Lynbrook High School

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Lynbrook High School
Motto "Go Vikings!" or "Go Vikes!"
Established 1965
Type of institution Public 4-year
Faculty qty?
Principal Mike White
Enrollment 1,831
Location San Jose, CA 95129, , USA
Location 1280 Johnson Avenue
Colors Red, White, and Blue
Mascot Vikings
Website http://www.lhs.fuhsd.org/
There is also a Lynbrook High School in Lynbrook, New York.

Lynbrook High School (abbreviated LHS) is a co-educational, public four-year secondary school located in the West San Jose neighborhood of San Jose, California, USA. It was founded in 1965, graduating its first class in 1968. It was once ranked among the top five public comprehensive secondary schools in California. Lynbrook belongs to the Fremont Union High School District. It is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

Like most other American high schools, Lynbrook is a four-year high school that consists of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior classes. As of 2006 Lynbrook's largest class is the class of 2010

Lynbrook High School's official school colors are blue and white, with red being used as an optional additional color. On school T-shirts, flags, and sports uniforms, blue is almost always applied as the background, and white is used as the lettering. Valkyries skirts (worn by the Lynbrook girls' dance team) have blue, white, and red on them. "Go Vikings" is the school slogan, often shortened to "Go Vikes."

Contents

[edit] History

Lynbrook High School opened on September 13, 1965, with an enrollment of 1,025 students. Because Cupertino High School had grown very large by that time, a new school in the western San Jose area was constructed. The District Board nominated Kendall Stanger as the first principal of the school. The school was technologically advanced around the time it was built and had closed-circuit television and air conditioning. During the first year, there was no gymnasium, locker room, or swimming pool. There were sophomores and freshman attending that year. By the second school year the gymnasium, locker room, and 'Olympic sized' swimming pool were complete.

During the 1990s, Lynbrook High School's Asian American students dramatically grew and replaced much of the formerly white student body. The school also became much more academically focused and competitive as the "college craze" started to take place in many high schools across the nation. A few decades ago, there were not many Advanced Placement (AP) classes available to students, but today the number of AP classes has greatly increased.

[edit] Campus

Compared to other high schools in the South Bay, Lynbrook High School's buildings and facilities are fairly old. Most of Lynbrook's buildings are constructed of old brick exteriors, but the interiors generally have a less aged appearance. New structures and facilities built since 1990 include the library, swimming pool, field house, and Voyager buildings.

Lynbrook has a football field with a dirt track around it, a swimming pool, and a small baseball field. Although the baseball field and football field are in need of renovations, Lynbrook's swimming pool in excellent condition. Lynbrook High School's swimming pool has nine lanes and devotes about half of its area to non-lane-divided deep-water areas. The deep-water area is used mainly for water polo competitions. As one of the newest swimming pools among South Bay high schools, Lynbrook students take pride in their four-year-new swimming pool.

The classroom wings are on the back (east) side of the school and are numbered from 101-615. The 100 and 200 wings are on the north side, and the 500 and 600 wings are on the south side. The gymnasium, swimming pool, and tennis and basketball courts are situated in the southwest of Lynbrook High School's campus. The western third of the campus consists of the Stober field (a large green lawn used primarily for field hockey practice and student events) and a football field. The visual and performing arts center is the school's easternmost building. The school's mural of the Viking, which faces the main parking lot, is actually painted on the same building that houses the girl's locker rooms and the weight training room.

The rally court or quad is the hub of student life at Lynbrook and is surrounded by the cafeteria, classroom wings, auditorium, and the ASB den. The marching band sometimes performs in the rally court.

[edit] Academics

Lynbrook has a solid academic reputation. Like nearby schools Monta Vista and Saratoga, Lynbrook is widely known for consistently being one of the top 20 high schools in California for several years. [1] Lynbrook's academic reputation has also inflenced the real estate market in the surrounding neighborhood, causing home prices to rise higher than other neighborhoods in the San Jose area.

