ELD cultivates essential language skills, prepares students for mainstream classes

By Erick Johnson

Milpitas is a city with a large pool of immigrants, and young people arriving in the United States need to learn how to communicate properly and adjust to a new school system. The English Language Development (ELD) program is designed to assist these students to integrate into their new life.

With 70 to 100 students enrolled in the ELD program, En- glish learners make up a significant population of MHS, ELD teacher Amy Huddleston said. The ELD program, at its core, is designed to develop speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills at an accelerated rate, she explained.

“The first level, Emerging ELD, is all about speaking,” Huddleston said. “We want them to be conversational when they leave that class. ELD 1, which is taught by Mr. Payne, is much more read- ing-focused — being able to summarize texts and being able to understand when you’re reading something. When they leave that class, the expectation is that they can write a simple paragraph.”

In ELD 2, the students begin to read novels and analyze text, similar to a mainstream English class, but with added support, Huddleston said. The process is slow, and students are guided through it, but the expectation is that after they complete ELD 2, ing feedback from students via surveys; and taste testing new items,” Huynh said. “We strive to offer a menu that is not only compliant, but tasty and enjoyable to

Yount said both students and the supervisors of SNS were working towards being more culturally responsive to the student body.

“We really are trying to please everyone,” Yount said. “There was a student member that came in and started this little vegan area.”

The universal meal program, which is a state initiative that began providing free brunch and lunch meals in the 2022-2023 school year, has added a new strain on her department to meet the demand, largely because meal participation has increased as a direct result of the free waiver, Huynh said.

“In addition, the pandemic has disrupted the supply chain,” Huynh said. “We are constantly experiencing supply shortages and limited product availability.”

Sophomore Carmella Henderson, who gets brunch and lunch almost everyday, noticed the food department’s efforts to diversify the menu, she said.

“It’s pretty good how we have different things,” Henderson said. “And it’s kind of interesting to discover new cuisines from different areas of the world and different cultures.” er who teaches ELD speaks the student’s language, which is currently not the case with any of the ELD teachers, who can only speak basic Spanish sentences, Valderrama said. When a student has a question, the current ELD teachers can not directly explain and help the students and instead rely on an assistant to act as a third-party translator, she said. As a result, there is confusion about the instructions being given and students might not fully understand the material being taught, she said.

The challenge for ELD students is that they’re not exposed to other people at school, and the interactions are usually limited because of the language barrier. They are not given opportunities to be exposed to things they have not experienced before because they are usually all together all the time for their classes, ELD teacher Yeonsoo Kim added.

“The (mainstream) teachers get upset with us because we don’t know their language and we don’t understand them,” ELD student Daniela Valderrama said in an interview translated from Spanish. “They come here to teach and do their job, and with us who don’t speak their language, they feel frustrated.”

It is important that the teach-

“I always ask for ELD tutors in this class who speak Spanish or Vietnamese because they can help students,” Kim said. “(Students) are not on the same level, and all of them are at a different place because they have different educational backgrounds.”

Despite the language barrier and other educational concerns, being an ELD student also has its advantages, Huddleston said. ELD students have their year schedules filled out before most students and receive priority attention from course counselors, she said. Unlike most students who can only take MHS courses over the summer to recuperate credits, ELD students can take summer classes in order to help them catch up with their English, she said. The school also makes sure ELD teachers have sufficient materials, and the school sets aside a portion of the budget for the ELD program every year, Huddleston added.

School dances waltz away over time

By David Rendon

Many movies portray dances as a staple of the high school experience. However, MHS has only held prom and homecoming for the last few years, Athletic Director Joanna Butcher said. It was not always like this, she added.

Butcher, who served as Activities Director for 11 years, said that when she started working at MHS, there was a Homecoming dance, Winter Ball, Sadie Hawkins dance, Junior Prom, Senior Prom, and an End-of-the-Year dance. However, many of these dances were discontinued as time went on, she added.

“We used to have the End-ofthe-Year dance, because (the school year would) go a little bit longer into June,” Butcher said. “It was one of the biggest dances of the year because all the freshmen would want to go, and it would be the casual one. There were a lot more problems that occurred at the dance in regard to not-appropriate activities for minors, so the administration at that time ended up getting rid of that.”

The Sadie Hawkins dance, where female students would ask out male students, was eventually phased out because Leadership wanted to start moving away from the idea of Sadie Hawkins, Butcher said. A casual dance in February replaced the Sadie Hawkins dance, she added.

The Sadie Hawkins dance was moved away from because the concept wasn’t inclusive to all students, activities director Jerell Maneja said. It had the lowest turnout of all the school dances, he added.

