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Palo Alto High School

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Palo Alto High School
The former Palo Alto High School sign.
Location
Map
Palo Alto
,
CA

United States
Information
TypePublic
Established1898
PrincipalScott Laurence (2005-2007)
Grades9-12
Number of students1670
Color(s)Green & White
MascotViking
Websitehttp://www.paly.net/

Palo Alto Senior High School is the older of the two high schools in Palo Alto, California, United States. Founded in 1898, its enrollment today is almost 1700 students. "Paly", as the school is known locally, draws high-achieving and scholastically-minded students due to the demographics of its location in the heart of Silicon Valley and its proximity to Stanford University. In 2002 Newsweek magazine ranked it among the top 200 public high schools, based on test scores.[1] The school also carries on a distinguished athletic tradition, marked in recent years by a rivalry with crosstown foe Gunn. Titles won by teams from Paly include California State Championships in Boys Varsity Basketball in 1993 (during which the team went undefeated) and 2006.

Paly is situated on the older, northern side of Palo Alto, a location it has occupied since 1919. The western boundary of campus is El Camino Real, opposite which stands Stanford Stadium and the campus of Stanford University. The northern end of Paly runs along Embarcadero Road (from which the main parking lot is accessible).

The eastern edge of the Paly campus abuts the Caltrain rail tracks, which separate the school from Alma Street. Commute trains thunder by on the route between San Jose and San Francisco, their window-rattling passage routinely ignored by all but the newest students and teachers. In 1986, 2002 and 2003, the Paly community was shaken by two students' suicides (by jumping in front of oncoming trains) at or near the Alma Street-Churchill Avenue crossing.

The southern side of the school grounds, with its expanse of athletic fields, ends at Churchill Avenue and the leafy residential area beyond. What would be the extreme southwestern corner of the campus is occupied by the main offices of the Palo Alto Unified School District.

The school can reached by the VTA bus line 22 along El Camino Real, the Dumbarton Express bus, the SamTrans bus line KX, Stanford's free Marguerite shuttle, Caltrain's Palo Alto station, as well as by the Palo Alto city shuttle, which runs along Embarcadero Road.

The school mascot is the Viking.

Student Organizations

Student Government

Paly ASB leadership includes the ASB President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Spirit Commissioners, and Web Design/Communications Officer. The purpose of the ASB, as defined by its constitution, is the conduct of activities on behalf of the students of Palo Alto High School as approved by the principal and the governing board of the Palo Alto Unified School District.

Publications

  • The Campanile is Paly's school print publication. It claims one of the largest circulations of any high school newspaper in the Bay Area. It prints around 20 broadsheet pages once every three weeks. It has won four Pacemaker awards and also a West regional award for editorial excellence from Time.
  • Verde is Paly's school magazine publication, published five times each year. Verde is the widest distributed student-run magazine in the nation, and has won numerous Pacemaker and Gold Crown awards for scholastic journalism, including the 2005 Gold Crown award in the Newspaper category. In 2006 Verde won the Best in Show at National Journalism Convention held in San Francisco.
  • The Paly Voice, launched in the 2002-3 school year, is Paly's online news source. It features searchable archives of all of the above publications as well as exclusive online content. In the spring of 2005 the site won both the People's Voice and Overall Webby Award in the "Student" category, a rare accomplishment for a high school level Internet site. The Voice was also one of the national Online Pacemaker award recipients in 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004, and was a finalist for the same award in 2003. The Voice can be accessed at voice.paly.net.
  • InFocus is Paly's television news channel. It is broadcast five days a week during fourth period, and available only on Paly campus and online at voice.paly.net. It has recently come under fire from Campanile for its unreliability, an issue highlighted by the occasional missed broadcasts due to technical difficulties. Their conflict has manifested in a cartoon in the Campanile and a subsequent InFocus segment .
  • Calliope is Paly's literary magazine, published once or twice a year. It is also available online at calliope.paly.net.

