Alta Vista High School

Alta Vista High School is a district continuation program with a focus on building academic and functional skills, as well as basic work habits.

Mission Statement

 Alta Vista High School's mission is to provide a safe, caring environment in which assessment and experiential learning assists students in improving personal, social and academic skills so that they may assume a positive role in their community.

 Vision Statement

 Alta Vista High School offers an alternative place for learning, not an alternative to learning.

 Alta Vista High School provides a challenging, safe and caring environment where resiliency skills are fostered to prepare students for success. Our school promotes awareness and appreciation of every student's culture and individual worth. Our students become self-directed learners, healthy individuals, critical thinkers, effective communicators, collaborative workers and productive citizens.

 Preface

 Welcome and Thanks

 The Alta Vista High School staff, students, parents and community welcome you to our school! We are proud to present our self study document and are pleased that you have volunteered to review our work and our school. We know that you are taking time away from your duties in your own communities, and we truly appreciate your efforts.

 A Brief History of Alta Vista High School

Shoreline High School , our original name, began in a church in downtown Mountain View in 1967. There were a series of moves and changes over the next 37 years that represent the evolution of our school. Shoreline High School moved from the church to the campus of “ Old Mountain View High School ” when that campus was closed as a traditional school site. When that campus was torn down in 1985, Shoreline High School was relocated to our current location in five portable buildings behind the district office. After seven years at this site, Shoreline High School was moved again; this time to the satellite campus of Foothill Community College , where Shoreline High School was transformed into Alta Vista High School in 1994. Prior to that time, a community/district task force was established to evaluate Shoreline High School 's effectiveness. A massive overhaul calling for changes in staffing, curriculum and philosophy ensued, resulting in a new high school with a new focus and a new name. After three years on the college campus, Alta Vista High School moved back to our current location where we have now resided for the last seven years. Alta Vista High School will move one more time. This move will be to a new school site. A ground breaking ceremony took place in January 2005. The new school site should be ready in the spring of 2006.

 The Hedgehog Principle

 Each year, for the past eight years, the staff of Alta Vista High School has chosen a book or a theme to use for study and focus for that particular year. We have worked with Schmoker's Results , Glasser's The Quality School , Brown & Moffett's The Hero's Journey , Zander's The Art of Possibility , and Collins's Good to Great .

The most recent work, Collins's Good to Great , gave us a great illustration to work from as we sought ways to get our arms around the WASC process. Collins's work discusses the differences between merely good companies and those that are truly great and ways a company can make the transition from good to great. Much of his work is directly applicable to the world of education. Last year we took a look at one particular aspect of Collins's work, The Hedgehog Concept, and used it to help sharpen our focus for WASC.

The Hedgehog Concept comes from the ancient Greek proverb by way of essayist Isaiah Berlin: “Foxes know many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Collins believes that the “great” companies are uncompromisingly committed to “one big thing.” The staff tackled this question for Alta Vista High School by listing descriptors for the “Three Circles of the Hedgehog” concept: What are we passionate about? What drives our engine? What can we be best at in the world? (More on this can be found in the appendix). We concluded that continuation schools were the best place to be and that Alta Vista High School , by maximizing self-evaluation tools like the WASC process, could be one of the best continuation schools in the world.

Organizational Process

 Our preparation for this self-study began six years ago when we went through our first WASC accreditation process. We were pleased to receive a six-year term with a review only two years after our school's reorganization. We rode the wave of enthusiasm generated by that first report and visitation for the next three years, when we caught the next wave for our mid-term review. We felt we had made excellent progress on all fronts, and the mid-term review committee agreed. Before we knew it, we were preparing for our 2005 self study.

The principal, along with the senior advisor, began attending the WASC workshops for our upcoming visitation and self study in November of 2003. They attended all of the follow-up workshops through September of 2004. The principal also accepted an invitation to be on a visiting committee in February of 2004 which helped to prepare him for our own visitation.

Inservice days during the 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 school years were dedicated to reviewing our prior WASC data and preparing for our 2005 visitation. We began incorporating WASC agenda items into our weekly staff meetings during the 2003-2004 school year and in May of 2004 we began weekly WASC meetings which will continue through January of 2005.

Early in our process, we determined that it would be best for us to use the same organizational format that we used for our first self report. Because we have such a small staff, we decided to break into two committees and split the six schoolwide criteria. Students, parents and community members were asked to join a WASC committee reflecting a good cross-section of our stakeholders. Our senior advisor took the leadership responsibility for one committee, while our special education instructional aide took the leadership responsibility for the other. The principal served as the self study coordinator leading the initial WASC meetings, joining both committees as they met, and co-writing this final report.

It has become almost cliché to say that “WASC is a process not an event,” but for the Alta Vista High School staff and other stakeholders, this statement rings true. The dedication of those associated with this school has propelled us from a position of benevolent neglect into the current state of unprecedented support and growth. We feel confident that our actions plans are sound and will carry us into a future that holds even more promise for the students of Alta Vista High School