As of 2005, Lynbrook High School's base Academic Performance Index (API) averages 895, which is similar to those of Saratoga, Mission San Jose, Gunn, and Monta Vista. [2] The 2004 API ranking for Lynbrook High School is 10 out of 10, which is the best rating possible for any school, and its similar- schools API ranking is 9 out of 10. Also in 2005, The Washington Post magazine rated Lynbrook as the 178th best high school in the entire United States. [3] Within California, Lynbrook is ranked as having the 14th highest API score in the state. [4]

Lynbrook students consistently receive high marks on standardized exams, including the SAT and Advanced Placement Exams. On the SAT I, the mean verbal score for the class of 2004 was 595/800 and the mean math score was 656/800. In the 2002-2003 SAT results, 83% of all Lynbrook students scored over 1000. Out of 906 tests by 431 students who took Advanced Placement Exams in 2004, 27% scored 5, the highest score possible, and 79% passed. STAR test results are also remarkably high, with most students scoring proficient or above in almost all subjects.

Most Lynbrook High students are concerned about entering into a top university or college, like students at Monta Vista, Palo Alto, Saratoga, and Gunn. Almost all students take the SAT. Many SAT prep schools have sprung up all over San Jose, Cupertino, and Saratoga. These SAT prep classes are taken by a large percentage of Lynbrook pupils; as a result, Lynbrook High School appears to have relatively high SAT and API scores. Many students choose to take honors and AP classes to boost their academics. Although many people view Lynbrook as a highly stressful and competitive, the level of academic difficulty is entirely up to the student's choice. Not all students may choose to have academically rigorous courses and environments.

Like nearby Monta Vista High School, Lynbrook has high grades on the average, although Monta Vista's scores tend to be slightly higher. GPA's above 3.8 are not uncommon, and GPA's below 3.0 are below school average. For some students, heavy emphasis is placed on math-intensive honors classes and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Due to Lynbrook's high academic achievements, many Lynbrook graduates have gone to Harvard, Brown, Princeton, Claremont Colleges, NYU, USC, MIT, Cornell, CalTech, UC Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA and UCSD. Not all students attend four-year colleges, and about one-fourth attend two-year colleges. [5]

[edit] Advanced Placement and Honor Course Offerings

[edit] Athletics and extracurriculars

[edit] Sports and teams

There are field hockey, baseball, cross-country, football, tennis, badminton, tennis, soccer, swimming, golf, track and field, wrestling, and water polo teams. Its chess, mathematics, and robotics teams are especially successful. Lynbrook's main rival is Monta Vista High School, but also occasionally includes Cupertino High School and Mission San Jose High School. Its tennis, water polo , badminton, and track teams are excellent. Lynbrook's freshman cross- country team is currently one of the fastest frosh teams in the region. [6]

Lynbrook's non-athletic teams include:

School publications include:

  • newspaper (The Epic)
  • literary magazine (Vertigo)
  • yearbook (The Valhalla; the 2004-2005 edition being the first in color)
  • newsletter (Viking Pride).

The school also has many clubs including Interact, Robotics, FBLA, Speech and Debate, Octagon, JETS, Key, Red Cross, MUN, and Link Crew (freshman orientation club). A complete list of clubs is available at [8].

[edit] ASB

Lynbrook ASB (Associated Student Body) organizes student activities and is lead by both student and administrative members. A complete updated list of student can be found here. As an organizer of many student games and activities around the year, ASB sets up class competitions, brunch and lunch time entertainment, and rallies.

ASB plans and organizes homecoming, which is the largest event on the school calendars. During homecoming, classes hold "skits" and compete against each other on the final day of homecoming week.

ASB cards are issued by ASB, which allow students to receive discounted prices on school merchandise, tickets, and activities. An ASB card can, as of the 2006-2007 school year, be purchased for $75, with the cost of the yearbook included in the total cost.

Lynbrook holds school dances throughout the year, usually on Friday nights. The dances begin at 8 P.M. and end at 11 P.M. School rules are in effect during the dances, and only Lynbrook students are allowed in the dances unless a guest pass is obtained. The music played may include hip-hop or jazz, depending on the formality of the dance.

