DCP El Primero High School is a public charter high school in San Jose, California. Its mission is to prepare first-generation students for college success, rooting from the school's strongly held value that every student has the potential to succeed. It opened in 2000 as the first charter school in Santa Clara County.
About the school
Downtown College Prep El Primero High School is the original flagship school and has the longest history among Downtown College Prep (DCP) campuses. Serving over 400 9th-12th grade students since 2000, this is the proud home of younger sisters, brothers, cousins, and friends of many past graduates.
Students experience a unified college-bound culture and a supportive environment in which students realize the value of positive interdependence and shared experiences. With guidance, education, and support, DCP ensures that every family has a college plan and the know-how to navigate the college application and admissions process. Over 600 students have graduated from this campus and successfully enrolled in college.
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About the students
The vast majority of the school's students are low-income, Latino youth, whose families have limited educational attainment. Eighty percent of incoming students performed two years below grade level in English and/or Math. Ninety percent of the students come from low-income families, and ninety six percent are Latino. About forty one percent of the parents have less than a high school education, and only four percent have a college degree. Despite many challenges students may have had before enrolling, Downtown College Prep alumni have among the highest rates of college matriculation and are four times more likely to graduate from college than their peers nationwide.
History
The school was founded by Greg Lippman and by Jennifer Andaluz, who became Executive Director. When it was granted a charter by San Jose Unified School District late in 1999, it was the first charter school in Santa Clara County; an elementary school opened the same year. After a summer program testing teaching concepts and forming the first group of students, the school opened in fall 2000 with 102 9th-grade students, split between two sites in downtown San Jose, near the San Jose State University campus: St. Paul's Methodist church (in 2007 the site of the launch of a charter elementary school, Rocketship One) and a YWCA. In each of the following three years, a grade and another approximately 100 freshmen students were added. The school received considerable help in its formation from Father Mateo Sheedy, pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic church, and its advisory board and eventual board of trustees included then-mayor of San Jose Ron Gonzales, Robert Caret, then-president of San Jose State, Tony Ridder, CEO of Knight Ridder, then headquartered in San Jose, and Greg Jamison, president of the San Jose Sharks hockey team. The mayor and the priest both spoke at the opening celebration on August 30, 2000.
Of the first freshman class, approximately one third transferred out, 11 moved away, 6 were expelled, and approximately half graduated, all of whom were accepted by four-year colleges. In 2007-08, the school had a 0.9% drop-out rate and a 100% graduation rate.
Initial plans of constructing a school building on land donated by San Jose State fell through. Instead, after briefly being split between three sites, the school moved in October 2002 to a converted fitness center, and in December 2005 to the former building of Hester Elementary School, on The Alameda. The building was gutted to create a "great area" and other new spaces; Downtown College Prep students and their math teacher assisted the architect, Bill Gould, in laying out the partitions for the interior rebuilding.
Gould had been the designer with Glen Rogers of the Spirit Gate, a San Jose Public Art Program project completed in 2000 consisting of an ornamental gateway on The Alameda with concrete posts resembling elephant tusks and inspirational "power words" such as "family" and "dream" stencilled out of the circular gate itself. Hester students chose the words, and the mosaics that wrap around the posts are based on their drawings.
Affiliated schools
In 2008, Downtown College Prep opened an affiliated middle school (6th-8th grade) in Alviso, in North San Jose. For the 2012-13 school year, this closed and was replaced by an affiliated middle school in Alum Rock, on the eastern edge of the city. As planned, this subsequently became a combined middle and high school. A second middle school authorized by San Jose Unified School District opened in the Fall of 2014
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