Los Altos High School (Los Altos, California)
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Los Altos High School (abbreviated as LAHS) is a
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-accredited
public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...
senior high school located in Los Altos,
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, United States, in the heart of
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
. Los Altos was opened in 1954 and is located at 201 Almond Avenue, close to Los Altos Downtown, San Antonio Shopping Center, and Almond Elementary School. Los Altos High School is one of the three
Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher ...
public high schools; the other is Mountain View High School and Alta Vista High School. The main feeder schools are Egan Junior High School and Crittenden Middle School. The attendance area includes highly affluent sections of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View, and low-income housing sections of Mountain View. The school principal, since 2005, is Wynne Satterwhite. The previous principal, George Perez, left in 2004.


History

Los Altos High School was established in 1954 on the site of an
orchard An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees which are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of larg ...
. Initially, Los Altos High School served the mostly white, middle to upper class populations of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. During 1981 redistricting efforts, the district closed its oldest high school, Mountain View High School, which was located on Castro Street in downtown Mountain View. Awalt High School was then renamed Mountain View High School, while Los Altos High School replaced its Knight mascot with the Eagle mascot from the old Mountain View High School. The district reaches from Los Altos through Mountain View to San Francisco Bay in the north. Both schools are located near the city border of Los Altos and Mountain View, and each has a considerable amount of the "other" city in its attendance area. During the El Niño storms of 1998, a
tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, altho ...
ripped through the Theater area of the school. The tornado touched down at 5:05PM on May 4, 1998, near the intersection of El Monte Road and Almond Avenue. It was rated F1 on the Fujita Scale, and was one of two that touched down in the area. The tornado uprooted trees, picked up dumpsters, damaged the tennis court fences, and destroyed the baseball diamond dugout. Damages were estimated at $25,000.


Statistics and demographics

As of the 2003-2004 school year, the enrollment was approximately 1600 students; in the last few years, each incoming class has been significantly larger than the outgoing class.California School Population Stats
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Education

Los Altos High School is a gold-certified high school and ranked 421st nationally in 2019 by '' U.S. News & World Report''. Los Altos High School is ranked 56th in California.


Test scores and state-wide ranking

In 2006, City-data deemed Los Altos High School to be the 9th best
High School A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
in
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, with an API of 797. However, Newsweek grades schools on weighted data and teacher:student ratios, while City-Data merely uses API as a standard. In 2008, the school's performance fell seven points in the API from the previous year, with a final score of 795. Asians lost their score slightly by five points and while students with disabilities lost 25 points from the previous year, while Hispanics and the economically disadvantaged scored higher than the previous year. However, they passed the Federal "Adequate Yearly Progress" standards. 2009 saw an increase of 30 points in the API for the school, with a 34-point increase for Latino students and 64 for English-Language learners. 825 points is the highest in school history. API scores for the student body overall have climbed steadily each year from 799 in 2008 to 875 in 2011. Beginning in 2016, the state of California switched to a new
Common Core The Common Core State Standards Initiative, also known as simply Common Core, is an educational initiative from 2010 that details what K–12 students throughout the United States should know in English language arts and mathematics at the conc ...
based testing through the CAASPP (California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress). Students in the 11th grade who took this test in 2016 averaged in the 85.33rd percentile in ELA, and 96.27th percentile in
Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
.


Educational environment

The
California Department of Education The California Department of Education is an agency within the Government of California that oversees public education. The department oversees funding and testing, and holds local educational agencies accountable for student achievement. Its st ...
claims that in 2008-2009, 98% of teachers were fully credentialed—this is higher than the state average. In 2009, Michelle Bissonnette, who taught at Los Altos for 10 years, was selected as one of three "Teaching Ambassador Fellows" to work as a full-time employee of the
United States Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...
for one school year. The student-teacher ratios at Los Altos High School are considerably lower than the state average.


