendale Unified School District told the Los Angeles Times Thursday that it was an education effort to deter students from joining gangs.
“We are going to try and do all we can to protect any student we fear is going to be at risk for being sucked into a criminal lifestyle,” Steven Frasher told the Times. “The allegation of racial profiling is ridiculous.”
On KPCC’s AirTalk Friday, Frasher said that the law enforcement agencies involved with the actual detention of students were demonstrating the types of actions that would actually happen to those affiliated with gangs.
“It’s a frank lesson, that’s true,” Frasher said. “Once kids get into the criminal lifestyles you never really get out of that. We wouldn’t be preparing these kids for the future if they didn’t have a clear understanding of the choices that they face,” he said.
Frasher said that the educators are extremely invested in helping the students avoid wrong decisions.
“No student is going to be neglected, or left behind, or left to their own devices if we see that they’re in harm’s way. A great deal of the academic intervention at Hoover is directed to ensure the success of Latino students,” he said.
Sapp, one of the lead attorneys investigating the case, told AirTalk’s Larry Mantle that “the school is treating these kids like criminals, not students, and that’s exactly the problem.”
For Flores, who is a junior at Hoover this year, her encounter with officers changed her views.
“Before this incident, I thought of police officers as heroes – the people keeping us safe,” Flores said. “After this, I’m honestly scared to get approached by one.”
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Tags: High School, High School Students, School Students, Students
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Fruitport High School names Students of the Month for February
April 2nd, 2011
Fruitport High School named its Students of the Month for February.
Bethany Marit Bo is the daughter of Glenn and Mary Bo. Bethany is a senior at Fruitport High School and serves as the Executive Council President for Student Council.
She is a member of National Honor Society, Business Professionals of America, Spanish Club, and is active in her church youth group. Bo plans on attending Lee University to pursue a degree in elementary education and minor in intercultural studies.
Michael Anthony Reyes is the son of Mike and Carla Reyes. He is a junior at Fruitport High School and is involved in football, basketball, and baseball.
Reyes plans on attending Grand Valley State University to pursue a degree in sports medicine.
Tags: February, Fruitport High, Fruitport High School, High School
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Will Portland’s new Jefferson High School deliver? Backers believe, but some parents remain skeptical
February 1st, 2011
A crowd gathered at the Jefferson High School library last week to hear Principal Toni Hunter (right) and others talk about the school’s transformation into a “middle college” magnet in partnership with Portland Community College. After years of failed attempts to turn the school around, many parents remain skeptical. Portland’s Jefferson High School, which has suffered a long, painful decline, finally has a widely supported, research-tested, resource-rich plan to reverse course and become an academic powerhouse.
In partnership with Portland Community College, Oregon’s only predominantly African American high school will be remade this fall into a citywide magnet focused on getting students prepared for and succeeding in college courses at PCC’s gleaming Cascade Campus across the street.
Still, big questions remain, none bigger than this: Will enough Jefferson-area students and their parents choose to enroll?
Every entering freshman will have to commit to doing college-level work. Results from similar schools around the nation suggest nearly all of them will succeed, and the hardest-working will graduate with a year or more of free college credits.
Although nearly 400 eighth-graders live nearby and have limited choices apart from Jefferson, however, the school has not been swamped with interest. The first of five weekly events designed to showcase the new Jefferson featured about 20 school district and community college officials to explain its assets — but drew just two eighth-graders and their parents to hear the pitch. Subsequent events drew bigger crowds, including standing-room-only turnout last week. But many Jefferson-area parents remain skeptical that yet another change will work when so many have failed.
Some parents say the idea of their child taking community college classes instead of participating wholly in high school, complete with all the clubs, music groups and social events a big school can offer, has little appeal.
“I am a little leery,” said Kurt Sand, a Jefferson-area parent with two elementary-age children. “I don’t know if I’ll want my kids crossing the street to go to college with college kids,” adding that he wants his children to have traditional high school experiences, not to “ask a PCC student to the prom.”
Other parents and students are writing off Jefferson without a serious look.
Raul Velasquez (right), a Jefferson teacher with the Self Enhancement mentoring program, talks to Magdalena and Jose Siquina and their son, Juan (second from left), at last week’s event.”People have preconceived notions of what kind of school Jefferson is, and parents get nervous about their children being guinea pigs in a new system,” said Andrea Shatz, counselor at Beach School, which feeds into Jefferson. “Personally, I buy into the vision for the new Jefferson … but you have to hold people’s hands a little bit to get them to really check it out.”
That is particularly true among white parents, many of whom view Jefferson, where most teachers are white and 65 percent of the students are African American, as school that caters to black students. The families who packed last week’s information night were overwhelmingly African American or Latino.
“I appreciate that it is a school very much committed to the African American community,” said Christy Zabo, a white parent of eighth-grade twins who attend their neighborhood school, Beach. “But for us, Jefferson isn’t an option.”
