Monte Vista Academics Highlighted in Ongoing Fight for More Students

The ongoing issue of Monte Vista High School trying to overcome community biases got new attention Wednesday.

UT-San Diego published a story lauding the 51-year-old school's academic credits while also noting its declining attendance.

The story follows a La Mesa-Mount Helix Patch report Feb. 16 in which teacher that the school often faces from some Mt. Helix and Spring Valley residents.

In that story, Wilson spoke candidly about what he sees as racial and socioeconomic biases against Monte Vista.

“The perception is, and this really burns me, particularly in the Mt. Helix area where I live, is people look at Monte Vista as a school where they don’t want to send their middle-class kids to interact with the poor kids from Spring Valley. That is a poor misperception of what we stand for,” he said.

See more: GUHSD Attendance Boundaries stories.

 While the UT-San Diego story doesn't mention these, it does lay out some of the impressive academic achievements of the school and its students, including:

• Monte Vista's Academic Performance Index (API) has risen 66 percent over the last three years
• Monte Vista's percentage of students in AP courses is 44 percent, more than the GUHSD average of 42
• Monte Vista's graduation rate in 2009-10 was 81 percent, higher than the County average of 78. Of these graduates, 13 percent enrolled in four-year universities, and 30 percent in two-year schools.

Wilson is part of the committee advocating for Monte Vista in the ongoing issue of potentially redrawing the attendance boundaries for the District, in an effort to create better equity across the attendance of its nine public high schools.