CHRONICLE the harvard-westlake
Los Angeles • Volume 26 • Issue 4 • Jan. 11, 2017 • hwchronicle.com
American Dreamers By Nicole Kim
and
Josie Abugov
Axel Rivera de León ’18 said he saw the terror in his mother’s face when Arizona State Patrol Agents demanded she show her identification. His mom was an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, and when the officers asked for their passports, she had nothing to show. “They took us in a little room,” he said. “There was a desk and a fridge and a stall, and that’s where we had to stay. They said [to my mom], ‘If you don’t have someone pick you up soon, you’re going to be deported, and your son’s going to have to go with you.” Although they were able to avoid deportation, Rivera de León said the • Continued on C3
ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE KIM
School considers AP class limit in talks of student well-being, academic balance By Katie Plotkin and Jean Sanders School administrators and faculty are discussing placing a limit on the number of AP classes students are able to take throughout their high school careers as part of their ongoing discussion about the happiness and wellness of students. Currently, they have not decided if honors classes would be included in any future limits. “For lots of reasons, I am hopeful that we will get to a policy decision by the end of this year,” Interim Head of Upper School Liz Resnick said. “That does not mean implementation in the fall, because if we make some decisions that mean adjustments to curriculum, we’re going to need lead time to that, and we will also
need to telegraph that to current and incoming families so everyone understands what it is.” Limiting the number of AP classes students can take in a given year would encourage students to broaden academic horizons and give a greater opportunity to explore other interests, Resnick said. At the same time, the school is looking to ensure that while the happiness and wellness of students improve, the academic rigor and intellectual atmosphere of the school do as well, President Rick Commons said. “We’re hoping not to compromise student health, not to compromise the intellectual atmosphere and academic rigor of the school, and not to compromise college admission outcomes,” Commons said. “We’re hoping, if any-
thing, to make the academic and intellectual life stronger and the outcomes better, and the health and balance of the student body better without compromising anything, and I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but there’s a lot of studying going on.” Upper School Deans Department Head Beth Slattery said that the number of APs and honors classes students must take in order to be a competitive applicant from Harvard-Westlake to the most selective universities has increased over time. Ten years ago, the average student applying to Harvard and Stanford had taken 10 AP or honors classes throughout high school, and last year the average applicant had taken 15. “I definitely think that people believe that they need to take AP’s to get into college,”
Phoebe Sanders ’17 said. “The thing is, if the school enforced this limit, then those receiving our new transcripts will understand [that GPA’s will change].” Information from the 2013 student workload survey, in which reported six hours of sleep or less per night as well as large amounts of nightly homework, spurred conversations among administration about what measures they could take to improve overall student wellness. “If we are to make good on the promise that happiness and balance will become primary values in the culture and the experience of students, we can’t just do business as usual and expect things to change,” Resnick said. Resnick said that although • Continued on page A2
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INSIDE
GIRLS’ BASKETBALL: The team is ranked sixth in MaxPreps’ California rankings. *Story on B1