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Mission San Jose High School (MSJHS or just MSJ), one of five Fremont, California, USA public high schools, was opened in 1964. The school is located in the district of Mission San Jose and is known for good academics, sending 90% of graduates to post-secondary schools.

Demographics

Demographics for the 2004-2005 school year: 77% of these students were of Asian origin, 18% European American (White), 3% Latino or Hispanic, 1% African American, 1% Filipino, <1% American Indian or Alaska Native, and <1% Pacific Islander.

Academics

Mission San Jose students perform well in various state and national tests. Most notably the school holds the highest position in the California public high school rankings (not including magnet schools) with an API (Academic Performance Index) of 917 in 2004. This increased to 935 in 2005. A less cited ranking by Newsweek places the school 193rd in the United States. see ranking The school claims many achievements and honors; and, one of the school's most meaningful laurels is the high number (near the top of Bay Area schools) of students earning National Merit Scholarships. The school was named a National Blue Ribbon School in 1987 and 1996.

In 2006, Mission San Jose took second at the first Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad. In its first year of Science Olympiad competition, Mission advanced to the 2006 NorCal State Championships, at which it placed 7th.

Mission San Jose also participates in various quiz bowl tournaments around the Bay Area, as well as the National Ocean Sciences Bowl, Science Bowl, and other quiz competitions. However, in 2006 for the first time, MSJ lost its regional Ocean Sciences Bowl competition (officially called the Otter Bowl), and failed to finish in the top 16 at the National Science Bowl.

Also in 2006, Mission San Jose had 14 USA Biology Olympiad semifinalists, 635% higher than the national average by numbers of semifinalists and 350% higher by the ratio of semifinalists to participants (those who did not qualify). One student advanced to the National finals, an intense 14-day training camp at George Mason University that decides the 4-member USA IBO team.

Mission San Jose's math team has consistently scored among the top in the nation on the American Mathematics Competition, AIME, and USAMO tests. In 2006, Mission San Jose's team produed 2 USAMO qualifiers. In 2005, one student was invited to participate in MOSP. Furthermore, the team won 1st place in the California Math League in 2006, edging out rival Lynbrook High School by one point. (For results, see http://www.mathleague.com/reports/2005_06/CA6.HTM).

Athletics

The school colors are green and white and the mascot is the warrior, but the logo was Mission Peak (located just east of Fremont, and easily visible from campus) recently until even more recently when a new warrior logo was designed and implemented with a student vote. The school's previous logo was a feathered arrow, but it was changed in the mid-1990s in response to the controversies surrounding use of Native American mascots and symbols by American schools. Currently, the school uses the "Mission Man" as a mascot.

Mission San Jose High School belongs to the Mission Valley Athletic League, comprising of the five high schools in Fremont as well as James Logan High School and Newark Memorial High School, the only high schools in Union City and Newark, respectively. The MVAL is a league of the North Coast Section of the California Interscholastic Federation.

The athletic ability of this school varies from sport to sport. For example, the varsity football team was disbanded in 2002 due to lack of interest, while the varsity swim teams have been league champions for over 26 straight years. Other sports in which this school excels include badminton (2004-2006 NCS champions) and tennis (2004 NCS champions). Mission's Winter Guard team has also just recently won Champion status in the 2006 Novice Division competition against fifteen other Guard Units at Del Oro. However, the football team was reformed the next year and in 2005 Mission won the homecoming game for the first time in 13 years (bravo).

Student activities

Mission has numerous different clubs organized by students. They cover a variety of categories, including board games, sports, volunteering, languages, publications, and academics.

Student Activities are directed by the Associated Student Body, or ASB, comprised of a President, a Vice President, a Secretary, a Treasurer, and an Activities Coordinator. Elections (with votes from the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors) are held annually to determine the new officers for the following school year. ASB Council Meetings meet every Wednesday at lunch to approve checks, pass new clubs, and discuss important announcements. The ASB officers are in the Leadership 2 class, headed by the Student Activities Director, a faculty member of MSJ.

The two major student publications are the Smoke Signal, a monthly tabloid format newspaper, and the Costanoan, the school's full-colored yearbook. A lesser known student literary magazine, the Phoenix, also gets published by the Phoenix club once a year.

Recently, Mission has also had a spotlight in the music industry. A group of students have organized a hip-hop record label named TPK Records. They released an independant mixtape in April 2006 called "What Is It Vol. 1" which took the school by storm. They also had a performance at Mission and were interviewed by the school newspaper, the Smoke Signal. Mission also features a rock band called Night Falls In Paris.

Overcrowding

Whilst the school has over 2,000 students, it was not designed to serve that many, leading to overcrowding and other problems. Fremont's population has grown from less than 50,000 when the school was built in 1964 to well over 200,000 today. Almost every school in the city has space issues stemming from that population explosion (four of the five high schools in the district have at least 1,500 students), but Mission has been among the hardest hit. Even after a significant redistricting by the Fremont Unified School District in the late 1990's, which reassigned much of the Warm Springs area students (mostly from Weibel Elementary School) from Mission to Irvington High School, Mission's enrollment is once again about the same as it was before. A contributing factor is the increased development within the Mission attendance area.

Notable alumni

Notable alumni of Mission San Jose High School include:

• Consuelo Maria Callahan, Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Judge (Class of 1968)
• Gary Plummer, former NFL linebacker (Class of 1978)
• Anil Kashyap, University of Chicago Edward Eagle Brown Professor of Economics and Finance (Class of 1978)
• Dina Ruiz-Eastwood, Television personality and wife of Clint Eastwood (Class of 1983)
• Kristi Yamaguchi, Olympic Figure Skating gold medalist (Class of 1989)

External links

• Mission San Jose High School website
  • Profile of MSJHS
• Costanoan Yearbook - MSJ's Official Yearbook
• The Smoke Signal - MSJ's Official Student Newspaper
• Class of '06 - Official Site of the Class of 2006
• Class of '08 - Official Site of the Class of 2008
• Class of '09 - Official Site of the Class of 2009
• MSJ Interact Club - Official site of Interact Club, a community service club at MSJHS.
• Fremont Unified School District (FUSD)
• FUSD's report for MSJHS during the 2002-2003 school year (PDF)
• FUSD's report for MSJHS during the 2003-2004 school year (PDF)
• Official site of TPK Records (requires Macromedia Flash)

• Educational institutions established in the 1960s
• Fremont Unified School District
• Fremont, California
• High schools in California
• Newsweek Top 1200 Schools