Athletics

Los Altos High School requires two years of
Physical Education Physical education, often abbreviated to Phys Ed. or P.E., is a subject taught in schools around the world. It is usually taught during primary and secondary education, and encourages psychomotor learning by using a play and movement explorati ...
(PE) credits in order to graduate. 1 full year of P.E. in 9th grade is required. After-school sports each provide one semester of credits. Its sports teams participate in the regional SCVAL League. The
track and field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...
team has made it to State championships numerous times, most notably winning 5 CIF-CCS Championship titles, and a CIF state championship title in 1970.


Performing arts

The musical ensembles included are
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(also known as '' Color Guard''),
Marching band A marching band is a group of instrumental musicians who perform while marching, often for entertainment or competition. Instrumentation typically includes brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. Most marching bands wear a uniform, ofte ...
,
Jazz band A jazz band (jazz ensemble or jazz combo) is a musical ensemble that plays jazz music. Jazz bands vary in the quantity of its members and the style of jazz that they play but it is common to find a jazz band made up of a rhythm section and a ...
, Chamber Ensemble, String
Orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...
, Wind Ensemble, Symphonic Band, and Concert Band. Los Altos High School also includes Concert Choir and the world-renowned ''Main Street Singers''. The school also hosts a
Drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
department, the advanced course of which is called ''Broken Box Theatre Company'' and performs in the school's Eagle Theater. The school's vocal ensemble, known as the "Main Street Singers" performs internationally. The High School's
Marching band A marching band is a group of instrumental musicians who perform while marching, often for entertainment or competition. Instrumentation typically includes brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. Most marching bands wear a uniform, ofte ...
is part of the Western Band Association, which is based in
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. The Band competes in the AA and AAA categories. In 1997, the LAHS Marching Band received six awards at the state festival. In 2008, the band won its first sweepstakes award in four years, placing 7th out of 48 participating bands at Western Band's state preliminaries. In 2011-2012, the Band's show, "Forbidden", won numerous awards at local competitions, finished 6th statewide at the WBA State Championships in Thousand Oaks, CA, and captured the State's AAA High Music caption award for the first time in school history In that same year, the band won a total of fifteen trophies and were undefeated in music throughout the entire season. The band's 2012 AA show was entitled "Senses" and their 2013 AAA show "REM." The 2014 AAA show was entitled "House of Cards" and won 1st place at both Gilroy High School and Quest Classic competitions. In 2014, for the first time, the LAHS Marching Band competed in Bands of America regional championships, placing 3rd place in the AAA category. The band's AA show from 2015 was entitled "Muse". In 2015, the band came in 3rd place in the AA category at the Western Band Association 1A-2A-3A Class Championships, earning a spot to compete in the 1A-2A-3A Combined Grand Championships. The band went on to place 8th overall in the combined class championships. The band's 2016 AAA show was entitled "Deja Vu" and their 2017 AA show "Vertigo."


School festivities

Los Altos High School's ASB (Associated Student Body) and the 4 class council's organize several events throughout the school year including rallies and dances. A notable event of each school year is
homecoming Homecoming is the tradition of welcoming back alumni or other former members of an organization to celebrate the organization's existence. It is a tradition in many high schools, colleges, and churches in the United States, Canada and Liberia. ...
, which includes a
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
game, a parade in downtown Los Altos, and the yearly nomination process of for the king and queen. Each year, seniors first nominate 20 peers within their own graduating class for the 2 positions. The 20 seniors then break up into groups of 3-4 and create a 2-3 minute video that is played for the entire school during the morning announcements. Finally, the entire school votes for their top 2 and the result is revealed during the halftime show of the homecoming football game with the crowning of the king and queen.