Mock Trial

Palo Alto's mock trial team, run by former Social Studies Instructional Supervisor Suzanne Stewart, is a perennial force in the Santa Clara County division of the Constitutional Rights Foundation's mock trial competition. Palo Alto competed in the 2004,[2] 2005,[2] 2006, and 2007 county finals, beating Lynbrook High School in 2005 and 2007[3] to represent Santa Clara County in the California Mock Trial Competition. In 2005, Palo Alto placed 10th in the state.[4]

Theater

Past productions include: Big Love, The Fantasticks, A Chorus Line, Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage, Metamorphoses, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Learned Ladies, Romeo and Juliet, Anything Goes, and 43 Plays For 43 Presidents. Every other year, Paly holds a Spring showcase of student-written and directed one-act plays called "Speed Limit 25."

The Thespian Society is the oldest club on campus, and facilitates field trips to see plays throughout the Bay Area, as well as to attend acting and improv workshops. Since 2004, the annual Play in a Day festival has been held the first weekend of Winter Break, when theater alumni join current students in the Haymarket to write, rehearse and perform one-act plays within a period of just over 24 hours.

Robotics

The Palo Alto High School (Paly) Robotics Team, established in 1996 by Doug Bertain and his engineering technology students, is one of the many active academic programs at Paly. They are funded mainly by corporate sponsors and compete annually in competitions such as the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Competition, the Electric Vehicle Rally, Botball, and the Tech Challenge. In 2006, the Robotics team won first place at the FIRST Las Vegas Regional Competition. This year, the team has also been selected to participate in, and given a $10,000 grant from MIT's InvenTeams program.

Campus Traditions

Since Palo Alto High school was built at its current location in 1919, it has acquired a host of campus traditions.

Spirit Week

Each class is assigned a color for Spirit Week, which they wear on Wednesday. Each day has its own costume theme, which is broken down into sub-themes by class. Rallies and competitions are held on the quad at lunch and points are awarded to each class based on their performance. Points can also be taken away for poor sportsmanship or the wearing of unauthorized class apparel.

  • Spirit Week Themes
    • Monday: Class Theme
    • Tuesday: Salad Dressing
    • Wednesday: Class colors/shirts
    • Thursday: Ages
    • Friday: School colors

The senior class has almost always won Spirit Week. One exception was of the class of 2006. The class theme was voted to be "Herbology" but the school decided it would not be appropriate and students found wearing the shirts were asked to remove the shirt, turn it inside out, or add language making the statement political. During Spirit Week, the class was penalized for wearing the shirts and was the first senior class to get a negative score and lose Spirit Week. Additionally, the class of 1987 won Spirit Week three years in a row, sophomore through senior years and the class of 2002 won it all four years 98-02.[citation needed]


Every year, two Spirit Commissioners are appointed to the ASB. The new commissioners must go through an initiation from the current Spirit Commissioners and one or two various members of Student Council. The new Spirit Commissioners are kidnapped and subjected to various methods of embarrassment and degradation. They must also recite a top secret pledge that was passed down from the originators of this tradition, Commissioner Brigid and Commissioner Ryan (aka- the bomb squad).

