- Homestead High School (HHS) is an American comprehensive high school serving western Cupertino, western Sunnyvale, and portions of southern Los Altos, in Santa Clara County, California. Opened in 1962, the school serves 2,270 students in grades 9 to 12 as part of the Fremont Union High School District (FUHSD).
- History
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Homestead High School has played an important role in the development of Silicon Valley. During the late 1960s and 1970s, the school was a haven for students interested in electronics and the emerging computer age. The school’s electronics class is considered as seminal as Frederick Terman's program at Stanford University.
- Campus
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Homestead High School is bordered by Homestead Road to the north and Interstate 280 to the south. The athletic facilities were remodeled in Summer 2009 to add solar panels and shade structures over both parking lots and reorient the football field and track so that lights could be installed and the school could host night-time games. The other half, facing Homestead Road, consists of several school buildings. The majority of the buildings have an inner corridor with outdoor corridors connecting the buildings. Green-colored hoofmarks decorate Homestead High School's sidewalks and walkways, which are from the school's official mascot and color. The front walls of the school are decorated with murals of similar theme, including a large, newly painted mural of a mustang.
- Academics
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Homestead High School offers a curriculum including preparatory courses, vocational training, and general education. The school has a variety of special programs to meet the needs of exceptional students. Open-access Advanced Placement (AP) classes are offered in the subject including US History, English, Physics, Calculus, Art, Government/Economics, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Statistics, Spanish, French, Japanese, Music Theory, and Chinese. Several programs promote positive learning for all students, including Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) and inclusion classes to support the needs of English Language Learners and Special education students. The school also offers a Peer Tutorial program and a program called EXCEL to serve the needs of students trying to pass the California High School Exit Exam and finish graduation requirements. The school introduced a block schedule in the 2003 school year that includes a 30-minute tutorial period four days a week.
- Academically, Homestead ranks in the top 10 high schools in Santa Clara County. Based on the average standardized test scores of its diverse student body, Homestead ranks third in the Fremont Union High School District, below top-ranked Monta Vista High School and second-ranked Lynbrook High School. Homestead has been successful at placing its students in state and national competitions. In science, math, and business, Homestead students have matched or outperformed students at Lynbrook and Monta Vista, and Homestead students have regularly placed among the top schools in the United States.
- Extracurricular activities
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Homestead High School provides a broad co-curricular program. Students actively lead and participate in a wide variety of organizations, clubs and teams.
- Colorguard
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Taught by a world class instructional staff, Homestead colorguard is one of the top teams in the nation. Undefeated Scholastic AA Class CCGC Champion for 4 years and placing 6th at WGI World Championships in Dayton, Ohio has made the organization nationally known. The caption head is Jason Peeples and is assisted by Luis Valcazar and Ethan Brooks as well as many other occasional staff members. They are currently competing in the Open class in both the CCGC circuit and the WGI circuit.
- The Epitaph
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Homestead's award-winning student newspaper, The Epitaph," won eight Gold Crowns from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA). During that same period, it received eight Pacemaker Awards from the National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA). As late as 1994, those were the most national awards ever given to a high school paper.
- The paper also received one of its highest honors, The Press Freedom Award from the Student Press Law Center, in 1988 for its successful defense of a story about about a junior boy who was HIV positive, one of the first such stories in any high school newspaper. The story had been initially censored by the principal but was allowed to run when the newspaper invoked a California law that protected students' rights to free expression. The story was reported nationally in the wake of a Supreme Court's decision in the Hazelwood case which gave school officials greater latitude in determining the content of a school's official student publications. The California law made the ruling moot in the state.
- During that same period, the paper also won numerous local and state awards. The San Jose Mercury News named the paper the best in its annual contest for Silicon Valley student newspapers ten of the twelve years the paper ran the contest. It was also awarded the top prize from the San Francisco Press Club several times during that period, as well as the top prize from the now-defunct Palo Alto Times.
- The paper's unusual name was selected by the school's first students in 1962. In keeping with the school's western theme and Mustang mascot, they named the paper after the first newspaper west of the Rockies, The Tombstone, Arizona Epitaph, which had been popularized in a television series of the time about Wyatt Earp, "Tombstone Territory."
- Some the newspapers former staffers have gone on to work professionally. Most notably, Alex Williams ('83) writes for The New York Times and Michael D. Shear ('86) is a White House reporter for The Washington Post.
- The paper's adviser, Nick Ferentinos, was named the 1994 Dow Jones National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year.
- FIRST Robotics Team
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Homestead has a robotics team that competes in the FIRST Robotics Competition. The team was created by students in 2001. The team number is 670. Alumnus Steve Wozniak has served as a key supporter of the team over the years. Homestead offers a robotics class that serves as a recruiting ground for students interested in joining the team.
