| Mid-Peninsula High School | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
 | |
| Information | |
| Type | Independent non-profit non-sectarian coeducational college preparatory high school |
| Opened | 1979 |
| Athletics conference | CIF Central Coast Section |
| Team name | Dragons |
Mid-Peninsula High School (Mid-Pen) is an independent non-profit and non-sectarian coeducational college preparatory high school located in Menlo Park, California.
Mid-Pen was founded in 1979 by Phil Bliss and Herman Ohme after Cubberley High School in Palo Alto was closed due to budget cuts. Perceiving a need for alternatives to the public system, Bliss and Ohme began advocating for students experiencing difficulty or dissatisfaction in the public school system or who had undiagnosed learning differences.
Ohme began schooling the first three Mid-Pen students in his living room in early 1980. Herman and Bliss soon leased space at the recently closed Cubberley High School and by the end of the 1979–1980 academic year, the school had 40 students and one graduate. Because Proposition 13 caused many public school districts to abandon summer school,[ citation needed ] Mid-Peninsula experienced a very high enrollment for summer school in 1980, which translated into more students for the following fall semester.
In response to this increased enrollment, the school's founders leased a new Mid-Peninsula High School site on Ross Road in Palo Alto. After five years, this site was scheduled for demolition, so the school relocated to the 870 N. California Avenue campus in Palo Alto. After 15 years, that site was reclaimed by the Palo Alto Unified School District.
Mid-Peninsula had its first capital campaign and purchased and remodeled a commercial building at 1340 Willow Road in Menlo Park. It opened to students on January 31, 2001. [1] The two-story structure features a large patio, grassy playing field, a gym, art studio, science labs and wireless technology. In 2001, student population was 140 and staff and faculty numbered 21. [2]
In a letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle (Oct. 6, 2006), Douglas C. Thompson, head of the school, wrote that the goal of a high school should be to support a student-centered process. “Someone who is eager to try new things, able to work in a group, able to learn about his or her world and able to express in words what he or she has learned, is indeed an educated person. It is sad that we have moved so far away from those simple goals,” he wrote. [3]
Mid-Peninsula's curriculum meets standards of admission for both the University of California and the California State University institutions as well as private institutions of higher learning. Mid-Pen is fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) [4] and the California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS). The school focuses on individualized learning approaches and employs flexible programming to accommodate various learning styles and reduce stress. Class sizes are typically smaller than 15 students.
Mid-Peninsula's variable credit program grants academic credit based on the quantity of work, while grades are based on the quality of work. Emphasis is placed on personal motivation, character and self-discipline. [5] [6]
Mid-Peninsula is a Division V school, has been a member of the Central Coast Section (CCS) for 20 years, and is also a member of the Private School Athletic League (PSAL). The school has several championships for soccer, baseball and basketball.
Mid-Peninsula employs a no-cut policy for all team sports (however, individual playing time is determined by attendance, performance and attitude). Volleyball, soccer and basketball are offered for boys and girls, while baseball is offered for boys and softball is offered for girls. Cross country is co-educational.
One of the highlights of the school's baseball roster included Jimmy Barefield, a 6-foot-5 pitcher and infielder from Redwood City who “was on the fast to becoming a poster boy for troubled youth,” when he arrived at Mid-Pen and became a standout player in 1999. He developed an 85-mile an hour fastball and an effective curve and slider. [7]
In 2011, a San Francisco Chronicle article reported that the school's once marginal athletic department had matured and was a contender for its first Central Coast championship. The reason was in part due to basketball standout Lydell Cardwell, a 6-foot-2 senior wing who was averaging more than 25 points a game. [8] Cardwell is now playing for Azusa Pacific University. [9]
The San Francisco Peninsula is a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area that separates San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. On its northern tip is the City and County of San Francisco. Its southern base is Mountain View, in Santa Clara County, south of Palo Alto and north of Sunnyvale and Los Altos. Most of the Peninsula is occupied by San Mateo County, between San Francisco and Santa Clara counties, and including the cities and towns of Atherton, Belmont, Brisbane, Burlingame, Colma, Daly City, East Palo Alto, El Granada, Foster City, Hillsborough, Half Moon Bay, La Honda, Loma Mar, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Millbrae, Pacifica, Palo Alto, Pescadero, Portola Valley, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Carlos, San Mateo, South San Francisco, and Woodside.
Palo Alto is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; and Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City to the west. It had 33,780 residents at the 2020 United States census. It is home to the corporate headquarters of Meta, and is where Google, Roblox Corporation and Round Table Pizza were founded. The train station holds the record as the oldest continually operating train station in California. It is one of the most educated cities in California and the United States; nearly 70% of residents over 25 have earned a bachelor's degree or higher.