Her daughter has long hoped to attend career-tech oriented Benson High, another citywide magnet high school. Her son isn’t as sure what he wants, but it isn’t Jefferson, she said. The dropout rate at the school has been too high and, after her children were among the first to spend their middle grade years in a K-8 school, she doesn’t want them to be “guinea pigs” again.
Many people find it hard to believe that Jefferson, after years posting some of the state’s lowest test scores, can achieve a surefire turnaround from the start.
Cade May, a biracial eighth-grader who lives near Jefferson, would much rather go to Central Catholic, a private high school where he found students to be highly focused academics, or Grant High, where many of his best friends from Beaumont Middle School will go.
May thinks Jefferson is likely to become the kind of rigorous college-oriented high school he’s looking for “eventually,” and the idea of getting a year or more of college for free is appealing. “But I don’t want to gamble.”
School officials say Jefferson doesn’t have to draw huge numbers of students this year to succeed. District projections suggest the school — designed to be smaller and more specialized than the city’s seven comprehensive neighborhood high schools — will enroll about 500 students once fully up and running. So it would need to draw only about 150 freshmen to be considered full size.
District officials said they will give the new Jefferson, formally called Jefferson High School Middle College for Advanced Studies, extra support to get off the ground, as they have done for other specialized schools.
Wholesale reinvention is not new for Jefferson. Since the late 1990s, the school has been subjected to a constant churn of reforms and changes, many of them ill-conceived, poorly supported or both. As principals came and went, sometimes several in a single year, the faculty has been upended and the school remade into subject-area academies, then grade-level academies, then back to a unified school.
Daryn Hickok (left), a 10-year-old student at Boise-Eliot School in North Portland, was among students and parents who attended an event to learn about the new Jefferson High School last week. Some students are looking forward to attending, drawn especially to the chance to take college courses.”I want to be able to challenge myself,” says Anna Robertson, now an eighth-grader.Although it enrolled 1,200 students 20 years ago, it has shrunk to just 400 this year, as the vast majority of families who live in the Jefferson zone bailed for other schools.
This latest turnaround plan, however, is different, backers say. Everyone who knows the details — including Jefferson teachers, the school board, Jefferson alumni, the community college’s top leaders and involved Jefferson parents — practically crackle with excitement as they discuss what they are convinced the new Jefferson will deliver.
Terms including “amazing,” “fabulous” and “phenomenal” pepper their accounts.
Algie Gatewood, president of PCC’s Cascade Campus, said his board will judge his success largely by how well the middle college flies. “We have made this partnership with Jefferson High School our No. 1 priority,” he said. “It fits right with our mission of offering opportunity to people of all ages, races, backgrounds and levels of income.”
Tony Hopson, president of a North Portland nonprofit with a track record of getting African American teens to graduate from high school and enter college, has long been an outspoken critic of school district action and inaction at Jefferson, his alma mater.
He’s become the ultimate true believer in the latest plans for Jeff. His agency, Self Enhancement, will provide daily on-site mentoring and support to every freshman. But he said he trusts all the players — including Superintendent Carole Smith and her top staff — to do their part to help Jefferson thrive.
“We really do believe in the teaching staff that is here today, that they are here for all the right reasons,” Hopson told prospective families at a recent gathering. “The central office — we trust their word this time. They are going to hold to what they have told us.”
Nationally, the middle college model of having students co-enroll at a community college while still in high school has proved successful at getting students to pass college courses and pile up college credits. According to researchers at Columbia University, middle college students pass more than 90 percent of the community college classes they take — a statistic that has held true for the Jefferson students who have taken PCC classes in recent years.
Some students can’t wait to start at Jefferson this fall.
A resident of the Jefferson area, white eighth-grader Emilie Larison attended elementary and middle school outside the neighborhood but has chosen Jefferson High. A dancer, she is drawn by the renowned dance troupe that will remain even as the school converts to a middle college. She also said she is “excited … about being around older people and getting used to the college environment before I go to college.”
Anna Robertson, also a white eighth-grader, had a good impression of Jefferson before touring it last month. Her brother, an introverted, academically oriented guy now in his senior year at Jeff, found students more welcoming than at previous schools, their mother, Lisa, said. And the teachers have been excellent.
Robertson said that learning about the stepped-up emphasis on college courses got her even more excited. Most middle school classes have been too easy, she said. “I want to be able to challenge myself.” All her friends will go to Madison High, which made her choice harder. “I really like my friends … but I can’t say no to all this opportunity here at Jefferson.”
Tags: High School, Jefferson High, Jefferson High School, School
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Artist sketches career options to Reynolds High School students
December 22nd, 2010
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Steve Dorris, a Portland caricature artist, draws Savannah Trayhorn, a Reynolds High School senior. Dorris visited the school Dec. 2 as a guest in Bonnie Rulli’s commercial art class. Rulli brings in working artist every term to teach her students about careers in art.Steve Dorris had the typical artist’s life, working at Blockbuster Video while drawing caricatures on the side.
