Clark Magnet High School

Billionaire Richard Branson may have been celebrating the next step in his quest to make commercial space flights viable this week, but students at Clark Magnet High School also have been busy at work analyzing their own near-space flight. The students launched a high-altitude balloon that reached 85,000 feet over the Angeles National Forest Sunday to collect photos and video from near-space. "Launching a high-altitude balloon is about 99% the same as going to space, and it's as close as you can get without a very expensive, massive rocket," said Clark teacher David Black, who oversaw the launch.

Clark Magnet High School students are getting ready to return to school. Teachers and administrators are having their staff meetings and getting their classrooms ready for another successful year. Clark is a magnet school with a United Nations type of feel, where each area of Glendale and Crescenta Valley is represented. Eighth grade students who are interested in attending Clark place their name in a lottery-type system. The only criteria is that you live within the Glendale Unified School District.

Glendale Unified School District will have a lottery Thursday to select students entering Clark Magnet High School. The selection begins at 9 a.m. in the district administrative offices, 223 N. Jackson St., Room 203. The lottery is open to the public. The lottery is necessary because the number of applicants to Clark has exceeded the number of spaces available. About 500 applications were submitted for 300 spaces. Each student's name drawn will be assigned a number and a waiting list will be established.

On Monday, a Clark Magnet High School teacher busily prepared a presentation of his pet project, Alice, an educational software program that allows students to stretch their imagination and hone computer skills in a 3-dimensional environment. The program is something Roger Smith is passionate about and he was nervous as he gathered his students and paperwork. “I noticed Dr. [Michael] Escalante was there [at the presentation at Clark],” said Smith. But he didn’t think anything was unusual, he just assumed he was there for a meeting or to join the staff for lunch.

NORTHWEST GLENDALE — Hundreds of prospective students who filled the hallways of Clark Magnet High School on Saturday got a lesson in cost-benefit analysis — yes, more stringent academic standards and college preparatory atmosphere would mean sacrifice and hard work, but the payoff could be worth it. While school administrators said the campus is not better, just different from Glendale Unified’s three other high schools, Clark...

When Henrik Kantarchyan was a student at Theodore Roosevelt Middle School, he participated in Project ABCD, a Glendale Unified School District program that teaches students about the dangers of tobacco use. On Wednesday, Henrik returned to Project ABCD as a high school student and mentor, and gave students the same message about tobacco products that he had heard at their age. Henrik was one of about a dozen Clark Magnet High School students who...

If Adelante Latinos - an organization launched in 2004 to promote and celebrate the success of Glendale Unified's Latino students - needs a poster child, Gabrielle Granados would fill the role admirably. The 17-year-old is set to graduate from Crescenta Valley High School next month with a 4.2 GPA, earned while captaining the varsity swim team and working as a lifeguard and swim instructor at the Verdugo Hills YMCA. Gabrielle, who was raised in La Crescenta, has accepted a half-tuition scholarship to USC, where she intends to study occupational therapy and gerontology.

The decision by NASA to shutter the popular open house at Jet Propulsion Laboratory has many science fans crying into their calculators. But Clark Magnet High School students in Glendale keep pushing on, recently launching a near-space balloon over Angeles National Fores t. Bert Ring imagines this cheering the JPL's downtrodden scientists.  -- Dan Evans, Times Community News  Follow Dan Evans on Twitter: @EditorDanEvans . ...

Clark Magnet High School teacher Dominique Evans-Bye is one of 11 teachers across the country - and the only one in California - to win a coveted environmental award that honors her innovative and hands-on approach to teaching science. An instructor at Clark since 2000, Evans-Bye this week won the Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators for her focus on environmental research and her students' sustainability projects. One of those projects took place last October when she led a group of students up steep hills near Ojai to see camps that used to house illegal marijuana growing operations.

The Glendale Unified School District is going after a grant of almost $3 million to boost its science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs. The federal grant became available this spring as most states prepare to adopt new federal standards that further emphasize the programs, commonly known as STEM. Worth $2.99 million, the five-year grant would benefit Clark Magnet High School as well as Roosevelt, Rosemont, Toll and Wilson middle schools. As Glendale school officials wait for federal approval to turn in the grant's full application, they have submitted a seven-page pre-application and started considering how millions of dollars could benefit Glendale schools.

Billionaire Richard Branson may have been celebrating the next step in his quest to make commercial space flights viable this week, but students at Clark Magnet High School also have been busy at work analyzing their own near-space flight. The students launched a high-altitude balloon that reached 85,000 feet over the Angeles National Forest Sunday to collect photos and video from near-space. "Launching a high-altitude balloon is about 99% the same as going to space, and it's as close as you can get without a very expensive, massive rocket," said Clark teacher David Black, who oversaw the launch.

School officials in Burbank and Glendale may not have to absorb hundreds of thousands of dollars in transportation costs after the state Legislature on Thursday restored $248 million for student busing operations. Gov. Jerry Brown, who eliminated the funding last month after state revenues fell short of projections, has indicated that he supports the move, according to the Los Angeles Times. Glendale Unified stood to lose about $750,000, including $350,000 in reimbursements for home-to-school busing of special education students.

What gratifying and happy news to read of Clark Magnet High School's recognition and much deserved nomination for Blue Ribbon accolades (“Clark gets another Blue Ribbon nomination,” Jan. 10). Doug Dall, Clark Magnet's principal, and his outstanding, dedicated and professional teachers and staff are a true and shining jewel and treasure in the Glendale Unified School District. Dall's brilliant vision, incredible energy, unwavering commitment to students, strong and devoted trust in his teachers and staff, and his strong and dynamic leadership are a model and an inspiration for other educators throughout California and the nation.

Clark Magnet High School was one of 35 California schools nominated Tuesday for the 2012 National Blue Ribbon Schools Program, widely recognized as a gold standard in public education. The school will have to wait until September to learn if it will receive the honor, which is contingent on hitting all of its 2012 standardized testing targets, including its scores for the overall Academic Performance Index. Last year, Clark earned a score of 909 out of a total 1,000, making it the highest-performing high school in Glendale Unified, despite a large population of low-income students.

Editor's Note: Numerous instances of plagiarism have been discovered in Dan Kimber's “Education Matters” column, which ran in the News- Press from September 2003 to September 2011. In those columns where plagiarism has been found, a For the Record specifying the details will be appended to the piece. Some of you reading this will be voting on April 5 for or against Measure S, the proposed school bond. To that elite group - likely under 30% of eligible voters - I want to say thank you for being involved; thank you for having a stake in your community, instead of just being an occupant in it; thank you for seeing beyond your present needs and looking to the future, especially where our children are concerned.

When twin sisters Ani and Armineh Mikaelian were hired at Clark Magnet High School four years ago as math-teaching pair, colleagues had such a hard time distinguishing them, the two teachers were referred to by their classroom locations. “The biggest difficulty for the office staff is both first names start with an ‘a’ — Ani and Armineh,” said Barbara Melone, secretary to Clark Magnet Principal Doug Dall. “Bless the principal, he had one in this building and one in the other building.