About
Vision
Our vision at Righetti High School is to provide a healthy, safe, and engaging learning experience through relevant curriculum, cooperative learning, and technological literacy, in order to promote academic achievement, career opportunities, and social responsibility for all students.
About the School
Demographics/Curricular Program
· Approximately 2150 student enrollment; 53% Hispanic and 36% White with very small percentages of other ethnicities.
· The student body is drawn from a variety of disparate communities both cities and small, unincorporated county communities. Most students are from the Orcutt/southern Santa Maria areas. Santa Maria has a high percentage of Hispanic families, with a more balanced mix of White and Hispanic families residing in the Orcutt area. A few hundred students are bused in from Guadalupe, a largely Hispanic town about 12 miles west of the school site. There is a significant amount of farming in and around our area, accounting for our healthy number of students and families who are involved in agriculture, including as migrant and year-round farm labor. In addition, a few students are bused in from the very small communities of Sisquoc (east of Orcutt) and Los Alamos (south of the site). The students from Sisquoc and Los Alamos are few in number and come from very small, K-8 schools in their very rural communities. The student population has a broad spectrum of families with very high levels of income and education through families who are desperately poor and may have limited schooling. Students come from five different elementary feeder districts.
· We are proud of our award-winning agriculture/FFA program, as well as strong athletic programs, and a healthy variety of clubs and elective programs that students may choose to be involved in while attending RHS. Our College and Career Center has been a central, unifying program within the school that allows guidance and placement, career and college exploration and preparation through both their academic and elective programs provided on an annual basis to all students. We have a strong Visual and Performing Arts program which includes a Marching, Jazz and Drumline Bands, a Ballet Folklorico and Marimba Band, a strong Video and Film series of courses and activities, competitive Dance Team, Madrigal and supporting choir performers, active Theatre and Drama productions, annual art shows and art in the community, as well as newly revised versions of our yearbook/annual, as well as our Righetti Legend. Our ASB program has been expanded to include more students, to develop leadership capacity in a larger sample of our student body. The many clubs on campus offer student participation in civic organizations, service, art, business, cultural, and many other "beyond" the classroom experiences. Our school also boasts 18 Advanced Placement courses, including three that have been added in the last 2 years.
· We have been working at incorporating data-driven decision-making at the site level for the past 10 years. Over ten years ago, our core departments spent time "unwrapping" standards and aligning curriculum to the state-mandated testing. This work set us up to develop Common Formative Assessments for all of our core, required courses about 6 years ago at a district-wide level. Refining and revising the CFAs and using the data from these assessments in Professional Learning Communities has taken a large portion of our professional development time. This work will now be utilized as we tackle the incorporation of the Common Core Standards as a unifying force for our curricular focus in our current school year and in the next few years. We have recently signed on with Pivot Learning Partners who will be a great help in shaping our "roll out" of the Common Core and how to help teachers in all areas of the curriculum to share in the responsibility and possibility inherent in a more integrated approach to education.
· Our site has a strong sense of community within the school and with our neighboring community. We enjoy the support of many businesses, non-profit and service organizations who create many opportunities for our students to learn and grow, but also support us with their donations of time, resources, and money.
· Approximately 2150 student enrollment; 53% Hispanic and 36% White with very small percentages of other ethnicities.
· The student body is drawn from a variety of disparate communities both cities and small, unincorporated county communities. Most students are from the Orcutt/southern Santa Maria areas. Santa Maria has a high percentage of Hispanic families, with a more balanced mix of White and Hispanic families residing in the Orcutt area. A few hundred students are bused in from Guadalupe, a largely Hispanic town about 12 miles west of the school site. There is a significant amount of farming in and around our area, accounting for our healthy number of students and families who are involved in agriculture, including as migrant and year-round farm labor. In addition, a few students are bused in from the very small communities of Sisquoc (east of Orcutt) and Los Alamos (south of the site). The students from Sisquoc and Los Alamos are few in number and come from very small, K-8 schools in their very rural communities. The student population has a broad spectrum of families with very high levels of income and education through families who are desperately poor and may have limited schooling. Students come from five different elementary feeder districts.
· We are proud of our award-winning agriculture/FFA program, as well as strong athletic programs, and a healthy variety of clubs and elective programs that students may choose to be involved in while attending RHS. Our College and Career Center has been a central, unifying program within the school that allows guidance and placement, career and college exploration and preparation through both their academic and elective programs provided on an annual basis to all students. We have a strong Visual and Performing Arts program which includes a Marching, Jazz and Drumline Bands, a Ballet Folklorico and Marimba Band, a strong Video and Film series of courses and activities, competitive Dance Team, Madrigal and supporting choir performers, active Theatre and Drama productions, annual art shows and art in the community, as well as newly revised versions of our yearbook/annual, as well as our Righetti Legend. Our ASB program has been expanded to include more students, to develop leadership capacity in a larger sample of our student body. The many clubs on campus offer student participation in civic organizations, service, art, business, cultural, and many other "beyond" the classroom experiences. Our school also boasts 18 Advanced Placement courses, including three that have been added in the last 2 years.
· We have been working at incorporating data-driven decision-making at the site level for the past 10 years. Over ten years ago, our core departments spent time "unwrapping" standards and aligning curriculum to the state-mandated testing. This work set us up to develop Common Formative Assessments for all of our core, required courses about 6 years ago at a district-wide level. Refining and revising the CFAs and using the data from these assessments in Professional Learning Communities has taken a large portion of our professional development time. This work will now be utilized as we tackle the incorporation of the Common Core Standards as a unifying force for our curricular focus in our current school year and in the next few years. We have recently signed on with Pivot Learning Partners who will be a great help in shaping our "roll out" of the Common Core and how to help teachers in all areas of the curriculum to share in the responsibility and possibility inherent in a more integrated approach to education.
· Our site has a strong sense of community within the school and with our neighboring community. We enjoy the support of many businesses, non-profit and service organizations who create many opportunities for our students to learn and grow, but also support us with their donations of time, resources, and money.