“We also used to have a Winter Ball that would be off-site,” Maneja said. “The last time that was created, there was a low turnout, and it ended up being thousands of dollars of loss due to not enough attendees.”

It was difficult to find an affordable venue for the winter ball because there is usually high demand for holiday party venues in December, Butcher said. The Winter Ball ended up being merged with the casual dance in February, formerly the Sadie Hawkins dance, she added. Junior Prom and Senior Prom were merged because students tended to go to both, and it seemed like people were spending too much money, Butcher said.

“Next year, we are trying to install one or two more dances, including one additional one on campus,” Maneja said. “When I came in, every year, the Homecoming dance broke records. We had 750 (attendees), approached 1000 after COVID, and then now we had our 1500 record breaker, so we understand the demand is there.”

When planning dances, all students’ needs are considered, which means finding an afford-

District recycling lacks consistency

By Tiffany Lieu

Recycling operations have changed in MUSD over time, and they currently include a longstanding paper recycling program and a more recently developed bottle-and-can recycling program, according to Thomas Russell Middle School (TRMS) recycling coordinator and teacher Barbara Knitter. Knitter had formerly coordinated recycling across the district, she added.

“I was doing it district-wide until all the other schools had recycling bins and programs in place,” Knitter said. “Then COVID happened, things kind of fell to the wayside, and I wasn’t getting paid for it or anything. So, I just kind of let it go, and no one’s asked me to continue it.”

A paper-recycling dumpster was added to the MHS campus in 2014, according to Environmental Society advisor and science teacher Glen Barrett.

“We finally got the white big dumpster out in the parking lot, which does get used significantly; I think it gets filled every couple of days,” Barrett said. “That dumpster was huge in changing our recycling on campus.”

Later, in 2016, MHS supplied each classroom with new blue paper-recycling bins, and teachers could either manually empty their bins into the paper-recy- cling dumpster or into a collective bin for their department, Barrett said. In recent years, paper waste production has decreased, he added.

“My paper production went way down when Google Classroom kicked in,” Barrett said. “Mine (recycling bin) fills up so rarely that, every so often, I’ll take it over to the white bin, but usually I don’t because there’s so little of it.”

Custodian Zenaido Alvarez said that the custodians will generally empty the classroom recycling bins and collective bins into the recycling if they notice that the bins are full. However, there are no strict guidelines, and this process can vary from custodian to custodian, he added.

The waste disposal company Republic Services processes paper recycling within the district, and allows any type of unsoiled paper to be recycled, Superintendent Cheryl Jordan said. The provider differs from the city of Milpitas’ provider, she added.

“Republic gave the school district a much better contract option,” Jordan said. “Also, Republic has a long record of providing our teachers with mini-grants. So we, as a district, felt that Republic better met our needs as a learning organization.”

Around the 2015-16 school year, the state of California required all able venue for students, Maneja said. It’s also a priority to ensure that all students feel welcome to come even if a dance may not be their typical scene, he said. It shouldn’t matter whether people have a date or want to dance; they should still be able to enjoy the dances, he added.

“My feeling has always been that it’s your attitude going into it,” Butcher said. “In 2012, we went up to the Scottish Rite Center. We had a couple of kids come in with Monopoly boards and cards and they had a great time. It was a side room so you could hear the music. They would go get food, they’d sit down, and they were all playing games.” government agencies, including schools, to have a recycling system in place, Knitter said. When Milpitas city officials reviewed MUSD schools, none had bottleand-can recycling programs as developed as TRMS, she said.

“They started going to the middle schools, came to Russell, and were astonished by what they saw,” Knitter said. “They came to me and said, ‘We want you to do what you’re doing at Russell districtwide.’”

With the help of her AVID students, Knitter distributed recycling bins to other schools in the district and designated recycling coordinators, who were volunteer teachers that oversaw the maintenance of these bins, Knitter said. While overseen by teachers, the operations themselves were generally student-run to avoid additional strain on custodians, she added. Still, collections remained limited to items that could be cashed in at recycling centers, Knitter said.

“We were only interested in bottles and cans so the money could come back to the school,” Knitter said. “For anything else, we would love to have a program, but it was just too intense labor.”

At MHS, bottle-and-can recycling bins are picked up by Environmental Society student volunteers and cleaned out every few weeks, and all bottles and cans are traded in at a recycling center so that funds can come back to the club, Barrett said. However, there is often an issue of students placing their bottles into the wrong bins, he added.

At TRMS, Knitter combatted this challenge by educating the campus with student-made educational videos, she said.

“The first three years that I did the recycling program, the garbage cans and the recycling bins looked identical,” Knitter said. ”It wasn’t until I started doing the videos schoolwide, until those education elements began, that they started to look correct.”

