Ashley Chen

  Unlike most transfer students, senior Melissa Hoffman arrived at the school as a senior; her father had received notice of a possible job transfer in the summer of 2014, and the family decided to accept the opportunity to move to California.  

Last year, more than 500 students took almost 1,300 AP exams, which amounts to an average of one AP test for each student at the school. Of those students, 93 percent received qualifying scores, which means they will probably be guaranteed some sort of credit for their work if they attend a state system Given this reality, it may seem natural for AP teachers  to tailor their curriculum to having their students achieve for a perfect score of 5 on the tests. This test-focused mind-set, however, undermines the quality of education students can receive.

While many students applaud the rolling block schedule decision as a step in reducing student stress and improving the quality of each class period, the positive effects of the rolling block are still questionable. And because Robinson announced this change without much discussion with Saratoga’s nearly 1,400 students and 70-teacher staff, previous concerns about the efficacy of rolling block have not been addressed.

Because of the difficulty and rigor of the school’s current science and mathematics courses, the school has been working on developing its three-year-old engineering program and making other STEM classes more accessible to students.

Sixty-four Saratoga students participated in the 90-minute MAA American Mathematics Competition (AMC) on Feb. 3.

Junior Sophia Lin describes her success in her piano playing career.

Rising application fees are a detriment to students. They are creating a gap for some studnets during the application process. 

As fun as it might be to listen to the auto-tuned machinations of artists like Calvin Harris or Jessie J (whatever you kids like these days), we need to revive our cultural roots and go back to where it all started: classical music.

In music sampling, artists take a portion, such as the bass line, of another artist’s song and use it in an “original” production. While it has been the subject of serious cases regarding copyright infringement in the music industry, music sampling is tantamount to an innocuous act: paying homage to another artist’s work.

Late last fall, senior Claire Strickland left school early on a Friday afternoon. 

Like many other seniors,  Claire Strickland has a dream college: New York University (NYU). Strickland is looking for a place to be independent, and NYU fits the description: It doesn’t even have a campus center.  

This year the English department has put together a policy that outlines appropriate behavior for tutors or parents who want to help students with essays and other assignments. The guide is available on the school website on the English department’s subpage.

Taylor Swift's new album “1989” is conspicuously missing from one of the most popular legal music-streaming websites, Spotify, and the third-most-visited website in the world, YouTube. So are all of her previous releases, excluding collaborations.

For many years, the annual Soundings magazine has been a forum for students to have their artwork, photography and writing published. 

After three months of hard work racing at invitationals and league meets, the cross country team is now preparing for CCS Finals, a 3-mile race at Toro Park in Salinas on Nov. 15.  

 Audrie’s Law (SBS 838), a bill sponsored by state Sen. Jim Beall and supported by the Audrie Pott Foundation, was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on Sept. 30.

Walking through the hallways of Saratoga High, nearly every student pauses to give senior Claire Strickland a second glance. 

As juniors look to build their senior-year schedule, they often run into a problem: Most of the available math classes are AP. Students often must choose between AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC and AP Statistics.

Math Department conducts a survey to see interest in non-AP classes and if students support the idea. 

Too often, at Saratoga High and other schools that emphasize STEM fields, students who declare their intentions to major in the humanities evoke instant derision.

Freshman Stephen Ding started playing badminton when he was 10 after trying swimming, basketball, soccer, fencing and tennis. He trains at Bintang Badminton in Campbell on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 4-7 p.m.

The school's newly expanded open access policy allows students to make any choice they want about their schedules, letting them sign up for any class regardless of whether they have taken the prerequisite. While this freedom sounds tempting, pressure to be competitive for college and summer program applications, from both parents and peers, often overrides students’ better judgment in course selections.

Actual Films will be on campus throughout the year to work on a documentary about moving on from cases of sexual assault.  

Senior Linus Lu is the epitome of what one might call an eclectic mind. A quick online search of his name yields conflicting results: He's defending Shostakovich, a 20th-century Russian composer on ask.fm, and debating between favorite classical pieces (Mahler Symphony No. 2 or 6?) on Facebook. He's reading T.S. Eliot (not just "The Waste Land") in his spare time, and writing his fair share of poetry.

We just don’t recognize minority cultures enough in the adult world. And we don’t at Saratoga High either, especially in our humanities curriculum. In order to provide students with a more balanced education, we need to put more emphasis to minority cultures and religions.

Reporter discusses her disappointment for the recently released movie "If I Stay."

Reporter discusses going a day without using the Internet.

“Shake It Off” is an appalling, entertaining-only-to-the-tone-deaf song, and it seems like it will lose her all the fans she gained by converting to mainstream pop music in addition to her old country devotees. 

