Mira Loma High School
| Established | 1960 |
|---|---|
| School type | Public |
| Principal | Chris Hoffman |
| Location | Sacramento, California, Calif., USA |
| Enrollment | 1,797 |
| Faculty | 77 |
| Campus | Suburban |
| Athletics | 15 sports |
| Colors | Scarlet red and Columbia blue |
| Homepage | www.sanjuan.edu/schools/miraloma |
Mira Loma High School is a public high school located in Sacramento, California, United States of America. It is a part of the San Juan Unified School District with a student body of approximately 1800 students.
Academic
Mira Loma High School is most noted for being an International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme school, consistently earning one of the highest average IB test scores among public schools worldwide. In addition to the IB program, Mira Loma offers the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program for honors freshmen and sophomores, the International Studies Program for a non-honors college-preparatory program, and the International Passport Program for students who speak English as a second language. The school also possesses one of the largest special education programs in the San Juan Unified School District.
The Mira Loma science department is especially strong and the school teams regularly win regional Science Olympiad and Science Bowl competitions. Mira Loma also sends several students each year to the International Science and Engineering Fair, the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium and the semi-finalist level of the Intel Science Talent Search. In 2006, the Science Olympiad team placed sixth at the national competition in Indiana. Mira Loma students also gained recognition for their history department by placing third nationally in the 2006 National History Day competition.
The Mira Loma Arcade Creek Project is a highly recognized, ongoing study of the riparian corridor of an urban watershed in Sacramento, California. It consists of eleven studies which measure the health of the Arcade Creek and is run entirely by students of Mira Loma High School and five faculty advisers.[1] The project has received many awards and recognitions including the Governor's Environmental and Economic Leadership Award [2].
Ranking
Mira Loma High School was ranked in the top 250 high schools in the United States by Newsweekin 2004. This statistic has increased since 2003 when it was ranked in the top 300 schools.
Culture
As the variety of academic programs listed above indicates, Mira Loma is a school noted for its diversity. In early April Mira Loma celebrates its annual International Night, in which students from various ethnic backgrounds set up presentations about their culture (typically offering some traditional food as well) and sometimes give performances of traditional dance or music.
Another Mira Loma tradition is the annual Sports-A-Rama in which the four classes compete against each other in a variety of games to win the competition. Games begin with Penny Wars several weeks in advance of the event itself and culminate in the event known as the statue wherein around fifty students perform a choreographed dance routine on the subject of the class's theme.
Every March 14, the Mira Loma Math Club hosts Pi Day on campus. This event features carnival like events that relate to the famous mathematical number. Events include a fund raiser that awards donations with the opportunity to throw cream pie at volunteering teachers and a "Digits of Pi" recital competition.
Ken Kesey Myth
According to campus lore, author and counter-culture figurehead Ken Kesey anonymously attended a 1980's stage adaptation of his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest held by the Mira Loma High School drama department. According to a 2001 New York Times article, this adaptation was his "favorite" stage representation of his novel due to its elaborate "machine-like" set-piece which accurately represented his intended commentary on governmental control and existence as a malevolent "system," an aspect that many consider to have been neglected in Milos Forman's Oscar-winning 1975 film. [3]
Day of Silence Controversy
Mira Loma has a large Gay-Straight Alliance club on campus that attracted local media attention during the 2006 Day of Silence. On April 26 around 30 Mira Loma students, along with an estimated 450,000 students nation-wide, voluntarily remained silent for the day to protest discrimination against the LGBT community. A group of students, organized by a local Slavic church, launched a counter-protest that day, handing out brochures arguing that support for the Day of Silence undermined freedom of religion. Many students also wore T-shirts denouncing homosexuality which were deemed derogatory. Several students who refused to remove these shirts, as well as some handing out fliers, were subsequently suspended from school on grounds that they were spreading hate messages. Three after-school protests organized by the Slavic church were then held in front of the school from April 26 to April 28. Over one hundred demonstrators participated. Advocates for the Day of Silence quickly organized their own, albeit smaller, demonstration and later printed t-shirts in support of gay rights and condemning the actions taken by the protesters.
Notable Alumni
Notable Faculty
International Baccalaureate Courses Offered
Mira Loma offers a large amount of International Baccalaureate courses that prepare students for IB examinations every spring. The tests are either Standard Level (SL) or Higher Level (HL) based on the amount of coursework prior to the examination. It is also one of approximately 25 schools worldwide to offer an IB course in anthropology, which will be discontinued in the 2007-2008 school year. The following IB examinations were taken by Mira Loma students in 2006:
Biology (HL), English A1 (HL), Environmental Systems (SL), French B (HL), French B (SL), Further Maths (SL), German B (HL), German B (SL), History (HL), Japanese B (HL), Japanese B (SL), Mandarin B (HL), Mandarin B (SL), Math Studies (SL), Mathematics (HL), Mathematics (SL), Music (HL), Music (SL), Physics (SL), Social Sciences Cultural Anthropolgy (SL), Spanish B (HL), Spanish B (SL), Theatre Arts (HL), Theatre Arts (SL), Theory of Knowledge TK, Visual Arts (HL) and Visual Arts (SL).[5]