Category: Santa Barbara News Press

In Santa Barbara County, as in the rest of the country, the race to become high school valedictorian is an increasingly cutthroat competition.

The honorific post has become the focus of intense student rivalries, slick maneuvering over class choices, and even the threat of legal action by parents.

To avoid splitting scholastic hairs in excruciatingly close contests, local schools are naming more multiple winners. Colleges, meanwhile, are getting flooded with more valedictorian applicants. And the valedictorians themselves are achieving GPAs that are through the roof.

Locally, the most intense valedictorian controversy has been waged at Lompoc High, where a $35,000 scholarship was at stake.

There, a neck-and-neck bid not only had a parent calling an attorney, but another accusing the school district of a cover-up. In the end, the school named four winners — a record number.

Lompoc is not the only place where pursuit of the valedictorian award has amped up academic competitiveness.

“With more students applying to colleges, it is kind of raising the bar,” said Jennifer Foster, an assistant principal at San Marcos High School.

To beef up their college applications, more students are taking college-level courses known as “Advanced Placement (AP)” or “International Baccalaureate” classes. Schools assign higher weight to those courses, raising the top possible GPA from 4.0 to 5.0.

During the 1990s the number of students taking college level courses doubled, according to The New Yorker magazine, which published a story this month stating that the increased competition has caused some schools to drop the distinction. Between 1990 and 2000, the mean GPA of high schoolers in the United States rose from 2.68 to 2.94, the magazine reported.

The stepped-up drive comes as a new reality TV show, called “The Scholar,” appears to glorify the growing intensity by having 10 students vie for a scholarship to the college of their choice.

In Carpinteria, valedictorian Emily Pettijohn felt the pressure both at home and beyond. The race at her school was so close the principal named three salutatorians.

Yet earning the title didn’t improve her prospects for scholarships; she applied for eight, and didn’t get one. The rejection letter from one school, Colorado College, said this has been the most competitive year in three decades — with 30 percent of its incoming freshmen being valedictorians from their schools.

She said many of the high schools there give the distinction to all students who receive straight A’s.

As a result of her failure to secure a scholarship, Emily is taking next year off.

“I’m going to move to Colorado and get residency out there,” she said. “I want to work full time . . . so I can save up some money for next year.”

Sometimes, the valedictorians aren’t even seniors.

Last year at Santa Barbara High School, seniors were peeved when 16-year-old Ben Eidelson, a junior who had accrued enough credits to graduate, took the title because he had the highest grade-point average, a 4.94. He had also earned two associate of arts degrees with honors.

In the old days, the tradition was to name one valedictorian and one salutatorian. Not anymore.

At the private Bishop Diego High School, there was only one valedictorian and salutatorian each year between 1990 and 2001, but this year, for the first time, the school had two of each. And Carpinteria’s naming of three salutatorians also probably constitutes a record, Principal John Arreguin said.

“It’s kind of difficult when you get into (differentiating) grade-point averages in the thousandths,” he said. “When you get into that minute an area . . . it isn’t worth trying to split hairs.”

At Santa Barbara High this year, Mikel Richardson won by a sliver, with an off-the-chart GPA of 4.85. The two salutatorians, Cord Phelps and Kimberly True, both earned a 4.82.

His sophomore year, Mikel quit playing football to keep his near-perfect grades on track.

While the praise from friends, family and strangers has been nice, it hasn’t come without sacrifice.

“I would have liked to learn a musical instrument,” said Mikel, who will attend Westmont College in Montecito, where he will major in chemistry.

David Hodges, an assistant principal at Santa Barbara High, said while it is good to recognize the academic feats of star students, he worries that the valedictorian title replaces the emphasis on learning with that of grades. Students, he added, are not similarly awarded for improvement.

“Say a student has gone from D’s to B’s (because) their reading comprehension had gone up,” he said. “Those accomplishments are well worthy of celebration as well.”

In Lompoc, the pressure went beyond simply being No. 1. Two of the school’s four winners had applied for a full-ride scholarship offered to valedictorians at Long Beach State — an award that amounts to about $35,000.

The dispute began when the front-running student, Matt Marchione, lost his sole first-place status because he dropped an AP class, leading to a swirl of confusion over the new winner. The school ultimately named four valedictorians, one of whom was Matt, whose father had contacted an attorney shortly before the announcement.

Earlier in the year, Matt had successfully applied for the Long Beach scholarship. The school bestows the award on the contingency that students wind up the first-place winners.

