It’s really not fair to lump the four separate schools at the San Diego High Complex together as if it’s one school, as Voice of San Diego did in its post, “The 10 Schools San Diego Parents Are Avoiding Most.”
These are four completely separate schools that happen to share a campus. The kids at the four different schools have four different sets of faculty and do not attend any classes together.
My daughter and most of her graduating class from Albert Einstein Academy Middle School, an international baccalaureate charter school in South Park, are in their freshman year at San Diego High School of International Studies – an international baccalaureate school that’s one of the four completely unrelated and separate schools that share the San Diego High Complex facilities.
This school is also our neighborhood school, where I drive my daughter and three other freshman girls every day from our homes in South Park and Golden Hill.
Believe me, we did our homework before sending our kids to this school, as did the parents from other international baccalaureate middle schools around town. Our middle school hosts a high-school open house every year. We went two years in a row to hear about what was offered by the various schools showcased, in addition to doing a lot of online research before choosing San Diego High School of International Studies.
For our kids who have already spent nine years studying foreign languages, there was no other choice that offered the language levels they needed. Our kids could teach the highest-level language classes offered at schools like Point Loma, La Jolla or Patrick Henry High.
This school is extremely high-performing, and was listed in 2014 by U.S. News and World Report as a gold-ranking school, the 12th best high school in California and 88th best in the entire nation. You can find a full list of the school’s many academic achievement awards here, including the California Distinguished School Award.
The other schools on the campus are not high-performing schools, it’s true, but they have nothing to do with our school. They may as well be miles away from School of International Studies at San Diego High. You should no more lump our school in with those than with any other school in San Diego County – they have nothing to do with one another.
Monta Briant is an author and owner of Baby Garten Studio, a parent and child education facility in South Park. Briant’s letter has been edited for style and clarity. See anything in there we should fact check? Tell us what to check out here.