Palo Alto High School

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (May 2008)
Palo Alto High School
The former Palo Alto High School sign.
Location
Palo Alto, CA, USA
Information
Principal Jacqueline McEvoy
Students 1763
Type Public
Grades 9-12
Mascot Viking
Established 1898
Homepage http://www.paly.net/

Palo Alto Senior High School is among the oldest high schools in the region, located in Palo Alto, California, United States. Founded in 1898, its enrollment today is over 1700 students. "Paly", as the school is known locally, draws high-achieving and scholastically-minded students due to the demographics of its location in the heart of Silicon Valley and its proximity to Stanford University. In 2002 Newsweek magazine ranked it among the top 200 public high schools, based on test scores.[1] In 2007 US News & World Report magazine ranked it #85 out of over 18,000 public high schools.[2] Palo Alto High also carries on a distinguished athletic tradition, marked in recent years by a rivalry with crosstown foe Gunn. Titles won by teams from Paly include California State Championships in Boys Varsity Basketball in 1993 (during which the team went undefeated) and 2006, along with CCS Championships in Football in 2006 and 2007.

Paly is situated on the older, northern side of Palo Alto, a location it has occupied since 1919. The western boundary of campus is El Camino Real, opposite which stands Stanford Stadium and the campus of Stanford University. The northern end of Paly runs along Embarcadero Road (from which the main parking lot is accessible).

At the eastern edge of the Paly campus are Caltrain rail tracks, which separate the school from Alma Street. Commuter trains pass by on the track using the route between San Jose and San Francisco. The Paly community has experienced tragedy three times, in 1986, 2002 and 2003 when students have committed suicide by jumping in front of oncoming trains near the Alma Street-Churchill Avenue crossing. Since the last tragedy, signs with 1800 SUICIDE have been placed along the tracks. The back of Paly student body cards now include “emergency” numbers to make sure the organizations are available to teens. Among these numbers there is a 24/7 help line, a teen health line and numbers for the Adolescent Counseling Services both on and off campus.

On the southern side of the school grounds extends to Churchill Avenue, and contain the athletic fields and the school district's bus depot. The southwestern corner of the campus is occupied by the main offices of the Palo Alto Unified School District.

The school can be reached by the VTA bus line 22 along El Camino Real, the Dumbarton Express bus, the SamTrans bus line KX, Stanford's free Marguerite shuttle, Caltrain's Palo Alto station, as well as by the Palo Alto city shuttle, which runs along Embarcadero Road.

The school mascot is the Viking.

Contents

[edit] Student organizations

[edit] Student Government

Paly ASB leadership includes the ASB President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Spirit Commissioners, Class Presidents and VP's, and Web Design/Communications Officer. The purpose of the ASB, as defined by its constitution, is the representation on behalf of the student body, the conduct of activities on behalf of the students of Palo Alto High School as approved by the principal and the governing board of the Palo Alto Unified School District. Activities include school dances, Spirit Week, and other ceremonies.

[edit] Publications

  • The Campanile is Paly's school print publication. It claims one of the largest circulations of any high school newspaper in the Bay Area and is one of the longest running student journalism programs on the west coast. It prints 24 broadsheet pages once every three weeks. It has won four Pacemaker awards and also a West regional award for editorial excellence from Time.
  • Verde is Paly's school magazine publication, published five times each year. Verde is the widest distributed student-run magazine in the nation, and has won numerous Pacemaker and Gold Crown awards for scholastic journalism, including the 2005 Gold Crown award in the Newspaper category. In 2006 Verde won the Best in Show at National Journalism Convention held in San Francisco.
  • The Paly Voice, launched in the 2002-3 school year, is Paly's online news source. It features searchable archives of all other Paly publications as well as exclusive online content. In the spring of 2005 the site won both the People's Voice and Overall Webby Award in the "Student" category, a rare accomplishment for a high school level Internet site. The Voice was also one of the national Online Pacemaker award recipients in 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004, and was a finalist for the same award in 2003. The Voice can be accessed at voice.paly.net.
  • InFocus is Paly's television news channel. It is broadcast five days a week during fourth period, and available only on Paly campus and online at voice.paly.net. It has recently come under fire from Campanile for its unreliability, an issue highlighted by the occasional missed broadcasts due to technical difficulties. Their conflict has manifested in a cartoon, written by Michael Schisler, in the Campanile in October, 2007 and a subsequent InFocus segment .
  • Calliope is Paly's literary magazine, published once or twice a year. Its first publication was in 1981-82. It is also available online at calliope.paly.net.
  • The Viking is Paly's campus sports magazine. It was first published first semester of the 2007-2008 year. The received "Best in Show" at the National Scholastic Press Association in Anaheim in 2008. The Viking is the first sports magazine in the nation at the high school level.[citation needed]

