Gunn High School

Henry M. Gunn Senior High School is one of two public high schools in Palo Alto, California, along with its rival Palo Alto High School.[4]

Henry M. Gunn High School
Address
Henry M. Gunn High School
Henry M. Gunn High School
Henry M. Gunn High School
780 Arastradero Road

Palo Alto
,
California
94306

United States
Coordinates37°23′56″N 122°07′59″W
Information
TypePublic
Established1964
School districtPalo Alto Unified School District
PrincipalKathie Laurence
Staff115.63 (FTE)[1]
Grades9–12
Enrollment1,993 (2019-20)
Student to teacher ratio17.37[1]
AreaNorthern Santa Clara County
Color(s)         Red and Black
Athletics conferenceSanta Clara Valley Athletic League
CIF Central Coast Section
MascotTimmy the Titan
NicknameTitans
AccreditationWestern Association of Schools and Colleges
NewspaperThe Oracle
YearbookThe Olympian
Feeder schoolsGreene Middle School
JLS Middle School
Fletcher Middle School
Websitegunn.pausd.org
[2][3]

Established in 1964 (1964), Gunn High School was named after Henry Martin Gunn, who served as the Palo Alto superintendent from 1950 to 1961. In 1964, the Palo Alto Unified School District announced that it would name the district's third high school after him. The Class of 1966 was the first class to graduate from Gunn High School.[5]

1,993 students attended the school in the 2019-2020 school year.[6] In 1992, the school was honored as a California Distinguished School.

Academics

Gunn offers 22 Advanced Placement (AP) classes and 8 Honors classes which are included in the weighted Grade Point Average (GPA).[7]

In May 2010, 657 students took 1820 AP tests. 93% scored 3 or higher and 54% scored a grade of 5. Gunn no longer ranks students, but ranking was previously recorded by decile.[7]

Hanna Rosin wrote in a 2015 The Atlantic article that due to the emphasis on academics and competition between students, Gunn became "an extreme distillation of what parents in the meritocratic elite expect from a school."[8] Around that time, families clamored to buy houses in Gunn's attendance boundary so their children could attend the school.[8] According to Rosin, after a spate of suicides of Gunn students in the 2010s, parents began to worry about whether the competitive atmosphere was harming students' mental well-being.[9]

PLTW

Gunn is host to Project Lead the Way (PLTW), an organization which promotes STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. Courses from this program include Digital Electronics and Introduction to Engineering Design, as well as Principles of Engineering.[10]

Statistics

Demographics

2015–2016[2]

  • 1,939 students: 1,006 Male (51.9%), 933 Female (48.1%)
Asian White Hispanic Two or more races African American Filipino Pacific Islander American Indian Uneported
862 733 173 126 25 14 4 2 0
44.5% 37.8% 8.9% 6.5% 1.3% 0.7% 0.2% 0.1% %

As of 2015, according to Hanna Rosin, 74% of Gunn's student body has one or more parents with a master's degree, or higher, or other graduate-level degree.[9]

Standardized testing
SAT Scores for 2014–2015 [11]
Critical reading averageMath averageWriting average
Gunn High 642686646
District 634671634
Statewide 489500484
2013 Academic Performance Index
2009 Base API [12] 2013 Growth API [13] Growth in the API from 2009 to 2013
915 917 2

Student groups

Gunn offers over 90 student clubs, teams, and organizations which focus on art, community action, culture, environment, politics, music, dance, journalism, and other avocations.[14]

Spangenberg Theater

Theatre

Gunn students stage three major productions every year (Fall, Spring, and the student-directed "One Acts"), along with occasional staged readings.[15] The Spring show alternates each year between a Shakespearean play and a musical.

Music

The music program consists of several music groups including Symphonic Band, Wind Ensemble, Jazz Big Band, Jazz Band II, Orchestra, Concert Band, Concert Choir, and Chamber Singers.[16] Gunn also occasionally hosts California Music Educators Association Festivals at its Spangenberg Theater.[17]

Debate

The debate team at Gunn High School consists of Policy, Parliamentary, and Public Forums, as well as a speech team.[18][19][20][21]

For the 2017-2018 school year, the club did exceptionally well at the national and state level, with one team entering Tournament of Champions (TOC) octofinals.[22]

Robotics team

The Gunn Robotics Team (GRT), established in 1997, competes at the FIRST Robotics Competition. It is also the only FIRST Robotics team to have won the national animation award more than once, winning in 1997, 2006, and 2012. They also won best models worldwide in their 2010 animation.[23]

In 2012, the Robotics Team won the National FRC Championship Excellence in Design Award (3D Animation) sponsored by Autodesk. GRT is the only team that has won a total of three Animation awards in the history of FIRST.[24][25][26]

Gunn High School football field

Mental health

Gunn High School received national attention in 2009 after five of its students committed suicide over a span of nine months, mainly by walking in front of trains at a nearby crossing. In 2017, a senior student committed suicide.[27]

