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PALOS VERDES HIGH SCHOOL - ISSUE 5, VOLUME 28 - MARCH 28, 2024
The Brilliant Blue Era
Team Stix and Stone take first place in the 2024 Scholar Quiz By Kate North reporter Scholar Quiz has been uniting Palos Verdes High School students in their academic pursuits since 2007. Through friendly competition, it encourages higher state testing scores and it builds camaraderie amongst students. This year’s championship game was between a team made of upperclassmen, Stix and Stone, and the youngest team to make it to the finals, The Innovators, which was made up of three freshmen and a sophomore. The hour-long lunch event brought out a big crowd and was made even more exciting with lights and a DJ. Stix and Stone (Gavin Eades, Rohan Gianchandani, Mikey Mackiewicz, and Kaden Stone) came out on top and won first place, while The Innovators (Aman Agandi, Malia Tamilin, Alan Wu, and Timothy Yang) took second. The game started off close until Team Stix and Stones pulled ahead at with multiple Lightning Round questions. The final score was 50-30. “Scholar Quiz is a time to have fun, but also to remind us that we’re creeping up to several weeks that are extremely important for both students, as well as the high school itself, our reputation,” Tecia Barton,
Scholar Quiz coordinator said. “Scholar Quiz has become important because we use it to kick off the dreaded testing season, which will start when we get back from spring break in April and May.” In the past years, PVHS students have done outstandingly well on state testing, reaching the “blue era” of academic excellence. “I see people training for this— they spend their lunches doing this,” Gianchandani said. “And I honestly think it’s really funny. It’s this weird phenomenon where you’re getting all different types of people to come and compete and get excited about stuff like this.” This year, a new round was introduced between the two teams knocked out in the semifinal round to determine a third and fourth place. “Very often competitions are more athletic,” Mark Lin said. “But this is one of the academic competitions that everyone knows about.” After 20 years and this academic victory, Barton will be handing over the reins of the Scholar Quiz to teacher librarian Ashley Brockman. “I’m not going to let Scholar Quiz go to the wayside,” Barton said. “I will hand it over with the knowledge that anybody and everybody can come to me.”
(First place team from left to right: Gavin Eades, Kaden Stone, Scholar Quiz Coordinator Tecia Barton, Mikey Mackiewicz, Rohan Gianchandani. Second place team bottom left: Malia Tamilin, Aman Angadi, Alan Wu , and Timothy Yang. Third place team bottom right: Michelle Nikmehr, Clarence Lin, Cayden McGuire, Mark Lin, and alternate Alex Naehu. (Photos by Natalie Dardon)
PVHS Presents Heathers Musical this Spring
By Kelly Bojorquez reporter
Get ready for the upcoming spring musical, Heathers. This play includes amazing choreography, songs and actors who have put a lot of effort into their performance. Unlike previous PVHS plays, Heathers includes material for more mature audiences with scenes including drug usage, murder and suicide. The Heathers musical is about common teenage issues, like popularity and bullying, and how they affect teenagers. The main character Veronica moves into a new town and becomes a part of the most popular clique but starts to rebel against the Heathers once she realizes just how bad they really are. Veronica gets a boyfriend JD who starts manipulating Veronica into helping murder the Heathers and other people and pinning them as suicides. Senior Rachel McGinty who stars as Veronica says her character struggles with popularity the most.Veronica soon finds out that popularity is not what’s important in life and that there’s other things that are
WASC Visits Campus A look at our school’s accreditation process
By Aaron Propst reporter
(Photo by Chloe Choi) more important, like her true friends. “It’s really just about high schoolers and what they go through and how important it is to be true to yourself and to do the right thing,” McGinty said. Due to the nature of the play, there are many mature scenes involved. “A lot of precautions are being taken to make sure that this production is safe for people to watch and safe for us to be a part of,” McGinty said. “It’s very different from the original in the sense that it’s not as vulgar or as shocking per say. It still tells the story and includes everything that is very important to the story.” As the Drama Department is putting on a performance about common teenage issues, students on campus have
found the topic of the play very interesting as it can relate to their own lives. “It promotes the reality of high school and explains how students in today’s society have to deal with bullying, stress, grades, and much more,” freshman Olga Mangual said. Plays, movies, books, shows, and podcasts can play a big role in how people see life today. For the Drama Department, producing Heathers for the school to see is a great way to spread more awareness about these issues. Support the Drama Department who puts all this hard work into their performances by attending the performances April 12-14 and 18-21.. Visit PVHSDRAMA.COM for more information.
WASC, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, visited the Palos Verdes High campus from Monday through Wednesday, March 11-13. The purpose of the WASC accreditation is to monitor student learning and set school improvement goals. WASC lead, Chloe Schofield, was a big part of planning and preparing for the arrival of WASC. “Are we a real school, does real learning take place, when students come are they safe and happy?” Schofield said, referring to what the WASC team looks for. “That accreditation makes the (students) high school diplomas mean something,” Schofield said. Around the school, staff members prepared in many different ways for the arrival of WASC. Schofield and Associate Principal Jason Ito were prominent in the preparation.
“We’ve been preparing for the WASC visit for at least a year,” Schofield said. “Mr. Ito and I spent a lot of time grinding out essays and writing reports.” Teachers were also excellent at preparing students making sure that our school was well represented as a serious campus that cared about learning in respective classes. “This isn’t a horse and pony show,” Gailene Lancey said. “Just be yourself and answer truthfully. You’re great kids.” Students did a great job at staying on task in class and working together to make a good impression. WASC recognized the joy of student life on campus at different lunchtime activities and during in class activities. Overall, Palos Verdes High School made a lasting impression on WASC and showed the true nature of our school as the school has received a lot of positive feedback. The visiting WASC team will share their comprehensive report and findings later this Spring.