Cupertino High School

Cupertino High School
Address
10100 Finch Avenue Cupertino, California, 95014 United States
Coordinates	37°19′16″N 122°00′34″W
Information
Type	Public 4-year
Established	1958
School district	Fremont Union High School District (FUHSD)
Principal	Kami Tomberlain
Faculty	129
Number of students	1,708
Color(s)	Cardinal, Gold, and Gray
Mascot	Dusty the Pioneer
Information	408-366-7300
Website	www.chs.fuhsd.org

Cupertino High School, colloquially referred to as "Tino", is a four-year comprehensive public high school located near the Rancho Rinconada and Fairgrove neighborhoods of Cupertino, California, USA. It is part of the Fremont Union High School District. The school serves mostly suburban residential and IT-enriched areas in eastern Cupertino, southern Santa Clara, and west San Jose. It has been named a California Distinguished School by the California Department of Education in 1990, 1994, and 2007.

Cupertino High School opened in 1958 (its first day of actual academics was September 15, 1958) with 700 9th and 10th graders with George Fernandez as principal. Cupertino has had an average student body of 1600. It offers a wide range of academic subjects and extracurricular activities, such as FBLA, DECA, Speech And Debate, FIRST Robotics, and Key Club.

Academics

Like most other American high schools, Cupertino is a four-year high school that consists of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior classes.

Cupertino offers many AP and Honors classes including AP Chemistry, AP Biology, AP Spanish, AP French, AP Chinese, AP Japanese, AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC, AP Computer Science, AP English Literature, AP US History, and AP Microeconomics. Many students finish Calculus by their junior year, and a handful finish an advanced placement foreign language class in their third year as well.

The student run school newspaper is The Prospector, and the yearbook is the Nugget. Cupertino High School boasts an award winning drama program, Cupertino Actors' Theatre, that produces plays and musicals, provides educational theatre workshops for English classes, and many opportunities for performance and design for students considering a career in the performing arts.

In 1996, Cupertino High School was awarded the National Blue Ribbon Award. The Blue Ribbon Schools Program honors public and private K–12 schools that are either academically superior in their states or that demonstrate dramatic gains in student achievement

As of 1999, Cupertino High school began providing a program to help students with various disabilities and differences, especially autism and Asperger syndrome. This class, Academic Communications, provided them with an opportunity to learn basic life skills and how to apply for jobs.

In 2007 Cupertino High School was ranked 566 in Newsweek Best High Schools. Yet a year later, it opted out of Newsweek's list, citing an unfair system of ranking with too much emphasis placed on AP classes.

Achievements

In 2010, Cupertino High's senior class was awarded $100,000 by Dell for a SuperProm. For four years the class decided rather than fundraising for junior and senior prom, they would raise funds for the Nthimbiri Secondary School in Kenya and pledged to collect $100,000 and called the project Kenya Dream. In early 2010, the senior class came across Dell's contest and submitted a video to possibly win the contest and also get the word out about Kenya Dream. The seniors competed against 200+ schools all around the country and won with 32,145 votes, which was 2,000 votes more than the second place winner.

Schedule

Cupertino High has a unique schedule. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays are regular days, starting at 7:35 and ending at 2:55. However, Wednesdays and Thursdays are special "block days." On Wednesdays, school starts at 9:00 and students only attend periods 2, 4, and 6 (each 80 minutes in length). On Thursdays, school starts at normal time and students attend periods 1, 3, 5, and 7. On both block days, there are also tutorial periods, which students may either spend studying in their designated classrooms or traveling to another classroom through the use of a tutorial pass. In past years, the schedule had been set up with the odd period block day on Tuesdays to correspond with that of Lynbrook High School. This was to allow students to take classes at Lynbrook if they so chose. However, there was very little demand for this, so the schedule was changed to its current format.

Notable alumni

Sports

• John Hencken – Olympic Gold & Bronze Medal Swimmer
• Kurt Rambis – Former NBA basketball player, former assistant head coach L.A. Lakers, current head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves
• Deron Thorp – Former NFL and NFL Europa Football player
• Judas Prada – Former college basketball coach and former assistant coach of the Denver Nuggets
• Pat Murphy – Professional sports agent (notable clients include baseball star Torii Hunter)

Entertainment, news media, and music

• Azadeh Moaveni – journalist and author
• Bryan "Brain" Mantia – musician, drums Primus and Guns & Roses.
• Peter Shin (1989) – Film director, artist.
• Ross McGowan – television anchor for KTVU
• Renée Montagne – Host, Morning Edition, NPR
• Nina Garbiras – Actress, best known for her TV roles as Alexandra Brill in Fox Television’s series The $treet, Beth Greenway in the Showtime series Leap Years and Andrea Little on the first season of NBC's Boomtown.

Politics

• John Doolittle – Congressman from California's 4th congressional district from 1991–2009
• Fred Keeley – Assemblyman, California's 27th State Assembly district from 1996–2002

External links

• Cupertino High School website
• Cupertino High Journalism – The Prospector
• Cupertino High School All Alumni Association
• Information about Cupertino's Cross Country and Track Teams
• Cupertino High School Soccer history
• Cupertino High School Athletics
• Cupertino High School Robotics
• Cupertino High Speech and Debate
• Cupertino High School Project: Kenya Dream