- Future Business Leaders of America
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Homestead High School is home to a chapter of Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), an organization dedicated to preparing students for success in business and careers. The chapter has enjoyed success, having won an unofficial sweepstakes tally for the past 12 years at California FBLA's Bay Section Level, and the official Sweepstakes Award at the California FBLA State Leadership Conference for the past 11 years.
- Key Club
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A club dedicated on developing leadership and character skills, Key Club is the world's largest community service club. Homestead's Key Club consists of more than 100 members. Its mission is to provide its members with opportunities to perform service, build character, and develop leadership. Homestead's Key Club is part of Division 34 of the Cali-Nev-Ha district.
- KFC: Komedy and Film Club
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The KFC: Komedy & Film Club represents the school at the annual district-wide Student Film Festival. At the First Annual Homestead High School Student Film Festival in May 2006, members of the KFC took third place overall. At the Second Annual FUHSD Student Film Festival in May 2007, members of the KFC represented their school while placing 1st in the Comedy category.
- Mathematics Competitions Team
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The mathematics team has regularly qualified for the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME). The team took fourth place nationally in the Mu Alpha Theta National Log 1 Contest Mathematics Contest in 2005, 2006, and 2007. From 2003 through 2006, Homestead's math team placed among the top 10 teams nationally in the Ciphering Time Trials, a contest sponsored by National Assessment & Testing. During this period, Homestead's team also placed among the top 20 teams in several other contests sponsored by National Assessment & Testing, including the Team Scramble, the Four-by-Four, and the Collaborative Problem Solving Contests.
- Music Department and Marching Band
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Homestead has an accomplished music program, with a continuous run of championships and sweepstakes starting in 1993 with their field show rendition of Phantom of the Opera. Since then, the Mighty Mustang Marching Band has performed such shows as The Who's "Tommy", and Miss Saigon. In 2005, the band tied for 6th place in the 5A division at the Western Band Association (WBA) State Championships. In 2007 and 2006, the band took the Grand Sweepstakes Award and Sweepstakes Awards in Music, Marching, Showmanship and Field Show at the Cupertino Tournament of Bands. In 2007, the band participated in a Bands of America regional placing 5th in finals.
- The Pegasus
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Homestead's yearbook, Pegasus, has been its most award-winning publication of recent years, capturing two Pacemakers from the National Scholastic Press Association in 2002 and 2005. The Pacemaker is awarded to the 20 best yearbooks in the country, often out of more than a thousand contenders. The yearbook was also an NSPA Pacemaker Finalist in 2000 and 2001. In 2006, the CSPA awarded the Pegasus a Silver Crown. The yearbook has also won myriad other awards, ranging from CSPA Gold Circles (awarded for individual stories, concepts, designs, and photography) to various Best in Show awards.
- Science Bowl Team
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Homestead has a team competing in the Science Bowl, a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Over the years, Homestead students have won awards at the National Chemistry Olympiad and the National Science Bowl. Teacher Gareth Wong initially organized and advised the team, and in 2002 the American Chemical Society recognized his work with a High School Teacher Award for the Western Region.
- Theater Department
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Homestead has an active theater department that presents multiple plays per year. Homestead also sends a contingent to the annual California Thespian Festival. In the spring of 2006, Homestead students Ittai Geiger and Jeff Glass took first and second place, as well as "Best At Fest" at the International Thespian Society Festival, where more than 2,000 students competed for awards.
- Trigenesis
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Trigenesis is a math, science, and philosophy club. The club provides peer support for students interested in participating in the county science fair or other science and technology competitions. Over the years, club members have won awards at the Synopsis Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship, the California State Science Fair and the Siemens Competition.
- Athletics
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Homestead has teams in the following sports:
- Badminton
- Baseball
- Basketball
- Cheerleading
- Colorguard
- Cross Country
- Field Hockey
- Football
- Golf
- Soccer
- Softball
- Swimming
- Tennis
- Track and Field
- Volleyball
- Water Polo
- Winterguard
- Wrestling
- Notable alumni
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Notable alumni at Homestead High School include:
- Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Inc.
- Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc.
- Dan Gordon, co-founder of Gordon Biersch Brewery
- Randy Wigginton, creator of MacWrite
- Linda Jezek, 1976 Summer Olympics 400 m relay silver medalist
- Scott Erickson, Major League Baseball pitcher
- Sean Dawkins, NFL wide receiver
- Jeff Sevy, NFL lineman
- Smith Cho, actress
- Patrick "P-Con" Connor, producer at KNBR in San Francisco
- Alex Williams, reporter, The New York Times
- Michael D. Shear, reporter, The Washington Post
- External links
- Information
- Homestead High School website
- Fremont Union High School District's Page for HHS
- California Standardized Testing And Reporting Results
- Extracurricular
- HHS Music Program
- HHS Tuba Department
- HHS Future Business Leaders of America
- HHS Key Club
- HHS Newspaper - The Epitaph
- HHS Athletics
- Source: Wikipedia; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.
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