A Bright
For 20 years , a charter school on the UC San Diego campus has changed our community , one student at a time .
By Barbara Davenport
FULL SPECTRUM ( L-R ) The Preuss School UC San Diego co-founder Cecil Lytle ; Indira Hood-Esparza , Preuss 2011 , UC San Diego ’ 15 , M . Ed . ’ 16 , now gives back as a Chula Vista schoolteacher ;
Jason Babineau ’ 07 tutored at Preuss as an undergrad and is now a high school principal ; Maria Martinez-Rendon has had three children at Preuss , including Eduardo , a current seventh-grader .
On a rainy September morning in 1999 , Cecil Lytle , the provost of Thurgood Marshall College , watched from his office window as a line of yellow school buses lumbered up the rise and parked in the turnaround in a eucalyptus grove . Slowly , cautiously , sixth , seventh and eighth graders in uniforms of dark blue shirts and khaki pants walked down the bus steps and clustered next to their buses . They were the first students of The Preuss School UC San Diego , the new college preparatory school that opened that day in temporary trailers at Marshall College . Doris Alvarez , the new school ’ s principal , stood in the rain and welcomed them . She pointed to a path and urged them to walk up the hill to the buildings at the top . A few students went , but most stayed by their buses .
Then 15 or so cars wound their way up the rise . Inside were parents who had seen their children off in Southeast San Diego and then followed them 21 miles to the campus . “ They were sending their kids to a place they ’ d never been ,” Lytle remembers . “ A place they ’ d heard had a lot of smart people . Those families believed that something good was going to happen . They trusted us — maybe more than we ’ d earned at that point .”
They climbed out of the cars , found their kids and held them close . Some of them cried . Then , one by one , they let them go . Students , some still with tears , turned and walked up the hill to their new school . The parents stood in the rain and watched until the last student entered and the door shut behind them .
TRITONMAG . COM 33