There are 4 to 6 spirit weeks held throughout the school year. During these themed weeks, ASB puts on spirit games in the quad that involve students and teachers in ridiculous but entertaining games. Usually these games involve one of each class, and it is a class competition.

More information about Lynbrook's ASB can be found at its website [9]

[edit] Culture and social life

Like Monta Vista, Lynbrook's student ethnicity is mainly Asian American. As isolated from poverty, crime, and gang activity, the school has a relatively low crime and incidence rate. Lynbrook's culture and general environment differs from other many high schools in the Santa Clara Valley, such as Fremont, Wilcox, Evergreen Valley, Santa Clara, and Los Gatos. Because of the student demographics, the Lynbrook High School's rival is Monta Vista High School. Monta Vista and Lynbrook have very similar student demographics and test scores. The social environment is also almost identical. Although the two schools are rivals, there isn't a lot of tension between Lynbrook and Monta Vista. Students rarely pick on each other and fight, and students from the two schools get along fairly well with each other.

[edit] Demographics

As of the 2005-2006 school year, Lynbrook High School had a total of 1864 students and a senior class of 403. 72% of the students were Asian American, 24% were white, and 4% of all students consisted of other ethnic groups. Like Monta Vista High School and other schools in the Cupertino area, very few Latino, Filipino, or African Americans attend Lynbrook. The school is composed mostly of Asian Americans and whites. There are only about 50 Latino students enrolled in the school, and even fewer Filipinos and African Americans.

The ethnic makeup of staff members are highly different from the student demographics, as 79.7% of staff members at Lynbrook High School are white. The parent education-level data, as of the 2003-2004 school year, showed that 60% of the students' parents had at least a master's degree. Only 10% had only some college or less. This is primarily because of West San Jose's incredibly inflated home prices, somewhat influenced by the school's well-known academic performance.

Many Lynbrook High School students are from Mandarin Chinese-speaking families, of whom a significant percentage have parents from Taiwan. Other major Asian ethnic sub-groups in Lynbrook include Asian Indians, Japanese, and Korean Americans. Minority Asian sub-groups include Vietnamese and Iranian Americans. Less than 10% of Lynbrook High's students are English Language Development (ELD) students, and about half of them speak Mandarin at home. Other ELD students speak Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, and Russian at home. Because the parents of most Asian American students immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, many Asian Americans were born in the U.S. Thus, there are relatively few ELD students, even though 71% of the student body is Asian American.

[edit] School boundaries

Lynbrook High School's boundaries comprise the western part of West San Jose and parts of northern Saratoga. The school's area is bound to the north by Bollinger Road, to the east by Saratoga Creek, to the south by Cox Avenue, and to the west by De Anza Boulevard. Currently, the Residency Verification policy states that all students who are enrolled in Lynbrook High School must be physically residing within the district's boundaries. The Residency Verification Anonymous Hotline is one of the district's ways of helping to enforce the policy. (see Fremont Union High School District).

Lynbrook students are from either western San Jose or northern Saratoga. A small number of students live elsewhere but are allowed enrollment due to lottery enrollment or by exceptions from the district.

[edit] Alleged white flight

According to a Wall Street Journal article, Lynbrook High has also been supposedly affected by a very mild white flight that has slowly taken place over the years as the Cupertino area has become more densely populated by Asian Americans. The article contends that this phenomenon is due to white students' concerns over intense academic competition with Chinese and Indian Americans. Some white students are also concerned about possibly being an underachieveing minority group within the school, as whites collectively have an average API score (844) that is 70 points lower than the average API for Asian Americans.