Naming four valedictorians infuriated parent David Grill, the father of Diane Grill, one of the four. Mr. Grill suspects his daughter, who unsuccessfully applied for the scholarship, achieved the highest GPA, and that the district caved to the legal pressure — a charge district officials deny.

But his anger has cooled somewhat since learning that, regardless of whether his daughter was the lone valedictorian, she did not qualify for the Long Beach scholarship.

“It still remains that the reputation of the school board is in the trash can, and the morale of the academic students is in the trash can,” he said. “The students see that no matter how hard they work, how great they achieve, the bottom line is . . . the actual reward in the end is determined by secret, back-room politics.”

Meanwhile, at Long Beach, the number of applicants for the scholarship — called President’s Scholars — has skyrocketed, from 25 the first year in 1995 to about 650 this year. Only 65 scholarships are available.

“We have moms with students in middle school calling to say, ‘I’ve heard about the scholarship, what do we need to do now to be competitive?’ ” said Valerie Bordeaux of Long Beach State.

The valedictorian imbroglio at Lompoc High wasn’t the district’s first.

Five years ago, a student at the other high school, Cabrillo, had taken the maximum number of AP courses, and had aced every course she took. Yet her GPA was surpassed by that of another student who had recently moved to Lompoc from a school out of town that had offered more AP classes.

Over the objections of the new student’s father — who pointedly identified himself as an attorney — the Lompoc school board crafted a policy granting principals the ability to name co-valedictorians despite differences in grade-point averages, “if inequity existed.”

But not all contests are bitter.

Take San Marcos High School, whose valedictorian and two salutatorians were all on the school’s polo team, and began hanging out in seventh grade.

Yet salutatorian Mike Kuhn admitted he wanted the title so badly he could taste it, unlike Thomas Myers, who assumed a more laid-back attitude but nonetheless wound up the winner.

“It’s sort of a fitting end,” Mike said.

One local high school, Dos Pueblos, has never given the honor, Assistant Principal Michelle Hughes said.

“All of our graduates are special,”

she said. “We want to keep an even playing field.”

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MIKE ELIASON / NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS

San Marcos High School graduate Thomas Myers assumed a more laid-back attitude toward the valedictorian honor than some of his peers, but he won it nonetheless.

Following controversy over who would be named valedictorian at Lompoc High, the school chose a record four winners, from top: Matt Marchione, Sarah Lyons, Thai Mova and Diane Grill

Before the school year started, 6-year-old Kevin Bowen used to stare into space when his mother asked him questions, like “Do you want to read this book or that book?” Now he knows that all questions require some sort of response — even if it’s just a nod.

Kevin accomplished this key social development step in a new class for children with autism begun in September in the Goleta elementary school district. The class at Kellogg School has six kids, but more are on the way.

Last year, district officials identified 17 children ages 3 to 5, with varying degrees of the disorder, expected to begin kindergarten in the next three years. (Four started this year.) That number surpassed by two the total number of autistic students attending schools in the entire elementary district.

The numbers aren’t as high in Santa Barbara, where 12 students have been identified. But at Cleveland Elementary, two children are enrolled in a similar program begun this year.

The numbers reflect a larger phenomenon in the United States, where one in 160 children is now diagnosed with varying degrees of the disability, a brain disorder that affects a child’s ability to communicate and interact socially. That compares with one in 2,500 in the mid- to late 1980s, said Dr. Lynn Koegel, the clinical director of the Autism Research and Training Center at UCSB. With the mushrooming numbers has come increased media attention, and still unproven theories about a cause, such as prenatal exposure to certain medications and inoculations for measles, mumps and rubella.

The Goleta class provides one-on-one teaching to each of the kids, and it is expensive. The cost to the district is $165,000 out of a $29 million budget. With five district-funded teachers and aides for the six students, it amounts to about $27,000 per student annually, compared to the roughly $5,000 for most other students. (UCSB also funds one student teacher.)

But because Goleta Union enjoys a rare funding status related to the high property tax revenue generated within the district and its declining enrollment, it is better off financially than the vast majority of California school districts.

Goleta school officials traveled extensively to study model programs before setting up their own this year.

As a result, parents of students with the disorder have a “middle ground” option. Last year, parents could send them to either the “special day classes” for all students with developmental disabilities — such as mental retardation and cerebral palsy — or the regular classroom, where they would be watched over by an instructional aide.

In the special classroom in Goleta, the students ponder not only traditional subjects but learn social skills that other children pick up more easily.

One second-grade student who used to spit at the wall or “cuss out” classmates when they tried to talk to him has learned to say “no” when the head teacher, Brent Elder, asks him if he feels like talking.

