Shorecrest High School

Shorecrest High School
File:GordonArms.gif
Location
15343 25th AVE NE Shoreline, WA 98155
Information
Type	Public
Motto	Seeing far... Working close... Creating choices... Building excellence... We are Shorecrest
Principal	Patrick Hegarty
Enrollment	1424 (as of April 2005)
Information	(206) 361-4286
Colors Mascot	Navy Blue, Forest Green, and Old Gold. Otis, the fighting Scot.
Website	http://schools.shorelineschools.org/shorecrest/

Shorecrest High School is a public high school in Shoreline, Washington (grades 9 through 12). Located at 15343 25th Ave. NE, Shoreline, Washington 98155, Shorecrest was founded in 1961 and its mascot is Otis the Highlander, and students refer to themselves as "Scots," or the "Highlanders," a reference to the Clan Gordon. Shorecrest is one of the two high schools in the Shoreline School District.

Mission

School Organization

Shorecrest is a comprehensive high school offering a broad spectrum of educational programs in academics, the arts, and applied learning. Instruction is organized by departments; many staff work collaboratively both inter- and intra-departmentally. Opportunities for participation and leadership in school decision-making are encouraged at Shorecrest. Leadership groups include Department Heads, the Administrative Team, school-wide committees, and Site Council.

Academics

Running Start

Shorecrest High School offers Running Start, a program that allows juniors and seniors a chance to receive high school and college credit for classes at the Shoreline Community College during the school day. Juniors and seniors may earn high school and community college credit without charge for tuition through the Running Start program. Students must provide their own transportation and purchase their own books. With the exception of PE, Shoreline School District graduation requirements are not waived for Running Start students. Running Start courses may, however, satisfy particular graduation requirements (e.g., vocational credit, fine arts credit, etc.)

Community Service

All students are required to complete 60 hours of community service in order to graduate. This program officially begins during the sophomore year and is monitored through the 10th grade English class. Students can volunteer their services at schools, community agencies, hospitals, and many other places.

Senior Projects

All seniors are required to successfully plan, prepare, present, and assess a Senior Project as a graduation requirement. The project is coordinated through the Senior World History and Literature course and the Senior Project Office. Each senior will work with a mentor and present their project to a panel of reviewers.

National Honor Society

The National Honor Society (NHS) exemplifies scholarship, service, leadership, and character. Eligible for membership are sophomores, juniors, and seniors with a cumulative GPA of 3.7 or higher. There is an application process that takes place in February of each year. To remain a member students must maintain a 3.5 cumulative GPA and participate in official NHS sponsored activities every semester.

Student activities

Performing arts

Shorecrest is regionally renowned for its excellent performing arts programs, including its award winning bands, orchestras, choirs, and drama programs. The Shorecrest Performing Arts Center is a state-of-the-art theatre that houses many of the school's concerts and performances, and is often rented by community organizations. Shorecrest's drama program has won the award for best overall performance in the 5th Avenue Theatre's high school musical awards, as well as numerous acting awards.

Student Media

• Tattoo (literary-arts magazine)
• Highland Piper (newspaper)
• The Loch (annual)
• "SCNN" (news)

Clubs

• Diversity Board
• Gay Straight Alliance
• Black Student Union
• Art Club
• International Club
• Key Club
• Tattoo
• Swing Club
• Chess Club
• Bible Study
• Science Club
• Math Team
• The Piper (school newspaper)
• Connecting Muslims and non-Muslims
• Drama Club
• Speech and Debate Team

Department Heads

• Ms. Henry (Math)
• Ms. Ellingson (Science)
• Mr. Loland {Social Studies)
• Ms. Etter (English)
• Mr. Nordby (Business)
• Ms. Nemeth (World Languages)
• Mrs. Johnson (Art)

Laptop program

Last year Shorecrest High School received its long-awaited technology grant, given by a large bond passed by the voters in Shoreline and Lake Forest Park. First piloted in the middle schools, Kellogg and Einstein, 2006-07 was the first year they were implemented for all high schoolers and middle schoolers. Students could choose to not get a Macbook. Each student was required to sign a restrictive terms of use as well as pay a $70 fee for insurance and a laptop case.

Every student received a Macbook pre-loaded with district deemed "necessary" software, including Microsoft Office and iLife. However, certain programs such as chat clients, DVD Players, and other applications and functionalities of the computer were removed for security, efficiency, and time constraints. While students were not the administrators and could only modify basic preferences (Desktop, Mouse, etc.) and could not install, download, or modify their district owned laptops, in certain cases exceptions were made for students to install specific programs for curricular use.

In the initial months of the program's first school year, many people experienced frustration with the laptops. A district wide poll later in the year indicated that while parents and students were supportive, if only lukewarm, of the technology integration program, teachers had many more reservations and qualms about the laptops. These included: web filtering, bandwidth bottlenecks, widespread gaming including flash as well as emulated console games, chatting, pornography, and countless violations of the terms of use. While the district exercised a lenient policy towards punishment, severe or obvious violations such as downloaded pornography or modification of system files often resulted in a suspension or equivalent punishment.