The track team concluded a successful season with a fifth-place finish by the boys and a 10th-place finish by the girls at the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League (SCVAL) meet hosted at Wilcox High School on May 16.  

With California in the midst of a three-year drought, students are seeking ways to promote water conservation.

Reporter discusses her enjoyable experience in a new Harry Potter fansite, Hogwarts is Here (HiH), that offers online 'classes' based off the ones that Harry Potter took at the fictional magic school of Hogwarts.

“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is entertaining. Some might even say funny, dramatic or well-animated. But amazing? Not quite. Sadly, director Marc Webb relies far too much on unexplained plot and backstory, with a healthy dash of sexism and worn-out cliche, to craft his narrative.

How could she know what would happen?  She just wanted a small summer party while her parents were out. But instead of the low-key hangout she envisioned, her social gathering morphs into a 15-person party — complete with drugs and alcohol. 

One of the favorite pastimes of Saratoga students and parents is asking administrators to add or upgrade classes, especially if they can have an Honors or AP designation.  

As part of a regular accreditation process, a five-person committee of educators representing the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) visited the school from April 28-30 to ensure that it is “an acceptable level of quality” and is demonstrating continual improvement.

Honors: It’s a distinction awarded to a select few classes for being above and beyond the average. Much more difficult than a standard course, an honors class requires students to analyze, synthesize and prove concepts. In math, this means deriving equations on your own. In English, this means reading and writing thousands of words per week.  

A strong, independent girl lives in a dystopian post-war America where the population is divided into separate communities. Following a standard but strange ritual all teenagers are required to undergo, she fights to save the lives of those she loves from an oppressive ruling body.

One or two people linger in the store, halfheartedly browsing the shelves for something to buy. Outside, the tables sity empty; no one stays long enough to sit down and enjoy the mosaic pattern that adorns the deck. The same sign — big, careful letters — smothers each side of the wall: Sale. Everything 40 percent off. 

Roshan Bal is one of many Saratoga athletes who chose not to attend Saratoga High.

The girls’ track team began the season with two consecutive losses in dual meets against Homestead and Santa Clara on March 13 and March 20.

“I’ll find you and kill you … You’re a clown. Kill yourself … Dude I’ll kill you.” All tagged with @dongatory, Flappy Bird creator Dong Ha Nguyen’s Twitter username, these death threats popped up around the Internet like weeds.  What was the offense? Nguyen decided to take down Flappy Bird after he thought the product was too “addictive,” according to Boy Genius Report. The threats seem even more ludicrous upon closer inspection. Anyone can continue to play the game; the only change was that no one could download it for the first time. 

The current SAT is execrable. No idea what “execrable” means? You’re not alone because a vast majority of the population is similarly clueless. You’ll probably never see the word again unless you teach English at Harvard.  That’s why College Board’s decision to revise the SAT for 2016 is a positive one. Among other changes, the new SAT will  test more common vocabulary, make the writing section optional and be more accessible for low-income students. They hope to increase the popularity of the SAT compared to the ACT.

Planned by ceramics teacher Leah Aguayo and attendance secretary Mandy Armes, an informal club of female students and Saratoga High parents, “Girls for Courage” had around 20 to 25 participants in its second year. 

Walk into Kirk Davis’s first-period AP Physics class, and at first glance it seems to be a class like any other. Look more carefully, though, and realize something strange: Only seven of the students are girls. 

“Follow your heart over your head!” Speaker Jason Hewlett twists his features into various expressions ranging from comical to downright off-putting. In the audience, the students’ faces reflect different forms of shock and fascinated disgust. On the whole, it’s not the kind of heartwarming material one would expect from an inspirational speech. 

Backed by a Silicon Valley tech magnate, nine Los Angeles students are looking to challenge California’s tenure system. The students argue that their right to a good education system is infringed upon by job protections that make it too difficult to fire bad instructors, according to The New York Times.

Remember the last time you read a nonfiction book for school? I can’t, either. Last year, as a freshman, I read a collection of short stories, “Of Mice and Men,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Great Expectations” and “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Zero nonfiction. Why? 

Limiting the number of APs at schools can limit student's college opportunities.

Welcome to the new and improved way of watching TV: binge watching. 

The team begins practice in early February under the direction of head coach Archie Ljepava, and will have its first meet at home against Homestead on March 13.

“Some groups in America do better than others.”  Does this sound like the kind of statement that would instigate rage, accusations of racism and hatred? Of course not. That hasn’t stopped the online community from drawing parallels between Amy Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfield’s newest book, the source of the above quote, and Nazism.

