Story link: Summit facility differences continue to alter school experiences

Student names: Judy Ly and Maxwell Taniguchi-King

Adviser name: Elizabeth ‘Liz’ DeOrnellas

School name: Summit Public Schools (Rainier and Tahoma specifically)

Publication name: Summit News

Describe your work on this piece: Both of us go to Summit Public Schools sites in San Jose, both of which are portable buildings. Max goes to Tahoma and Judy goes to Rainier. After our own experiences with seeing different Summit schools spread across the Bay Area, we realized that students perceive their school differently based on their facility. As students who attend portables, we recognize that the negative impressions among our classmates result in less school pride and spirit. However, a lot of our classmates don’t know that their version of “Summit” in San Jose is actually inconsistent with the other sites. Our video examines a student’s life in a school in San Jose and the flagship Summit school in Redwood City, which has more space and resources. Additionally, we further explore teacher and student perspectives in those different schools.

What else do you want readers to know about your work? Summit Public Schools has eight schools spread across the Bay Area. We focused on five of those schools. In the article, there are graphics breaking down each school’s history with facility changes.