Even if you were to make the most cursory of evaluations, CCA would stand out. We’ve all heard the reports – top 100 in the nation, top 15 in the state, highest API in San Diego – but if you were to ask any CCA student or faculty member what makes us special, they wouldn’t respond with our grades or rankings. Our unique culture here at CCA is one of striking acceptance and inclusion, and for me as a senior, it is one that I have come to love, so when the first day of school arrived and we all started to realize just how large the freshmen class had become, I immediately began to wonder how this would affect our school’s atmosphere.
With school only just beginning its hard to really see any immediate impacts outside of cramped stairways and impossibly long traffic lines, but to predict its effects down the road, we need to first examine the underlying reasons for why this new change was necessary. The freshmen class is the largest CCA has seen to date, sitting at exactly 662 students admitted, and a simple answer as to why this number is so high is demand. The statistics, rankings, and awards that make CCA stand out on paper, coupled with our Envision, Robotics, and Quest programs have all made our school a very desirable place to be in terms of academic rigor, and our rising sports teams have also brought us a sense of credibility in an area Torrey Pines has long dominated. An important thing to note, however, is that all these virtues have been present in some form or another for these past few years and the question still remains: Why now? Why has our district taken this seemingly sudden new approach to the waitlist? After all, according to our administration, in two of the last three years CCA has not accepted ANY of the students on the waitlist, let alone the entire pool.
As a middle-school student I remember anxiously waiting the day our CCA waitlist was announced, and the way I celebrated when the lottery fell in my favor, but in that excitement there was a tinge of regret. I would no longer be able to see the vast majority of my friends at school anymore, many of whom had elected Canyon Crest only to be offered a spot on the waitlist. It seemed so unfair, that kids who could see the school from their backyards would still be unable to attend. Families of these students, and of others who had not been offered spots in the classes of 2015, 2016, and 2017, have for years been raising questions on the equity and overall merit of the CCA lottery system. It is only recently with the recent passage of Prop AA, and its Phase III plans to build another set of classrooms in a proposed B-building behind the counseling office, that the district decided to meet and take another look at CCA’s student capacity. After conducting a study led by our superintendent Mr. Rick Schmitt and discussing its findings, the school board eventually decided to make classroom changes at both SDUHSD academies to maximize efficiency and to accept the entire waitlists at both schools. Principal Mueller states: “Our district has set up a task force [comprised of] members from the northern region of our district, the southern region, teachers, classified staff, students, parents, our feeder schools,” that will make sure that “when decisions are made, they are informed and purposeful.”
Such an action doesn’t necessarily guarantee that our following year will have an equally populous incoming class – Mr. Mueller goes on to say that this decision wasn’t “a rubber stamp that ‘from this day forward all students will get their school of choice'” – but the overall trend seems to favor an ever larger and larger CCA, one that despite the district’s assurances, still feels cramped. I know, I know, this senior’s complaints about crowded staircases during passing period “rush hours” and impossible pick-up/drop-off lines may seem like the angry cane-shaking of a geriatric at the neighborhood children on his lawn, but it’s still a legitimate concern. After all, the proposed Building B is still a long way off, and even with that new structure, ballooning student-to-faculty ratios may continue to make certain classrooms feel like a squeeze, particularly those in the humanities that may not benefit from the many laboratories that are supposed to make up our new building. How about campus safety or even student parking? We only have one amazing Hector to enforce our closed-campus rules for this growing host of students, and the student parking lot is – as Mr. Steinberger’s frantic directing of after-school traffic can attest to – already jam packed. Though individually they might not seem very pressing, each of these little concerns come together to pose a serious problem for our school in the future.
I’m not going to lie, I was worried. These concerns reminded me eerily of my procrastination – each little thing would build up and threaten to overwhelm us if things weren’t addressed sometime soon. After interviewing Mr. Mueller, however, I’ve come to realize that many of my fears were unfounded and that the district has already started actively working to address the others. For example, it turns out that with a series of new hires this past year, student-to-faculty ratios are at, or slightly below, those of years past: we are welcoming new teachers in the sciences, world languages, English, and even physical education. What’s more, the district recognizes that not all problems are as easily solved as hiring new teachers. As Mr. Mueller likes to say, “People vote with their feet,” and due to high demand for courses in such fields as engineering and computer science, the district has decided to make some hard decisions, closing some classes to freshmen. Mr. Mueller goes on to say, “It’s not new to this school year – last year there were courses that were only available for 10-12, and that’s just the reality of student interest. With the four-by-four we say to our freshmen ‘you have plenty of opportunities over the next three years and a term to take some of these courses.”
Culture, however, is something the district cannot actively control and the question still remains, how will we adjust to our bigger campus? Many of our bigger sister schools in the district have struggled for years with bullying, cliques, and fighting, and though these problems stem from many different sources, CCA’s small size, coupled with its distinction as a school of choice, has always played a big role in preserving our school’s unique mindset. This inclusiveness sets us apart, and thinking of ways to cultivate it with our newer, bigger composition harkens back to the “Keep CCA Weird” movement that occurred a couple years ago. Seniors in the then graduating class decided to challenge fellow ravens to preserve our CCA “weirdness,” whether that be through being oneself or through accepting one another. This simple reminder of what it meant to be a CCA student helped all of us, whether we were students or faculty, come together and refocus on who we were.
In the same way, I’ve come to realize that regardless of how big our school may seem, we’ll always have to continually remind ourselves why we’re even here, and just like those 2012 seniors, it falls on all of us to decide what CCA is all about, and how it’s going to either stay the same or change accordingly. These things don’t have to be earth shattering; for the first time this year our ASB ran a New Student Orientation Day where incoming freshmen had a full day on campus devoted to getting to know each other – and the school – better. At this particular event, students participated in name games, water balloon tosses, and campus tours, as well as getting to know our faculty better, formally meeting Mr. Mueller, the assistant principals, and our counselors before the school year even started. Katie Simonian, our Senior Class President, played a large role in helping to make that happen, and when asked about the thought processes behind hosting such an event, she states: “[The freshmen class] is a big class, and obviously you can’t know everyone, but we thought it would definitely be cool for all of them to be closer together.”
“That [orientation] was really effective and helpful, and I feel like the freshmen class all got a better feel for CCA before they finally came here.”
Though it may have only lasted a single day, the student orientation has had a lasting impact. It has helped many of our new students feel more welcome and more focused on forming interpersonal connections within their grade. We too, should work to cultivate that sense of unity in our school through our actions, continually welcoming others in the things we do. That doesn’t mean we have to suddenly start packing our gym to the brim with screaming fans whenever our girls volleyball team plays a home game – though having a new, more eager freshmen class may change all of that – but rather, trying to live out the “CCA spirit” in our daily lives.
Though staircases, parking lots, and classrooms can always be built anew, that sense of CCA unity and welcome cannot, and I for one, welcome our new freshmen class to our Raven family.
Brian Chekal is the Editor-in-Chief of Pulse Magazine.
This article originally appeared in Volume 10, Issue 1 of Pulse Magazine.