[edit] Mock Trial

Palo Alto's mock trial team, run by former Social Studies Instructional Supervisor Suzanne Stewart, is a perennial force in the Santa Clara County division of the Constitutional Rights Foundation's mock trial competition. Palo Alto competed in the 2004,[3] 2005,[3] 2006, and 2007 county finals, beating Lynbrook High School in 2005 and 2007[4] to represent Santa Clara County in the California Mock Trial Competition. In 2005, Palo Alto placed 10th in the state.[5].


[edit] Debate

Palo Alto's Policy Debate team is coached by Ben Picozzi, who is a member of the Stanford University debate team and was an extremely successful high school debater for Mercer Island High School. Despite being extremely small and in its first year, the Policy Debate team has competed successfully in the varsity divisions of extremely competetive tournaments such as The Glenbrooks, Alta, Berkeley and Stanford. The debaters pride themselves in being able to debate in both the "slow" and "fast" styles. One Palo Alto team of first-year debaters was in the finals of their National Qualifying tournament, beating extremely experienced debaters from schools such as Menlo-Atherton, Bellarmine, and Harker. Palo Alto also has an extremely competetive Lincoln-Douglas Debate team. They have had numerous debaters attend the Tournament of Champions (debate). In the 2007-2008 year, debaters from the Palo Alto team won the Dempsey-Cronin Invitational at Santa Clara University, the Stanford Invitational, and many others. Both teams have growing reputations for excellence are increasing in size and popularity rapidly.

[edit] Theater

Past productions include: Big Love, The Fantasticks, A Chorus Line, Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage, Metamorphoses, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Learned Ladies, Romeo and Juliet, Anything Goes, The Laramie Project and 43 Plays For 43 Presidents. Every other year, Paly holds a Spring showcase of student-written and directed one-act plays called "Speed Limit 25".

The Thespian Society is the oldest club on campus, and facilitates field trips to see plays throughout the Bay Area, as well as to attend acting and improv workshops. Since 2004, the annual Play in a Day festival has been held the first weekend of Winter Break, when theater alumni join current students in the Haymarket to write, rehearse and perform one-act plays within a period of just over 24 hours.

In 2008, Kristen Lo left the theatre department and was replaced by Kathleen Woods.

[edit] Robotics

The Palo Alto High School (Paly) Robotics Team, established in 1996 by Doug Bertain and his engineering technology students, is one of the many active academic programs at Paly. They are funded mainly by corporate sponsors. The team competes annually in competitions such as the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Competition, the Electric Vehicle Rally, Botball, and The Tech Challenge. In 2006, the team won first place at the FIRST Las Vegas Regional Competition. In 2007, the team was selected to participate in, and given a $10,000 grant from, MIT's InvenTeams program. This year, the team participated in 3 FIRST regional competitions: Portland, San Jose, and Las Vegas. After placing 6th in Las Vegas, the team will travel to Atlanta for the FIRST Championships in mid-April.

