BUCKEYE MAN ACCUSED OF MURDERING WIFE, PAGE 3
westvalleyview.com — the newspaper of Avondale, Buckeye, Goodyear, Litchfield Park & Tolleson, AZ 50¢ Wednesday, May 10, 2017 (623) 535-8439
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University High School ranked No. 21 in nation by Chris Caraveo staff writer
LEST WE FORGET Millennium drama students tackling somber subject — Page 10.
ON THE RUN Annual torch run makes way through West Valley — Page 9.
DAILY UPDATES! News Updates and fresh Classified ads posted Monday - Friday at 4:30 p.m. online at www.westvalleyview.com Volume 32, No. 05 28 Pages 1 Section Circulation: 79,061 INDEX Classifieds .................... 24 Editorials & Letters .......... 6 Obituaries ...................... 22 Sports ........................... 12 Briefcase ....................... 11 9 Days a Week............... 20 Recycle this paper
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MILLENNIUM HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA STUDENTS Maddie Wilcox, Sydney Rassas and Taryn Landis play the roles of three teens involved in a car accident during a mock DUI crash May 3 at the Goodyear school. Goodyear police, fire and Millennium theater students joined together to create the scene to raise awareness of the dangers of driving under the influence ahead of prom and graduation. See the story on Page 23.
Battling stigmas Food banks aren’t one-size-fits-all by Shane McOwen For whichever reasons, stigmas are a part of life for various entities, and food banks are no exception. For food banks, a simple one-sizefits-all explanation doesn’t begin to
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cover all of the stigmas associated with the programs. Cassie Wilkins, All Faith Community Services director, has made it part of her mission to educate the community on the truths
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While BASIS schools dominate a national ranking of best high schools, one campus in Tolleson continues to produce quality students. And they are from within the community. The U.S. News & World Report released its rankings of the best high schools in the country, with University High School in Tolleson sitting at No. 21. “We’re extremely excited and very proud to have gone from 36 to 21,” said Academic Dean Susan Thompson. “If you’re in the top 100, that’s the top of the game, top echelon. We’re really glad to stay within the top 50.” University High, which has ranked as high as No. 8, is located on the Tolleson Union High School campus. The data used in the rankings comes from the 2014-15 school year. U.S. News teamed up with North Carolinabased RTI International, a global nonprofit social science research firm, to rank more than 20,000 eligible high schools using a four-step process. The first step determined whether a school’s students performed better than statistically expected for students in that school’s state. The next step looked at how a school’s disadvantaged students — including black, Hispanic and low-income students — compared to the state average for leastadvantaged students. Step 3 required schools to meet or surpass a benchmark for their graduation rate. Schools only passed if their rounded graduation rate was 75 percent or greater. The 3,109 schools meeting the first three steps became eligible to be judged on collegereadiness performance using Advanced Placement test data. From there, 500 schools received gold medals and ranked via a tiebreaker based on the percentage of seniors at a school taking AP exams and the percentage of seniors who passed at least four exams. There were five Arizona BASIS schools in the Top 7. Despite the same name, unaffiliated University High School in Tucson came in at No. 15, leaving the Tolleson school the highest ranking Valley campus not under the BASIS flag. Thompson and Joseph Ortiz, director of public relations and marketing for the Tolleson Union High School District, stressed the fact the school has succeeded on a national level with students within the Tolleson community. “These are the neighborhood kids,” Thompson said. “We do have some students who come from out of district but they’re still our neighborhood children. We don’t generally have kids that travel from an affluent area.” Entrance into University High, unlike BASIS’ lottery system, involves looking at students who score proficient or above on the AzMERIT, and then write an essay on why they want to be at University High. Thompson credits the start of University (See A’s on Page 4) BA
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