“I’ll say ‘OK, then keep it cool and if you do we’ll talk about it,’ ” Mr. Elder said.

Autistic children “are not as concerned with social conformities,” said Dr. Koegel. “A (successful) teacher’s not going to say, ‘If you don’t do your homework, you can’t go to recess.’ A child with autism might say, ‘Fine.’ ”

Also, such children often need either more or less sensory input than others.

A student whose sensory needs are underactivated might crave deep-pressure rubbing occasionally throughout the day; a hypersensitive student might be unable to focus on anything but the feeling of the seam on the toe of his sock. Nearly half of people with autism are hypersensitive to noise.

“For them, the (school) bell ringing might seem like the sound of a dentist’s drill or a jet plane taking off,” said Helen Bird, who works with special education students in Goleta as an inclusion specialist.

In the Goleta class, the five boys and one girl take a daily “sensory break,” with an occupational therapist squeezing the hands and heads of some children or rubbing their arms and legs with a plastic brush. One child who has a need for oral input will receive a specially made rubber toy to chew on, providing an alternative to chewing on his hands.

Parents and educators seem to be pleased with the progress of the Goleta class.

Kevin’s mother, Terri Bowen, has noticed marked improvements in his writing skills.

“He’s now working on forming letters and numbers,” she said.

Some of the kids in the class spend up to half the day with “typically developing” kids. Dr. Koegel said that research in this past year suggests moving them toward full inclusion.

“Our end goal in life is to not have them in segregated settings,” said Dr. Koegel, who heads an inclusion program in the 500-student Montecito Elementary School for the eight children there with varying degrees of the disorder. “You want them to have jobs.”

Regular students, she said, also benefit.

“The typical kids are absolutely wonderful with kids with autism,” said Dr. Koegel, who was careful to credit the Goleta district for responding to parents’ requests. “There are several kids in each class who want to sit and help. It really makes your heart soar.”

Goleta parent Tambra Boydston can attest to that.

Her fifth-grade daughter, who was diagnosed with high-functioning autism, has been in the regular classroom since kindergarten and sometimes gets nudged in the right direction by nearby students.

“Once in a while they’ll notice she’s not quite focused. She’ll be staring out the window during reading and a kid will point where they are in the book,” she said.

Now, her daughter enjoys sleepovers and birthday parties with a circle of friends. But Ms. Boydston doesn’t necessarily credit the full-on regular classroom experience for her daughter’s social success.

“That’s who she is,” she said. “One thing that made it tough to diagnose her is she wanted to be cuddled. There are some that are that way.”

Mr. Elder said the goal of his Goleta class is to eventually integrate the students. But for now the structured environment is better for most of them.

“With autism, the world is chaotic,” he said. “Routine and sameness provide comfort in a world they have a hard time understanding.”

In the classroom, the most important asset is a teacher’s patience, a trait for which 24-year-old Mr. Elder is well known.

On a daily basis, one 5-year-old used to scream “No!” repeatedly and run around the room when he didn’t want to do an assignment, like learning how to count. Now, he knows to simply say “I’m not ready” when he needs a break before starting such a task.

The most severely affected student in the class is extremely withdrawn, and Mr. Elder can often spend 10 minutes sitting face-to-face with the boy, coaxing him to put on his shoes.

“Stand up,” he said evenly to the boy on a recent school day. The child was softly singing and muttering to himself while holding his ear and looking at his raised hand. “Pick up your shoe, please. Stand up. Hand me your shoe, please. Pull (the Velcro) off. Nice job.”

WHAT IS AUTISM?

Autism is a developmental disorder that is characterized by three distinctive behaviors and is generally apparent in children by the age of three.

Autistic children have difficulties with social interaction, problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, and sometimes exhibit repetitive behaviors or narrow, obsessive interests. The behaviors can range from mild to disabling.

Many children with autism have a reduced sensitivity to pain, but are abnormally susceptible to sensations such as sound, touch, or other sensory stimulation. These unusual sensitivities may contribute to behavioral symptoms such as a resistance to being cuddled or hugged.

There is no cure for autism, but symptoms often lessen with treatment and with age.

— Source: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health

STEVE MALONE / NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS

Carol Rowland, one of the “foster grandparents” in a Kellogg School program for students with autism, helps Kevin Bowen complete a class project. Kevin is one of six students in the class.

Jenny Wolfrom, an instructional assistant, works with student Jordan Frank as he examines an “emotion card” during a one-on-one activity at Kellogg School.