Senior Pranks

  • Six-foot C painted on Stanford's main quad (c. 1940)[5]
  • Cow in Tower Building (possibly apocryphal)[6]
  • '74 was painted on the Media Center roof and promptly turned into '76 that same year as a dis to 1974 grads from some 1976's grads-to-be (1974)[citation needed]
  • A cloth mannequin was hung from the tower of Apple-Pie High, a "hippy high school" within Paly (1976)[citation needed]
  • A small car was assembled in the Media Center (Library), apparently brought in piece by piece (year unknown)[citation needed]
  • The entire freshman class was assembled for a group photo. As the shutter clicked, several hundred gallons of water were dumped on them from above (1979)[citation needed]
  • A beehive was brought into the library in a sealed 33 gallon plastic garbage can, then opened. The library and adjoining offices were closed for a day in order to remove the bees (1979)[citation needed]
  • All the doorlocks in the science wing were removed and reversed (1979)[citation needed]
  • Pigs released in library (1985?)
  • Eight-foot paper maché and chicken wire penis was tied between palm trees and dangled across the quad (1991)[7]
  • Library broken into; library carrels moved to quad (1997)[6]
  • Volkswagen Rabbit from the Auto Shop was parked inside the library near the quad entrance (1998)[citation needed]
  • Hundreds of crickets unleashed in the library prior to the finals for grades 9-11 (1999)[citation needed]
  • Complete classroom moved to quad and reassembled (1999)[citation needed]
  • Giant inflatable water polo ball taken from Stanford was re-inflated on top of the library building (2003)[6]
  • "ASS SEX $4" written on the ground in green Hershey's chocolate. (2007)[citation needed]
File:Senior Prank 2007.jpg
2007
  • A car which was decorated by seniors for a prank was turned over on the senior deck and a painted toilet was cemented into a seating area. The police arrived on the scene and started and investigation. An administrator was called to the school and informed of the prank and what the police were doing about it. [8][9] Students rallied around the senior held responsible, showing their support by wearing T-shirts saying "Free Tom," a reference to an alias the student had used for years.[10][11] San Jose Mercury News Columnist and Paly mom Patty Fisher commented on the controversy[12][13] as did James Franco at his 2007 Paly baccalaureate address in Stanford Memorial Auditorium. (2007)
  • Math Building bathroom was filled with cooked noodles (2007)[citation needed]

Streaking

Typically a group of just graduated seniors streak across the quad during the last week of school (usually the last day of classes at brunch).

This event also occurs during the Last Chance Dance.

Notable Alumni

Notable Visitors

  • Walter Mondale, Former U.S. Vice President, 2006
  • David M. Kennedy, Historian and author of The American Pageant, 2006
  • Mary Tillman, Mother of the late American football player and soldier Pat Tillman, 2006
  • Alan Bersin, California Secretary of Education, 2006
  • Annette Bening, American Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning actress, 2006

Sources: The Paly Voice at http://voice.paly.net

  • Steve Young, Football Player for the San Francisco 49er's, 2004.
  • James Franco, Actor, Spoke at the Baccalaureate of the class of 2007.

Trivia

  • The school colors were green and red until Gunn split off. Gunn took red, and Paly's colors changed to green and white.[citation needed]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Jeffries, Kimberly and Laila Ouhamou, researchers. [1]
  2. ^ a b Chana Karlin-Neumann. Mock Trial Team Dominates County, Campanile, 7 March, 2005.
  3. ^ Erik Krasner-Karpen. Mock Trial qualifies for States, Campanile, 9 March, 2007.
  4. ^ Taylor Whitfield. Mock trial represents county in State Finals, Voice, 21 March, 2005.
  5. ^ Marek, Grant. "There's More to the Big Game than 'the Play': Rivalry has Storied Tradition of Pranks, Acts of School Pride," Daily Californian, 17 November, 2001. [2]
  6. ^ a b c Cook, Gavin. "Pranks brighten, blemish Paly environment," Campanile, 2 June, 2005. [3]
  7. ^ Blakely, Participant, Class of '91
  8. ^ Coté, John. "Senior prank: Volvo belly-up on campus," San Francisco Chronicle, 7 June, 2007. [4]
  9. ^ Kazak, Don. "Paly 'senior prank' has felony consequences," Palo Alto Weekly, 8 June, 2007. [5]
  10. ^ Wykes, S.L. "Students protest teen's arrest," San Jose Mercury News, 7 June, 2007. [6]
  11. ^ Nevius, C.W. "Volvo-flipper's arrest, jail time turn him into school celebrity," San Francisco Chronicle, 8 June, 2007. [7]
  12. ^ Fisher, Patty. "Safety obsession dulls teen spirit," San Jose Mercury News, 7 June, 2007. [8]
  13. ^ Ibid. "Readers wrestle with best way to punish prank," 11 June, 2007. [9]
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