Attempts have since been made to try to improve the emotional health of students attending the school.[28][9] Titan 101, a program for incoming freshmen aimed at easing the transition into high school, was introduced in 2011. In 2015, the Youth Empowerment Seminar (YES!) program was introduced, aimed at reducing student stress through meditation and controlled breathing techniques.[29] In 2017, Social Emotional Learning and Functionality (SELF) was introduced as a replacement for Titan 101. The four-year program is mandatory for the Class of 2021 and later, but there are opt-in sessions for all classes.[30]

On August 30, 2019, a student from Gunn High School made a public comment online threatening to shoot up the school, and was arrested.[31]On December 12, 2019, another shooting threat was made on a public, anonymous confession page run by Henry M. Gunn students, but police apprehended the suspect before any violence could be carried out.[32]

Notable alumni

References
  1. "Henry M. Gunn High". National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved 2019-11-28.
  2. "Enrollment by Ethnicity for 2015–16: Henry M. Gunn High School". California Department of Education. Retrieved 2016-09-27.
  3. "School Profile 2011–12: Henry M. Gunn High School". California Department of Education. Archived from the original on 2013-06-15. Retrieved November 10, 2013.
  4. "Henry M. Gunn High School". Retrieved 2020-02-28.
  5. "2007 School Profile" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-07-05. Retrieved 2008-03-22.
  6. "School Profile 2019-2020" (PDF). Henry M. Gunn High School. Retrieved 2020-02-28.
  7. "Gunn High School School Profile". Archived from the original on 2012-10-27.
  8. Rosin, Hanna (December 2015). "The Silicon Valley Suicides". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-08-31. But in the e-mails traded among parents in the weeks after Cameron’s death, the obvious worry surfaced about whether all this emphasis on excellence imposed a cost on the kids[...]
  9. Hanna Rosin (November 16, 2015). "The Suicide Clusters at Palo Alto High Schools - The Atlantic". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2016-01-18.
  10. "Gunnpltw.com". gunnpltw.com. Archived from the original on 2016-01-21. Retrieved 2016-10-18.
  11. "SAT Report - 2014-15 District Level Scores". California Department of Education. Retrieved 2016-09-26.
  12. "2009 Base API School Report – Henry M. Gunn High". California Department of Education Assessment, Accountability and Awards Division.
  13. "2013 Growth API School Report – Henry M. Gunn High". California Department of Education Analysis, Measurement, & Accountability Reporting Division.
  14. "CLUBS - Gunn High School Student Activities". sites.google.com. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  15. "Program". Gunn Theatre. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  16. "gunnmusic.org". www.gunnmusic.org. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  17. "Superintendent's Board Update - April 19, 2019". Palo Alto Unified School District. 2019-04-19. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  18. "Public Forum". GUNN SPEECH & DEBATE. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  19. "Public Forum". GUNN SPEECH & DEBATE. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  20. "Policy". GUNN SPEECH & DEBATE. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  21. "Speech". GUNN SPEECH & DEBATE. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  22. Epstein, Eric (2018-03-06). "Debate team dominates regional, league tournaments". The Oracle. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  23. "Gunn Robotics Team – Awards". gunnrobotics.net. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2015-11-21.
  24. "Awards – GRT". gunnrobotics.com. Archived from the original on 2013-01-26. Retrieved 2015-11-21.
  25. "NASA Previews Robotics Engineers of the Future" (Press release). NASA Ames Research Center. March 10, 2006. Retrieved 2008-05-22.
  26. Malone, Michael S. (March 25, 2002). "The Fix-It Kids Take Over". Forbes Magazine. Forbes.com Inc. Retrieved 2008-05-22.
  27. Kadvany, Elena. "Gunn High student dies by suicide". www.paloaltoonline.com. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  28. "After five suicides, Palo Alto high school students change culture through peer support « Culture & Features « Peninsula Press ARCHIVE (2010 – Sept. 2014)". peninsulapress.com. 2011-01-04. Archived from the original on 2016-10-10. Retrieved 2016-01-18.
  29. Oracle, The. "YES! program will implement mental health education". The Oracle. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  30. Satpathy, Sakshi (2018-02-02). "New SELF program at Gunn builds student connection and support". Palo Alto Pulse. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  31. Bartley, Kaitlyn (2019-08-30). 14-year-old Gunn High student threatens to shoot up school - Police do not believe the student intended to carry out the threat. Mercury News, 30 August 2019. Retrieved from https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/08/30/14-year-old-gunn-high-student-threatens-to-shoot-up-school/
  32. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2019/12/13/gunn-high-school-student-taken-into-custody-for-alleged-online-shooting-threat
  33. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2013/05/19/former-student-now-pop-star-in-japan-recounts-story

Bibliography


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