[edit] Paly Clubs

Paly offers a range of clubs. Major established clubs include Paly Key Club, Science Olympiad/Science Bowl, Math Club, the Millard Fillmore Trivia Club, the Inside-Out (Christian) Club, the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) Club, the YCS (Youth Community Service) Club. A full list of clubs can be found online at [6]

[edit] Campus traditions

Since Palo Alto High school was built at its current location in 1919, it has acquired a host of campus traditions.

[edit] Spirit Week

Each class is assigned a color for Spirit Week, which they wear on Wednesday. Each day has its own costume theme, which is broken down into sub-themes by class. Rallies and competitions are held on the quad at lunch and points are awarded to each class based on their performance. Points can also be taken away for poor sportsmanship or the wearing of unauthorized class apparel.

  • Spirit Week Themes
    • Monday: Class Theme
    • Tuesday: Salad Dressing
    • Wednesday: Class colors/shirts
    • Thursday: Ages
    • Friday: School colors

The senior class has almost always won Spirit Week. One exception was of the class of 2006. The class theme was voted to be "Herbology: We're higher than you" but the school decided it would not be appropriate and students found wearing the shirts were asked to remove the shirt, turn it inside out, or add language making the statement political. During Spirit Week, the class was penalized for wearing the shirts and was the first senior class to get a negative score. Additionally, the class of 1987 won Spirit Week three years in a row, sophomore through senior years and the class of 2002 won it all four years 98-02.[citation needed]

[edit] Senior pranks

  • Six-foot C painted on Stanford's main quad (c. 1940)[6]
  • Cow in Tower Building (possibly apocryphal)[7]
  • Library broken into; library carrels moved to quad (1997)[7]
  • Giant inflatable water polo ball taken from Stanford was re-inflated on top of the library building (2003)[7]
2007
2007
  • A car which was decorated by seniors for a prank was turned over on the senior deck and a painted toilet was cemented into a seating area.[8][9](2007)

[edit] Notable alumni

[edit] Notable visitors

  • Philip Zimbardo, Professor of Psychology at Stanford, 2008.
  • James Franco, actor, alumni, spoke at the baccalaureate of the class of 2007.
  • Walter Mondale, former U.S. Vice President, 2006
  • David M. Kennedy, historian and author of The American Pageant, 2006, 2007
  • Mary Tillman, mother of the late American football player and soldier Pat Tillman, 2006
  • Alan Bersin, California Secretary of Education, 2006
  • Annette Bening, American Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning actress, 2006
  • Steve Young, football player for the San Francisco 49ers, 2004.
  • LeVar Burton, actor, producer, director, spoke at the baccalaureate of the class of 2000 and 2005
  • The Grateful Dead, when they still went by "The Warlocks" (They played a show in the theater)

Sources: The Paly Voice at http://voice.paly.net

[edit] Trivia

  • The school colors were green and red until school year 1947-48 when they were changed to green and white by student vote. Template:Ref. p. 11 of 1948 Madrono, school yearbook.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Jeffries, Kimberly and Laila Ouhamou, researchers. [1]
  2. ^ Gold Medal Schools - US News and World Report
  3. ^ a b Chana Karlin-Neumann. Mock Trial Team Dominates County, Campanile, 7 March, 2005.
  4. ^ Erik Krasner-Karpen. Mock Trial qualifies for States, Campanile, 9 March, 2007.
  5. ^ Taylor Whitfield. Mock trial represents county in State Finals, Voice, 21 March, 2005.
  6. ^ Marek, Grant. "There's More to the Big Game than 'the Play': Rivalry has Storied Tradition of Pranks, Acts of School Pride", Daily Californian, 17 November, 2001. [2]
  7. ^ a b c Cook, Gavin. "Pranks brighten, blemish Paly environment", Campanile, 2 June, 2005. [3]
  8. ^ Coté, John. "Senior prank: Volvo belly-up on campus", San Francisco Chronicle, 7 June, 2007. [4]
  9. ^ Kazak, Don. "Paly 'senior prank' has felony consequences", Palo Alto Weekly, 8 June, 2007. [5]
  10. ^ Disney Legends - Ollie Johnston