Warning: Spoilers for “The Hunger Games,” “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay” follow. Before the 75th Hunger Games began, Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), the District 12 mentor, remarks, “I think these games are going to be different.” The same can be said in comparing the movie adaptation of “Catching Fire”, the second book of Suzanne Collins’s international bestselling trilogy, to its predecessor, “The Hunger Games”. Crammed with riveting scenes filmed with a non-shaky camera, “Catching Fire” wows the audience with its spectular storytelling. 

Let’s just make one thing absolutely crystal clear: No one in my 15 years has ever called me talkative. And yet when I faced the challenge of not talking for one day, I crashed and burned into a sorry little mess of sentient and audible ashes.  I thought the challenge would be a piece of cake. On a daily basis, I talk more than I want to, and I thought I’d enjoy my ironclad excuse for avoiding small talk. On the night before my experiment, I whipped out a red ink pen and scrawled on my left hand, “I can’t talk today. Social experiment for newspaper” and basked in my own confidence. 

How many times do students need to learn about the American Revolution to “get it?” Apparently the answer is four: once in fifth grade, eighth grade, 10th grade, and 11th grade. This model of education, which is prevalent in American schools, is called “spiral learning,” in which students return to the same basic concepts on a periodic basis, but with increased complexity each time.

Senior quarterback Jonathan Walters stands a few feet away from the open door of physics teacher Matt Welander’s classroom. As he shifts his weight back and forth, he begins to describe his first concussion.

On Aug. 12, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 1266, an amendment to the California education code that will give transgender students access to sex-segregated bathrooms, sports regardless of their gender at birth.

“How was the test?” your friend asks.  Before you can answer, though, she says, “I got a 96.” She grimaces. “I could’ve done better, though. You?” 

A power outage that affected many Saratoga buildings, including the school, occurred at 7:52 PM, according to PG&E, on the night of Tuesday, Oct. 19. According the principal Paul Robinson, the outage was caused by a tree falling onto a transformer, which went up in flames on Herriman Avenue.  SHSTV reported that a transformer on Herriman caught fire and later exploded.

As part of the recertification process of California high schools, a team of administrators, parents, teachers and students have been working to prepare for the spring 2014 Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) review. This effort is led by assistant principal Kevin Mount and math teacher Audrey Warmuth. 

I don’t want to die like this.  I rocked back and forth on the white hospital sheets with eyes closed. I had just thrown up, but the pain wouldn’t leave me. Saliva climbed the walls of my throat and strangled me in ebbs and flows, as if its hands were clenching and relaxing. Within me, my stomach fought to purge my body of what it perceived to be an invader with a throbbing knifelike jabs.   

A few feet away from physics teacher Kirk Davis’ desk hangs a fist-sized toy pig held by a strand of thread from the ceiling panels. The flying pig, as students have affectionately dubbed it, not only teaches a lesson on tension and centripetal force, but also serves as an inspiration to students that the impossible is within reach.

Imagine a museum built from former quarry buildings, versatile trails that support bicycles and horses as well as pedestrians, a zip line course, a fishing pond and a playground for young children surrounded by lush, colorful flora. All of these are possible attractions for a new park in Saratoga.

$275. That’s how much money you’re asked to contribute to play any of the sports at our school. Whether you play your sport in the pool, which costs thousands of dollars to heat every year, or are part of the badminton team, which requires athletes to buy their own rackets, the fee is constant. 

In the last couple of years, the Nobel Peace Prize seems to have strayed from its initial purpose. It seems like the prize has lost the credibility and prestige that it once had.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America … one nation, under God … with liberty and justice for all.”

A lovestruck voice rang through the theater, crooning “Your love lifts me out of time,” as glowing bubbles floated through the badly animated greenhouse. As if made by gears, pink and purple flowers spiraled open and released a flurry of glitter. 

Senior Casey Takahashi isn’t ditching cross country. She’s leaving practice 30 minutes early, but it isn’t because she’s a slacker. Rather, Takahashi, a team captain, is heading over to San Mateo College to take a night class — physics.

“Keep it up! No walking!” Junior co-captain Christine Schlossareck shouted encouragement to the girls’ cross country team as the 30 girls inched up the 45-degree hill on Upper Hill Drive, tired and sweaty, on Sept. 5. Though she is about only 5 feet tall, Schlossareck is a big presence on the team, and her cheers motivated teammates. 

Facebook gains its yearly profit of almost $2 billion through advertising, according to Daily Mail.

Drum major: marching band conductor, guilt giver, baton wielder, recipient of bad jokes; may work up to 30 hours a week with no salary. In other words, senior Michael Shang’s ideal job.