Letter: Local high schools stand tall

EDITOR,
Congratulations to gold-medal Scotts Valley High School and the rankings of No. 50 in the state (out of 2,407 state high schools) and No. 259 nationally (out of nearly 22,000) in the 2012 U.S. News & World Report “Best High Schools” compilation. Scotts Valley compares well with Palo Alto High (29 in California and 152 nationally) and Saratoga High (31 in the state and 157 nationally), and outranks nearby Los Gatos High (No. 105 in the state and 540 nationally). Make sure to mention that to your friends in Los Gatos when you go “over the hill.”
San Lorenzo Valley High School also made an excellent ranking as 266 in the state and 1,289 nationally and achieved a silver medal as a “high performing school, but with lower college readiness”.
However, it would be an oversight not to mention that there is one even higher-ranked public school in Santa Cruz County — in fact, the highest-ranked school in the entire Bay Area: Pacific Collegiate School, one of the three public high schools in the Santa Cruz School District, ranked No. 2 in California and No. 8 in the country. With a college readiness index of 100.0 (versus SV’s 55.5) and an academic performance rating of 942 (versus SV’s 831), this public charter school serves nearly 500 students from all over Santa Cruz County.
Scotts Valley and SLV high schools should be very proud of their rankings — they are great accomplishments and deserve vigorous support. But let’s also be thankful that in PCS, our students have access to one of the very finest schools in the nation.
John Hayes, Felton