Antelope High School is the fifth and newest comprehensive high school in the Roseville Joint Union High School District. The small community of Antelope is situated in the most northern section of Sacramento County and is located fifteen miles from downtown Sacramento. Due to district affiliation and close proximity to the city of Roseville and the Placer County line, Antelope High School is a part of the Placer County Office of Education catchment area and also receives specific services from Sacramento County as well.
Antelope High School began our most recent self-study process in 2017. Since the opening of Antelope High School in 2008, we as a staff, have conducted monthly staff meetings, weekly collaboration meetings, and book clubs discussing the pedagogy behind Whatever it Takes, by Richard Dufour, to foster and support conversations about critical issues such as grading practices, targeted instruction, curriculum, common assessments, and systemic intervention. Through these critical conversations, we, as a full comprehensive staff, were able to create the mission statement that guides our practice as educators: “Antelope High School is a learning community that expects to increase the achievement of EVERY student.” This mission statement serves as the foundation and cornerstone to all conversation surrounding Antelope High School students.
For the past ten years, Antelope High School has worked relentlessly toward becoming a Professional Learning Community, with small subject-based teacher teams to align their curricula and develop common assessments that will help aid teachers in their instructional practices to support the learning needs for all students. Departments and curricular teams have been meeting since the start of Antelope High School on a weekly basis during our collaboration Mondays to discuss ways to support EVERY student within our school. Along with developing our own Professional Learning Community, we have joined the Professional Learning Community of Roseville Joint Union High School District. Throughout the year, each academic discipline area across the district comes together to create a common summative assessment that is administered at the end of each term across the district. After the common summative assessment is administered and the results are in, each discipline area comes together to discuss the data and develop strategies to help increase achievement across the district. As our teachers continue to learn from assessment results and work together to adjust their instructional practices, we have seen improvement in academic achievement, reflected in student grades and CAASPP score results.
Though our core courses are essential, AnHS prides itself in enrichment courses and activities for all aspects of learning. During the first two years of varsity competition, Antelope athletic teams have won five league championships, a CIF championship in track, and a Nor-Cal Semifinalist in boys’ basketball. There are over a dozen clubs on campus, including many that are service-oriented. In 2016, The Titan Times student newspaper received its second prestigious Pacemaker Award from the National Scholastic Press Association and its sixth equally renowned Gold Crown from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association; the Titanium Yearbook has also earned eight Gold Crown (CSPA) and seven Pacemaker (NSPA) in only eight years. Only seven schools in the nation have received such recognition.
Our choir and band programs have achieved superior and excellence performance ratings. Last but not least, our innovative student government program created the Antelope RED ZONE which is a cheer section during athletic events that is so supported by students, faculty and community that it has brought recognition from several area schools and newspapers.
The WASC process has been extremely helpful in finalizing our findings and propelling these findings into concrete actions steps. We appreciate this opportunity to both validate the work that we have already accomplished as a staff and with our students, as well as the assistance to further develop our school into a place where our students can access their true potential as life-long learners. It is with this in mind that we have focused our collective efforts to offer the highest quality and most effective approaches appealing to all learning styles to support the achievement of all students.
The self-study process, by its very nature, cannot be done without the involvement of the entire learning community. In particular, thanks go out to the students, teachers, parents, administration and support staff for their contributions to this self-study. Thanks especially to our students, who we celebrate in their pursuit of academic, social, vocational, and personal success and growth.