The school district network operates with the Websense web site filter. The filter fulfills two rolls: safeguard the internet to assauge parental fears of unsupervised school internet use, and restrict student ability to pursue non-curricular activities. Controversy arose when certain websites were found to be blocked by websense, including all personal hosting websites, websites affiliated with homosexuality, YouTube (for bandwidth reasons), "hobbies" websites, almost all chat client websites, and proxies. In some cases, this blocking was unintentional, and performed automatically by the Websense software. Blocking policies in these instances were reviewed on a case by case basis, and changed if necessary. In other cases, such as personal websites, there is a 60 minute daily quota enforced, so that those sites are not completely blocked. In remaining instances, for websites such as Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, and other websites that are not academic related, web sites are completely blocked. The Websense filter only affects the school district network, and does not affect home networks.

As of the 2007-2008 school year, a Mac Minder restriction is initially placed on every students' computer. These restriction include a limit of three hours of internet time after school hours during the school week and a total of five hours computer time during the weekends. A few weeks into the school year, students were given the option to submit a signed parent consent form to modify or remove their laptop's restrictions, despite the fact that many students had already found out how to "freeze" this program.

Student schedule information

The school day starts at 7:50am. It ends at 2:25pm every day. The average class load per student at Shorecrest is 6 classes. The class schedule is comprised of A,B and C days. On A days, odd numbered classes (1,3,5) meet for 1 hour and 45 minutes. On B days, even numbered classes (2,4,6) meet for 1 hour and 45 minutes. On C days, all 6 classes meet for 50 minutes.

Clan Gordon heritage

An elected student panel selected Shorecrest's mascot after a phase of thorough research. They first decided on a name--"Shorecrest" is the crest of a shoreline--and then selected the blue, green and gold color scheme. These colors, they discovered, coincided with the colors traditionally used by Clan Gordon in Scotland, so the students decided to adopt the Clan's palette. The panel sent a letter to the leaders of the Clan, who granted Shorecrest permission to be "part" of Clan Gordon–-every person who passes through Shorecrest becomes an honorary member. In addition, the school adopted many other features associated with the Clan: the names of Shorecrest's publications (Highland Piper, Loch, and Tattoo) all have Scottish roots, and the marching band still sports the traditional costume of Clan Gordon, from kilt to sporran. Additionally, the clan's motto, found on its traditional crest, "bydand", has been translated as 'abiding' or 'resilience'.

Notable alumni

• Ray Pinney, Former National Football League offensive lineman with the Pittsburgh Steelers
• Marc Wilson, Former National Football League quarterback with the New England Patriots, and Oakland Raiders
• Michelle Akers, professional soccer player and member of the 1991 and 1999 world-champion U.S. Women's National Teams
• Glendon Rusch, Major League Baseball pitcher
• Rick Bender, Former Washington State Legislator (10 Years) and Senator (8 Years)
• Rainn Wilson, actor (attended but transferred before graduating)
• Sean Nelson, frontman of the alternative rock group Harvey Danger
• Sanjaya Malakar, American Idol 6th Season Finalist (2007), attended in 2004-2005 for freshman year
• Terry Karg, Former Arena Football League QB with the Tampa Bay Storm and Connecticut Coyotes. Currently the Offensive Coordinator for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Pioneers
• Jeff Kashiwa, jazz musician
• Allen James, 1982, two time Olympian, 1992/1996 track and field athlete of the century at Western Washington University

Sports

• Tennis
• Cross Country
• Football
• Volleyball
• Soccer
• Swimming
• Basketball
• Gymnastics
• Wrestling
• Golf
• Track

Notable Sport History

• 1992 Boy's Basketball Wesco Champs
• 1992 Boy's Football Wesco Champs
• 1992 Boy's Basketball 2nd State
• 1992 Boy's Tennis Wesco Champs
• 1993 Boy's Basketball Wesco Champs
• 2001 Girl's Softball 4A State Champions
• 2004 Girl's Volleyball State Champions
• 2005 Boy's Soccer 3A State Championship
• 2006 Boy's State Cross Country High Scorers
• 2006 State Math Olympiad 2nd Place
• 2006 Hip Hop State Champions
• 2006 Track and Field 3A 2nd Place
• 2007 Hip Hop 3rd Nationals
• 2007 Hip Hop 2nd at State
• 2007 Boy's Swim/Dive Wesco Champs

Trivia

• Weezer recorded a promo single acoustic version of Pink Triangle at Shorecrest in 1997 after the school won a contest to have the song played during lunch. [1] A video recording of this performance appears on Weezer's DVD, Video Capture Device.

External links

• http://schools.shorelineschools.org/shorecrest/
• Shorecrest History of the Scottish Arts
• Shorecrest Pipers and Highland Dancers
• http://www.scforums.uni.cc/ is an unofficial Shorecrest webpage created by students.