Student clubs

Students at Los Altos High School have independently started over 50 different clubs, including
One Dollar For Life One Dollar For Life, or otherwise known as ''ODFL'' is an IRS Registered 501(c)#501.28c.29.283.29, 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded to address third world poverty on the premise of collecting United States one-dollar bill, one dollar from ea ...
, a
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founded by
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and
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teacher Robert Freeman. It also hosts club extensions of many nationally recognized organizations, such as
American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
,
Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...
, AVID Council, Club Darfur,
Future Business Leaders of America The Future Business Leaders of America, or FBLA, is an American career and technical student organization headquartered in Reston, Virginia. Established in 1940, FBLA is a non-profit organization of high school ("FBLA"), Middle Level ("FBLA ...
, Gay-Straight Alliance,
Key Club Key Club International, also called Key Club, is an international service organization for high school students. As a student-led organization, Key Club's goal is to encourage leadership through serving others. Key Club International is the hig ...
, Model United Nations,
Safe Ride A safe (also called a strongbox or coffer) is a secure lockable box used for securing valuable objects against theft or fire. A safe is usually a hollow cuboid or cylinder, with one face being removable or hinged to form a door. The body and do ...
, and Mock Trial. They also have "student unions" of most ethnic and racial groups present in the school. For example, The BSU (British Student Union) at Los Altos High School celebrates British culture. These clubs impact the entire Los Altos community, and in the case of One Dollar For Life and Amnesty International, they impact regions in rural Africa and Haiti, respectively. The Los Altos Green Team, with the help of
Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...
officials, urged citizens to sign petitions and presented them to the City Council. This helped create the grassroots for a Los Altos "Cool Cities" campaign to aide the city in becoming more
Green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...
; resulting in the city to be included in the
Kyoto Protocol The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part ...
through the Mayor's Climate Protection Center. They have also invited an
Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
-winning
Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...
-trained speaker to deliver an "update" on '' An Inconvenient Truth'' as well as provide tips on making the student's lives more environmentally friendly. They have since started a local
sustainable Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livin ...
and organic garden and plan to sell subscriptions to local residents. In addition, class of 2008 and previous president of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance, received an award for his efforts in promoting
gay rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Notably, , 3 ...
at a local level; while joining San Jose city's annual gay-pride parade. In 2004, the Alliance petitioned the Los Altos city council to proclaim a Gay Pride Parade in the city's downtown, which resulted in the passage of language which specifically prohibited religious, racial, ethnic or sexual discrimination-related proclamations. The group, along with the support of
San Francisco Mayor The mayor of the City and County of San Francisco is the head of the executive branch of the San Francisco city and county government. The officeholder has the duty to enforce city laws, and the power to either approve or veto bills passed by ...
Gavin Newsom Gavin Christopher Newsom (born October 10, 1967) is an American politician and businessman who has been the 40th governor of California since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 49th lieutenant governor of California fr ...
and then-Supervisor
Tom Ammiano Tom Ammiano (born December 15, 1941) is an American politician and LGBT rights activist from San Francisco, California. Ammiano, a member of the California Legislative LGBT Caucus, served as a member of the California State Assembly from 2008 to ...
, then petitioned the city council to reverse the law, a move which was unanimously approved in 2006. They then organized a Gay Pride parade in downtown Los Altos, with over 300 in attendance. Due to this event, the
County of Santa Clara Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259, as of the 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring San Benito County together f ...
and multiple local cities declared a gay pride day in honor of the club. In addition, the school sponsors a Day of Silence event annually to combat discrimination against
LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...
students. Los Altos High School shares a Speech and Debate team with Mountain View High School. The team was founded by Charles Dahan in 1999, with Dahan earning nine Tournament of Champions bids during his debate career. In 2008, Daniel Moerner, class of 2009, won the Walter Alan Ulrich Award for Top Speaker in Lincoln-Douglas Debate at the Tournament of Champions. In 2009, he also became the first debater to ever win the Stanford Invitational and Berkeley National Invitational back-to-back in their 20-year history.


Student publications

''The Talon'' is the school's student-run newspaper which has been nationally recognized by the Journalism Education Association and the
National Scholastic Press Association The National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1921 for high school and secondary school publications in the United States. The association is membership-based and annually hosts high school journalism conv ...
. In 1997, it was honored as one of the NSPA's newspaper pacemakers. In 2009, it placed 10th for the NSPA's national Best in Show award in the Newspaper 17+ pages category. They also won several awards for Features writing, Entertainment Review writing, Photography, and Editorial Cartooning. In 2010, The Talon's website
www.lahstalon.org
placed 8th for the NSPA's Best in Show award for publication websites. In 2011, The Talon's website qualified for the Pacemaker online finalists.