All that changed when the Portland artist landed a gig drawing faces at the Waterfront Blues Festival. Soon after, he quit his day job in 2001 and has been creating art since.
He visited a Reynolds High School art class early this month to tell students that yes, young Picassos, there is a career in art. The event was standing-room only in Bonnie Rulli’s commercial art class.
“Caricature is about how far you’re going to take it,” Dorris told the group, as he flipped through a giant pad of paper demonstrating his work.
Dorris was the latest in a string of artists invited to the class by Rulli, who’s been teaching art at Reynolds for 31 years. She brings in multiple working artists every term — from fashion designers to digital animators — to show her students they can make a career out of art.
“You never know who you’re touching,” Rulli said. “You never know what little ‘Ah, ha!’ spark flies. One of the nicest things we can give our students is the outside world.”
Dorris got his invite after meeting Rulli at a fair.
“I was taken over by his style,” said Rulli, who also works as an artist.
Dorris gave the class some secrets of his craft. To make a caricature, he explained, simply exaggerate a part of the subject’s head, such as Barack Obama’s ears or Donald Trump’s hair.
“Draw often,” he said. “Have a sketchbook. Hang out with other artists.”
He showed books of artists who inspire him — Sebastian Kruger, for example — and handbooks that have helped him practice drawing. He told of meeting comic book writer Stan Lee and director Kevin Smith.
An involved caricature takes four or five minutes, he said, whereas a long line of customers means he can only spend two minutes on a subject.
Dorris went to high school in Waco, Texas, and took commercial art but didn’t like the traditional business route.
“Advertising just wasn’t for me,” he said.
The Reynolds students soaked him up like a brush in paint. They peppered him with questions, such as what is the hardest body part for him to draw (hands) and the tools he uses (Prismacolor Sticks.)
The most exciting moment came when Dorris pointed to students in the class and asked to draw them. Many raised their hands, leaned forward and yelled, “Right here! Right here!”
“I really loved the whole experience of him coming in and talking to us,” said Chris Hernandez, 16, of Troutdale, who hopes to work as an animator one day.
Many of Rulli’s former students have taken what they’ve learned at Reynolds, including one — Chris Bailey — who went to work for Disney.
Dorris said the route to success is simple.
“You just have to work at it,” he said.
– Melissa L. Jones, Special to the Oregonian
Tags: High School, Reynolds High, Reynolds High School, School
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Suncoast High School traffic snarls still irk neighbors, but relief promised by mid-October
August 30th, 2010
RIVIERA BEACH — Drivers still wait in lines of traffic and obey police to reach the new Suncoast High School in the mornings.
But some residents say the Suncoast traffic is flowing better than it was during the first few hectic days of the school year. And the school district says the traffic jam between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. will be eased in mid-October, when a wider section of West 13th Street is scheduled to open.
Still, some residents remain frustrated by the congested mass of cars winding through their residential streets.
“It’s crazy,” said Erica Gonder, a parent who lives on 13th Street near the Suncoast entrance. “It’s not that we don’t want the school there. They should take a better route.”
Terrence Houvouras, a father of three who lives on 13th Street, worries about cars speeding by his house while his sons play basketball in the driveway.
Houvouras and other residents want speed bumps to be restored when the wider stretch of 13th Street near the school entrance is completed. The school district is not planning speed bumps, nothing that they pose problems for school buses.
“Their only concern is making everyone at Suncoast comfortable,” said Annette Simpson, a 13th Street resident who attended an Aug. 24 meeting with district officials to discuss traffic around the new school. Simpson says speed bumps are needed – especially now that the road in front of her house will be wider and filled with young drivers headed for Suncoast.
Riviera Beach officials are irked, too.
The city withheld water and sewer permits for the new high school last year because the district had failed to make road improvements to handle Suncoast traffic. The utility permits were granted in January after the city and district approved an agreement that called for several improvements: two stoplights, turn lanes on Congress Avenue and a widening of the stretch of 13th Street between Congress Avenue and Jake Lane.
The road work was supposed to have been completed Aug. 1. The city and the school district are working to extend the deadline to Jan. 7.
City officials also are negotiating with the district to pay for the hours that six Riviera Beach police officers spend directing traffic to and from Suncoast.
The acclaimed high school sits on a 70-acre campus that includes John F. Kennedy Middle School and Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary. The high school serves 1,394 students.
To reduce the number of students walking through construction and traffic to reach the three schools, the district recently added bus routes to pick up students at the Spinnaker Landing and Marsh Harbour developments west of Congress Avenue.
But on a recent morning, a student dressed in khaki trousers and a white shirt walked, apparently late for school, around backhoes and bulldozers working on 13th Street near the Suncoast entrance.
Tags: High School, Still, Suncoast High, Suncoast High School
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