The little district that could

Congratulations to all the area graduates!

Tonight I’ll be proudly attending the Temple City High School commencement for the Class of 2008. My son, Matt, 18, will be graduating, as will some 534 other seniors.
Here’s a high school from which 15 students will be going to UCLA, and another 15 will be going to UC Berkeley (my son, included). That is just one aspect of the success story that is Temple City High School.

Respected TC businessman Jerry Jambazian wrote in an e-mail to me, after attending the TCHS senior awards ceremony: “In the graduating class there were 151 seniors who had a GPA of 3.5 and SAT (scores) of 1500 and above.”

Call me biased, but you know the argument is easily made that this school, with its above 800 API, is one of the best in the San Gabriel Valley.

That’s why I believe a recent editorial in a weekly newspaper (NOT affiliated with the Pasadena Star-News or any of our weekly publications) that criticized outgoing Temple City Unified School District superintendent Joan Hillard was harsh and inappropriate. The writer went so far as to suggest that Hillard not attend graduation and other promotion ceremonies this year.

While our newspaper (and even yours truly) have been critical of Hillard at times, she deserves to be present at the TCHS graduation tonight. As someone who was at the helm of this district for nine years, she contributed to the continued success of this district and its students. I want to thank her, the other administrators, counselors, coaches, the teachers at TCHS, Oak Avenue Middle, and the three elementary schools and all the staff for a job well done.

The school is a model of what a small district that promotes learning can do.

This entry was posted in environment, land use, Pasadena by Steve Scauzillo. Bookmark the permalink.

About Steve Scauzillo

I love journalism. I've been working in journalism for 32 years. I love communicating and now, that includes writing about environment, transportation and the foothill/Puente Hills communities of Hacienda Heights, Rowland Heights, Walnut and Diamond Bar. I write a couple of columns, one on fridays in Opinion and the other, The Green Way, in the main news section. Send me ideas for stories. Or comments. I was opinion page editor for 12 years so I enjoy a good opinion now and then.

3 thoughts on “The little district that could

  1. the school has a similar schools rank of what, a 3 or 4? it has 62% Asian and 20% white students. that’s why it has an API. you could put the books on the tables and the students with their cultural expectations would teach themselves. c’mon be a little objective steve.

  2. an API so high, i meant to say. it also has probably the largest achievement gap between high-performing Asian students and African-American students of any school around.

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