Notable alumni

*
Ted Barrett Edward George Barrett (born July 31, 1965) is an American umpire in Major League Baseball. He joined the American League's staff in 1994, and has worked throughout both major leagues since 2000. He has worked in twenty three play-off series, inclu ...
,
MLB Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
umpire *
Steve Centanni Steven James "Steve" Centanni is an American former news reporter for Fox News Channel. Journalism career Centanni joined FNC in 1996. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, he served as an embedded journalist with the Navy SEALs and provided numer ...
,
Fox News The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
national correspondent *
Elizabeth Chomko Elizabeth Chomko (born 1981) is an American playwright, film director, screenwriter and actress best known for the film ''What They Had.'' Early life Chomko grew up in Chicago, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Her family moved to Belgium when she ...
, actress, director and screenwriter * Stephen Clark, Olympic gold medal winning swimmer * David DiVincenzo, pioneer of quantum computing *
Lorrie Fair Lorraine Ming Fair (born August 5, 1978) is a retired American professional soccer midfielder who was a member of the World Cup Champion United States national soccer team. Over the span of ten years, she was a part of one World Cup Team and th ...
and
Ronnie Fair Veronica Fair Sullins (; born August 5, 1978) is an American retired professional soccer player who represented the United States national team, winning three caps. She played professional club soccer for New York Power and San Diego Spirit of ...
, twin sisters that played for USA National Soccer team, and later became professional soccer players *
Juliette Fretté Juliette Rose Fretté (born December 25, 1983) is an American comedian, writer, artist, activist, and model. Known as "The Naughty Feminist", in 2017, she began writing for National Lampoon and Weekly Humorist, headlining with her spoof series "T ...
, June 2008 Playboy Playmate of the Month *
Tom Harrell Tom Harrell (born June 16, 1946) is an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, composer, and arranger. Voted Trumpeter of the Year of 2018 by ''Jazz Journalists Association'', Harrell has won awards and grants throughout his career, including mul ...
, musician *
Erik Johnson Erik Robert Johnson (born March 21, 1988) is an American ice hockey defenseman for the Colorado Avalanche of the National Hockey League (NHL). Nicknamed the "Condor", Johnson previously played for the St. Louis Blues, who selected him with the f ...
, MLB Baseball player *
John Brady Kiesling John Brady Kiesling is a former U.S. diplomat and the author of ''Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower'' (Potomac Books, 2006) and the ToposText classics/archaeology mobile application. Diplomat An archaeologist/ancient historian ...
, former U.S. foreign service officer and author * Raj Mathai, Emmy Award-winning news anchor *
Theodore Olson Theodore Bevry Olson (born September 11, 1940) is an American lawyer, practicing at the Washington, D.C., office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Olson served as United States Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel (1981–1984) ...
, 42nd United States Solicitor General * Daniel Rosenbaum, American-Israeli professional basketball player for
Hapoel Jerusalem Hapoel Jerusalem is a sport organization in Jerusalem as a local branch of the Hapoel movement. The branch was established in the 1920s and represents the city in more sports than any other sport organization in Jerusalem. Today, the club's leadi ...
* Simon Rosenbaum, American-Israeli baseball player with Team Israel *
Nick Swinmurn Nick Swinmurn is the founder of Zappos.com. He started the company in 1999. He left in 2006, before it reached $1 billion sales in 2008, and was sold to Amazon in 2009. Early life and education Swinmurn was born in England and moved to the Unit ...
, founder of Zappos.com *
Talise Trevigne Talise Trevigne is an American operatic soprano. Trevigne is known for her commitment to contemporary music, having premiered works by composers Jake Heggie and David T. Little. She sang the lead female role in Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek's ope ...
, opera singer


Notable faculty

* Sandy Wihtol, head baseball coach


References


External links


Los Altos High School website

The Main Street Singers of Los Altos High School
- an SATB Chamber Group
The Talon
(school newspaper)
Eaglestrike
- FRC Team 114 from Los Altos High School {{authority control Mountain View–Los Altos Union High School District High schools in Santa Clara County, California Los Altos, California Public high schools in California Educational institutions established in 1954 1954 establishments in California