However, the report has faced much criticism from local residents, the school district, and sociologists, who say that the news article is a biased report that misuses gathered information in order to explain that a new form of white flight exists in the Cupertino/West San Jose area. Many local students, parents, and teachers claim that Lynbrook High School has not faced any major demographic shifts as they point out that there has not been even a 30% drop in white student enrollment over the past five years. Furthermore, parents of both Asian and European ancestry contend that some white families have chosen to move or send their children to other schools due to an intense focus on academics, not fear of competition with Asian American students. To a large extent, the real cause for the so-called "white-flight" is that some long- time resident families chose to sell their homes during the price boom in the late 90's and reap the rewards of selling for upwards of nearly 6 times their original purchase price. During this time, most families moving into the Cupertino area happened to be Asian-American, wealthy, and focused on the education of their children.

[edit] School information

[edit] Schedule

Lynbrook High School's schedule has Mondays and Thursdays as tutorial schedules. Tuesdays are odd block (only odd-numbered periods are attended), and Wednesdays are even block (only even-numbered periods are attended). Fridays are normal schedules. There are a total of seven periods (from 1 to 7), and 1st and 7th periods are optional (most students take either six or seven periods, although some take as few as four).

Lynbrook High School's classes usually start at 7:35 A.M. and end at 2:05 (if the student's last class is at period 6) or 2:55 P.M. (if the student has 7th period), although the times may vary slightly for the different days of the school week. On Tuesdays, classes begin on 7:35 A.M., but only odd-numbered periods are attended (periods 1, 3, 5, and 7). Students who do not have 7th period and who do not choose to eat at the school are dismissed at 12:45 P.M. On Wednesdays, classes begin at 9:15 P.M. and only has 2nd, 4th, and 6th periods, with a staff development and collaboration period before the start of the second period. Wednesday is the only day of the school week that is late start. The school also has 35-minute tutorial (i.e., study hall) periods on every Monday and Thursday. Brunches are 15-minute breaks, and lunches are 40-minute breaks followed by sixth and seventh periods.

[edit] Graduation requirements

A minimum of 220 semester units are required for graduation from Lynbrook High School. 10 units equal one year of work for each period. In order to graduate, students must also pass the CAHSEE, which can be taken during the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades.

Subject Units
English 40
Social studies 30
Science 20
Mathematics 20
Electives 70

Lynbrook's electives include 3D Design, Art, Architecture, Business, Choir, Computer-Aided Drafting, Computer Science Electronics, French, Japanese, Marching Band, Orchestra, Spanish,. Physical education is a required course for freshmen, and one additional year is also needed. PE 10 includes Team Sports and Total Fitness, or strength training exercises.

[edit] Policies and grading

Lynbrook High School's most important policies are covered by the Fremont Union High School District's main policies, including the Zero Tolerance Policy, Academic Code of Conduct, and Residency Verification. Assistant principals and the Student Legislative Council set minor policies and school rules.

Like most other high schools within the Fremont Union High School District, most of Lynbrook's classes follow an A-F grading system. 90-100% is marked as A, 80-89.9% as B, 70-79.9% as C, 60- 69.9% as D, and lower grades are marked as F. Many classes, however, do not use this grading system. Many teachers will consider a 89.5% an A.

[edit] Faculty

[edit] Administration

The Lynbrook administration includes principal Mike White, assistant to principal Jan Broman, assistant principals Rich Amlin, Kathleen Sullivan, and Andy Walczak, and teacher on special assignment Sydney Marsh. Other staff members servicing the school including Jose Ramirez, student conduct specialist, and Charles Taylor & Marissa Goldstein, guidance counselors. A complete list of staff members can be found here.

The administrative offices are all located in the main office next to the library.

[edit] Technology

Lynbrook considers itself a technology-literate school which uses the Internet as the primary means of communication. Like some schools within the Fremont Union High School District, teachers, administrators, and students use the A+ Board for announcements, discussions, assignments and schedules. The A+ Board can also be used for posting e-mail addresses and files.

The school library also has 36 public terminals for student use. Two computer labs in Rooms 005 and 006 are only for use by classes that have made appointments with the school, but students may access the computers during Monday and Thursday tutorial periods.

[edit] Notable Alumni

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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