San Juan Hills High School

San Juan Hills High School is a high school located in San Juan Capistrano, California, and it is the sixth high school of the Capistrano Unified School District. The school officially opened in the 2007-2008 school year as a new comprehensive high school and it serves the residents of San Juan Capistrano, Capistrano Beach, and southern Ladera Ranch in Orange County, California.

SJHHS opened with Tony Ferruzzo as the principal in August 2007. He was excited to begin his job with the first school in his community and succeeded in getting this dynamic new school off to a great start. He announced his retirement on Friday, February 22, 2008, citing a desire to go in a different direction in his life. Ferruzzo served as principal for two-and-a-half years, starting the job two years before the school opened. The assistant principal, Shannon Soto, served as interim principal to complete the year. [1] In the summer of 2008, Capistrano Unified School District appointed and transferred the experienced Tom Ressler, former principal of Capistrano Valley High School in the city of Mission Viejo, to serve as the new principal of SJHHS. Ressler was at CVHS for 22 years and was instrumental in helping to build a successful program at CVHS. He is expected to do the same at SJHHS.

Test Scores

In its opening year, San Juan Hills High School had an Academic Performance Index (API) of 748, and in 2009 it surpassed the district goal of 800 by reaching 810, showing the highest growth in points by a school in the county. [2]

Controversy

There was controversy when Capistrano Unified School District was planning to open this school. The primary reason for the controversy was the changing of the district boundaries. Capistrano Beach residents, whose students previously attended San Clemente High School, feel that they are basically a part of San Clemente and some initially resisted the change. Many high school students from Ladera Ranch will now attend SJHHS, instead of Tesoro High School in Las Flores. A small number of high school students from Ladera attend Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo. There were changes to district wide boundaries, one result of which included sending all of the high school students in Mission Viejo from a split between Tesoro High School in Las Flores and Capistrano Valley High School, to just CVHS (due to the students from San Juan Capistrano, who previously attended CVHS now attending SJHHS). Dana Hills High School in Dana Point saw the loss of all its students from San Juan Capistrano and its boundaries shrunk. San Clemente High School's boundaries also became smaller, which was essentially a welcome change because the school was already overcrowded. They had over 3,000 students, now enrolling students from the growing Talega neighborhood in San Clemente.

Some residents of San Juan Capistrano have been concerned about the potential increase in traffic on Ortega Highway which leads to the school. It should be further noted that the main cause of the traffic congestion at the intersection of La Pata and Ortega Highway is due to ongoing construction—a widening of Ortega Highway (from the Antonio Parkway/La Pata intersection to Lake Elsinore) in an attempt to make that part of Ortega Highway a safer route to travel.

Mascot

A leadership team of students, representing each of the feeder middle schools to San Juan Hills, was formed in 2006 and began drafting plans for the school. In choosing the mascot, future San Juan Hills students voted at their current schools and chose "The Stallions", with navy blue, gold, and white as the school colors. Students had to wait for varsity football and basketball games for the school's first two years, until the students are old enough (in their junior and senior years).

Racial Demographics

In 2008, the first official racial data was released for San Juan Hills High School: White 53%, Hispanic 38%, Asian 1%, Unknown 8% [3]

External links

• Additional information on school site issues (blog).