Alta Vista High School in Mountain View has a reputation as a "bad" school, one with failing students and lower-quality teachers.
Alta Vista students and teachers alike said they had this impression of the continuation school, which serves students from both the Palo Alto Unified and Mountain View-Los Altos Union school districts, until they actually got there.
"I was kind of afraid to come here," said senior Isaiah Harrison, who transferred to Alta Vista from Palo Alto High School during his junior year. "But once I started ... getting to know everybody and the teachers and the people around here — it's not a bad school at all. It's actually a really good school. They help you out a lot; they push you to reach your goals. They want to help you graduate."
That is the primary goal of Alta Vista: to help students who fall through the cracks at a traditional high school get back on track through a smaller, more structured school environment that also aims to challenge traditional notions of success.
Read the entire story on the Palo Alto Online website.
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