Jordan said that no major changes are currently planned for the recycling program.

“The structure is there,” Jordan said. “We just need to be consistent following it.”

Senior Kaden Nguyen has no particular desire to see more dances, but also doesn’t see any downsides to having more, he said. For the most part, he feels that the best part of the dances isn’t the dances themselves, but the buildup to it all, Nguyen added.

“I think (the buildup) is pretty integral because it really helps you feel like you’re a part of the school community,” Nguyen said. “You’ll see other people participating in the spirit days, and it’ll immediately build a connection for you on campus. This allows you to really venture out of your comfort zone because being able to explore these flamboyant themes can help people break out of their shell.”

For students to feel connected to the school, there needs to be an opportunity to make memories, Butcher said. When students look back on high school, they’ll remember the activities, the clubs, the school plays, the athletic events, and the school dances, she added.

“Students are finding more opportunities to call this place home,” Maneja said. “And that’s the priority of my organization, to promote school belongingness, and to define pride as not whether or not you dress up on this day, but that this is your second home and that you are happy to be here.”

School resource officers provide safety, form bonds with students

By Kevin Ting

School resource officers are a familiar sight on the MHS campus, often conversing with students or watching over the school. These police officers have been stationed on campus since before 1989, MUSD Superintendent Cheryl Jordan said.

These officers are stationed at MHS most days of the week, and are usually stationed for two to three years at a time, Associate Principal Skyler Draeger said.

“They’re here, of course, to provide safety,” Draeger said. “But generally, we try not to do things punitively and that prevents things from escalating.”

The role of these officers is also to build positive relationships between law enforcement and the wider community, Jordan said.

“We have officers who come at the elementary level, they read to the classes, they come at recess and play wall ball,” Jordan said, “And then at the middle schools, they play basketball and bring pizza.”

San Jose Unified School District (SJUSD) also has officers stationed on their school campuses, courtesy of an $800,000 contract between SJUSD and the police department, according to “SJUSD, SJPD outline agreement under new SJUSD agreement” by the San Jose Spotlight.

However, MUSD has not made any formal contracts with the Milpitas Police Department, and instead has a verbal agreement,

Jordan said.

“Our relationship started with our last police chief, and has been even built upon with the current police chief, Hernandez, and that is a building relationship, our core, between our police officers and our students,” Jordan said.

MHS resource officers also often work with school administrators to improve student conduct, Draeger said.

“If it seems like that a student is verging on activities that might at some point become an arrestable offense, we would rather proactively bring in the police officers to sit down with that student and talk to them,” Draeger said.

However, the officers are rarely asked to directly intervene in situations with students, Draeger said.

“As a school, what we don’t want to do is funnel students into the police system,” Draeger said. “We don’t want our students to have a record.”

While officers are able to build bonds with students, the reaction to the officers is not always positive, Draeger said.

“There’s always a fear if you’re bringing a police officer into a situation,” Draeger said.

Draeger hopes that the relationship between the officers and the community will only continue to improve, he said.

“I think we have a really strong working relationship with the police department, and I think it’s a relationship that has benefited our students,” Draeger said.

Food trucks serve global cuisines

By Zaynah Turabi

Food trucks have been around for a long time and have become known for convenient and inexpensive bites. In the modern world, food trucks can be an efficient option for people who can’t find the time for a sit-down meal. Here are a few options in Milpitas.

1. El Taco De Oro: 3/5 stars

For my first stop, I tried a taco truck I’ve driven past hundreds of times but never eaten from. Located at a gas station off the 880 and 237 exits, this location was the least impressive out of all the food trucks. The carne asada taco was perfectly done, and it came with a regular option or an upgraded option with sour cream and cheese. I ordered the upgrade, and the flavors worked pretty well together. It’s not a heavy taco, as the regular only comes with onion, cilantro, and salsa. While I was initially skeptical, I found that the light toppings worked well to accentuate the meat. I also ordered a burrito, which was unfortunately a bit disappointing. It was a lot less balanced than the taco, too riceheavy with hardly any cheese. It was a little on the dry side and blander than I would have liked, so I was definitely disappointed. All in all, the food was okay, but I probably won’t be coming back unless I’m desperate for a quick meal.

2.

India: 3.5/5 stars

This truck was also at a gas station, across from Foster’s Freeze, but there was a bigger crowd at this location. Since it was a popular spot for pani puri, I knew I had to try some. Pani puri is a common Indian snack consisting of hollow fried dough balls meant to be filled with potatoes, chickpeas, veggies, spices, sauces, and fla-