Design Tech High School

Design Tech High School, commonly referred to as d.tech, is a public charter high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. The school is located on the Oracle Corporation campus in Redwood City, California, and is part of the San Mateo Union High School District. Founded in 2014, the school has roughly 562 students (as of Spring 2022) and focuses on implementing technology, self-direction, and the process of design thinking into its curriculum. A second school operated under the same "brand" in Rancho Cordova, California is projected to open in Fall 2023.

History

The petition that led to the creation of Design Tech was filed with the San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD) on September 12, 2013; SMUHSD's board of trustees unanimously accepted the petition in November. Design Tech was founded in 2014 by a group of four educators: Nicole Cerra, Ken Montgomery, Christy Knott, and Wendy Little, along with community members Sandra Feder, Ron Drabkin, Betsy Corcoran and David Little. Montgomery, who had previously been the Assistant Principal of Capuchino High School, was inspired by his studies at Stanford, where he attended classes at the Stanford d.school. The group began planning of the school and opened in time for the 2014–2015 school year, with a temporary campus in a hallway at Mills High School in Millbrae, California; students designed the space as their first assignments.

Students and parents of Mills were unhappy with d.tech's presence. The next school year, d.tech migrated to a former auto body shop on Rollins Road in an industrial area of Burlingame, leading to the adoption as unofficial school mascot of the koi, a fish with a reputation for growing to fill any container. During that school year, d.tech was offered the opportunity to design and build a building on a waterfront plot on the Oracle campus in Redwood City. Throughout the year, students and faculty met with Oracle's architectural team to help design the new building, and it opened in January 2018.

The first class of d.tech graduated in 2018.

At the start of the 2022-23 school year, Design Tech implemented Yondr Pouches and an e-hall pass system, both of which were highly unpopular with students. A lunchtime protest of the new policies and other actions that students viewed as unfair resulted in suspensions and subsequent expulsion hearings for more than 13 students. The school and its administration have been criticized for their handling of the situation. The school has also received criticism for not reflecting the make-up of the district as a whole in its enrollment and for the involvement of Oracle.

Campus

Mills High School

Design Tech's first campus was at Mills High School in Millbrae, California. In spring 2014 SMUHSD offered six classrooms at Mills essentially rent-free, based on the requirements of Proposition 39, which mandates that charter schools be offered facilities "reasonably equivalent" to public schools. School leaders had initially requested space at Burlingame High School, but district officials opined that there was no space available at BHS. Intended to be a temporary campus, d.tech was located within a single hallway at Mills. In the first two weeks of school at the Mills campus, instead of attending academic classes, students were tasked with designing their classroom layouts. They were also required to take a field trip on the second day of school due to Mills' first day of school. However, students and parents of Mills complained about the presence of d.tech on their campus, capped by a contentious SMUHSD Board of Trustees meeting where State Senator Jerry Hill declared he would ask a civil grand jury to investigate the Board's responsiveness to citizens, and d.tech began planning their relocation within a few months.

Rollins Road

Design Tech began to rent a large warehouse, previously an auto-body repair school, to use as their campus. It was located in Millbrae as well, on Rollins Road, adjacent to US Highway 101. The students began to affectionately call this campus "Rollins", after the road it was located on. The main area of the building was the "Hangar"; a large, open, concrete-floored space. Classrooms in the Hangar were fluid; while some students often complained about distracting noise during their classes, as there were no walls or doors to stop sound or people from entering classrooms, other students felt that there was a special sense of community in this open space that brought them all closer together and could not be replicated in another way. The Rollins Road campus included the school's first iteration of the Design Realization Garage which students used to build projects such as wheelchair-accessible ramps, skateboard racks, and a hexagonal bench that was eventually used as seating for meetings and snack breaks. Despite the limited space of the campus and its lack of school-related uses, students were quick to use the often empty parking lot for basketball, football, and other physical activities.

Oracle

Soon after d.tech's move to Rollins, the Oracle Education Foundation announced plans to build a $43 million, 64,000 sq ft (5946 m2) campus for d.tech on a 2.5-acre site at the company's then headquarters in Redwood Shores. The building was designed with input from students and includes a two-story 8,000-square-foot Design Realization Garage. Oracle leases the building to d.tech for $1 per year, and offers students two-week courses and unpaid internships three times a year through the Oracle Education Foundation.

Awards and recognition

The school is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The current Design Tech High School campus building at Oracle was built to LEED Gold specifications and won the Green Building Award from Sustainable San Mateo County and Best Education Project from both ''Silicon Valley Business Journal'' and PCBS as a part of their 2018 Gold Nugget Awards.

Athletics

Design Tech offers students the chance to create sports teams based on interest. The first sport introduced to the school was Basketball during the school's inaugural year. Since the inaugural year, the school has expanded to six sports for both Boys and Girls consisting of girls volleyball, cross country, basketball, soccer, boys baseball, girls softball, swimming, track, and sailing. In the 2019–2020 school year, girls volleyball, cross country, and boys basketball have qualified for the CCS playoffs.

Robotics

The Design Tech High School FRC team
5940
BREAD (Breakthrough Robotics Engineering And Design), was founded in the 2015-2016 FIRST season.

The team went to the World Championships in their first season via the Rookie All-Star award. In the 2021-2022 season the team won the Monterey Bay Regional qualifying them to compete at the World Championships in Houston, Texas. Team 5940 ranked 3rd, winning th
Roebling Division
at the World Championship qualifying them for the Einstein rounds where they went 1-4-0. Additionally, they won the entrepreneurship award for an outstanding business plan and organizational structure.

Admissions

Design Tech applicants are admitted to the school based on a lottery system, per California law. The lottery gives preference to siblings and to students in the San Mateo and Sequoia High School districts. There are more applicants than there are spaces available, and the school has moved to offer tours only after admission has been granted due to the large number of applicants.

Executive directors

*2014–present: Ken Montgomery

Enrollment

N.B.: Non-binary student data not available prior to the 2021-22 school year.

References

External links

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Charter schools in California
High schools in San Mateo County, California
Educational institutions established in 2014
2014 establishments in California