Town Hall meeting to promote college for Santa Paula students

September 19, 2008
Santa Paula News

The Santa Paula Union High School District, the nationally known Hispanic Scholarship Fund and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Ventura County will host a free Town Hall Meeting in English and Spanish on Wednesday, Oct. 1 to promote a college education and help prepare Santa Paula’s students for college.

The Santa Paula Union High School District, the nationally known Hispanic Scholarship Fund and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Ventura County will host a free Town Hall Meeting in English and Spanish on Wednesday, Oct. 1 to promote a college education and help prepare Santa Paula’s students for college.The event is open to all students and their parents at Santa Paula High School, Renaissance High School, and 8th graders at Isbell Middle School. A free dinner will be served to the first 350 guests.This event – the first of its kind to be held at a high school in Ventura County – takes place from 6 to 9 p.m., starting with dinner in McMahon Gym at Santa Paula High School, then moving to the school auditorium for the presentation.During the three-hour program, attendees will learn about financial aid options, how to apply for scholarships, and about the college preparatory curriculum. Representatives from area colleges including Ventura College; UCSB; California Lutheran University; California State University Channel Islands; and California State University, Northridge will be on hand to talk to students and parents, and to answer questions. An information packet will be handed out to attendees, featuring bilingual materials and scholarship applications. Town Hall Meetings are one of the outreach programs offered by the non-profit Hispanic Scholarship Fund (www.hsf.net). The HSF is the nation’s leading organization supporting higher education for Latinos all over the United States. In its 32-year history, the HSF has awarded more than 82,000 scholarships worth over $221 million to Latinos attending nearly 2,000 colleges.Dr. David Gomez, Superintendent of the Santa Paula Union High School District, said the district’s sponsorship of this event is a part of its goal to encourage students to attend college and make sure they complete the academic prerequisites while they are in high school.
“A high school diploma is no longer enough to get a good job. Students have to think about going beyond high school, which means attending a two-year or four-year college, or beyond.”In recent years, Santa Paula High School has augmented its curriculum and added scores of rigorous classes to develop and promote a college-going culture on campus, and the high school has seen college attendance surge among its graduates. Santa Paula High’s academic program fulfills the A to G college admittance requirements for UC and CSU schools, and Santa Paula High is now an SAT and ACT testing site so students can feel more comfortable taking the test at their home school.By all standard measures, Santa Paula High School students made tremendous academic improvements in recent years. The recent release of the 2007-2008 school year test results show large gains for the entire student population, as well as most of the subgroups tested.• For the California High School Exit Exam (which students must pass to earn a high school diploma), on the English portion of the test given to 10th graders, 78 percent of students at Santa Paula High passed the exam last year, compared to 73 percent the previous year. On the math portion, 79 percent of students passed, compared to 69 percent from the previous year.• For the Academic Performance Index (API), Santa Paula High students brought in an API score of 683 last year, up 12 points from the prior year, when the API was 671. The year before that, the SPHS API was 637, for an overall two-year net gain of 46 points.• Another measure of academic progress is the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP), the federal government’s benchmark for student performance under the No Child Left Behind law. Growth targets were met and exceeded last year for every student category measured at Santa Paula High School.



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