East Palo Alto is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of East Palo Alto was 30,034. It is situated on the San Francisco Peninsula, roughly halfway between the cities of San Francisco and San Jose. To the north and east is the San Francisco Bay, to the west is the city of Menlo Park, and to the south the city of Palo Alto. The city is directly north of Palo Alto. East Palo Alto was founded as an unincorporated community and incorporation in July 1983. The two cities are separated only by San Francisquito Creek and, largely, the Bayshore Freeway. The revitalization projects in 2000, and high income high-tech professionals moving into new developments, including employees from Google and Facebook, have begun to slowly eliminate the historically wide cultural and economic differences between the two cities. East Palo Alto and Palo Alto share both telephone area codes and postal ZIP codes.
Area code 650 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It was split from area code 415 on August 2, 1997, and includes most of San Mateo County, part of San Francisco, and the northwestern portion of Santa Clara County including Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Los Altos.
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Bishop Montgomery High School is a Catholic high school serving twenty-five parishes in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. BMHS was founded in 1957, and staffed by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, Conventual Franciscans, and lay faculty. The 24-acre (97,000 m2) campus is located in Torrance, California, in southwest Los Angeles County, one mile (1.6 km) from the Pacific Ocean and the Del Amo Mall. The coeducational student body is approximately 900 students in grades 9 through 12, making BMHS the sixth largest private high school in Los Angeles County.
Menlo School, commonly referred to as just Menlo, is a private college preparatory school in Atherton, California, United States. The school comprises a middle school, grades 6–8, with approximately 230 students and a high school, grades 9–12, with about 580 students. The middle and high school share a campus and have some overlapping administration, such as the Head of School.
The Sequoia Union High School District is a public union school district in the San Francisco Bay Area, primarily serving the southern San Mateo County communities of Atherton, Belmont, East Palo Alto, Ladera, San Carlos, Menlo Park, Portola Valley, Redwood City, and Woodside. The District currently serves more than 9,000 students, and also owns the radio station KCEA.
Silicon Valley International School, colloquially INTL,, is a private grade day school located in Silicon Valley, with two campuses in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton is a private, Roman Catholic, co-educational school in Atherton, California, United States. It was established in 1898 by the Society of the Sacred Heart and is governed by an independent board of trustees.
The Palo Alto Unified School District is a public school district located near Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. It consists of twelve primary schools, three middle schools, two high schools, and an adult school.
Gregory Fenton Buckingham was an American competition swimmer, Olympic silver medalist, and former world record-holder in two events.
Ravenswood High School was a public high school located in East Palo Alto, California, United States. Opened in 1958, it served the East Palo Alto area of San Mateo County until its closure in 1976. In 1958 its enrollment was 629 students. During the existence of Ravenswood, East Palo Alto was the low-income area in the shadow of its more affluent neighbors Menlo Park, Atherton and Palo Alto. The city of Palo Alto, while adjacent and sharing the same zip code, is a completely different city in Santa Clara County. Ravenswood was part of the Sequoia Union High School District, which also serves the southern San Mateo County cities of Belmont, Redwood City, San Carlos, and Woodside.
San Carlos High School was a high school operated by the Sequoia Union High School District in San Carlos, California, United States, from 1960 until 1982. Originally founded due to increasing enrollment across Belmont, San Carlos, and Redwood City, by 1982, the high school suffered from low enrollment due to racial protests between local students and students bused in from East Palo Alto, which led the district to close the site. The campus was demolished in 1988, and is today the site of Highlands Park and a subdivision of luxury homes in the San Carlos hills.
The Peninsula Library System (PLS) is a consortium of public and community college libraries in San Mateo County, California, United States, which serves the part of the San Francisco Bay Area known as "The Peninsula". The system has dozens of branches in local communities and at various area community colleges, a bookmobile, and automated book kiosks called Library-a-Go-Go.
Peninsula Athletic League (PAL) is a high school athletic conference in California, part of the CIF Central Coast Section of the California Interscholastic Federation. It comprises 17 high schools generally around San Mateo County, California. There are also nine smaller schools, designated supplemental members, of which four are located in Santa Clara County. The seventeen sports offered are divided into different divisions depending on the strength of the school's program.
Silicon Valley International School, colloquially INTL,, is a private grade day school located in Silicon Valley, with two campuses in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
TIDE Academy, commonly shortened to TIDE, is a small public high school located in eastern Menlo Park, California, United States and the newest school within the Sequoia Union High School District. Founded in 2019 with a freshmen class of 102 students, the school features specialized curriculum intended to prepare students for STEM careers. Despite drawing students from across the district's borders for its unique curricular emphasis, the school is officially neither a magnet school, nor a charter school. TIDE is a comprehensive ("traditional") high school with the full range of curriculum, clubs, sports, and administrative support as the larger high schools.
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