\doc\web\98\04\lindberg.txt http://www.leconsulting.com/arthurhu/98/04/lindberg.txt See pictures at http://www.leconsulting.com/arthurhu/images/98/04/lindberg/Page0001.html RETURN TO LINDBERGH HIGH SCHOOL 1972-76 -> 1998 To the edloop - here's my trip report I made up for my folks on how Lindbergh High School in Renton WA has changed since I was the first class to go all the way through a what was then a brand new high school as one of the only Chinese / Asian students. It's now got one of the highest percentages of Asians of any high school in the state, and I suspect the fact that my family was first may be part of the reason, we sent 3 kids to Stanford and 4 to MIT, something that hasn't been duplicated by any family there since then. What I've noticed there is probably true of most high schools that have been around that long. Stayed at mom's house and realized that I was near the Lindbergh High School on a working day, and decided to pay them a visit for the 1st time since graduating in 1976. I got stopped by a big brawny security guy with a radio that directed me to the office. They say they've only had this type of guy for the past 4 years. I had a talk with the principal, who was the only guy that could authorize me to wander around, and left him my driver's licence so they could find me if I did something horrible to a student. They said that some of the neighborhood is getting rough, and some of the toughest kids are from Russia now, and I doubt that all the Asian kids are as well behaved as we were. Lindbergh is straddling Fairwood which wants to be Bellevue south, and Cascade Vista which is sort of teetering between middle class and suburban less-than-middle. Renton High School, down in the valley is now 40% black, I suspect, it will turn into the suburban middle class extension of the depressed urban Rainier Valley, as cities like Los Angeles and DC have middle class black suburbs. If Bellevue is at the top end and Beacon Hill is the lower end of Asian neighborhoods, Lindbergh may be the center of a new Asian concentration, especially when they put in the massive Asian supermarket near Valley General Hospital. There are about a half dozen old timers that still remember the Hu legend, Ms. Bedteylon (totally fooled me I had to look her up in my yearbook before I realized who she was), Mr. Oyler (now looks like Santa Claus), Wickstrom (now with mustache, looks like Mr. Holland), says he found my computer game magazine, that must have been Georges, Packwood, and Nicholson (now balding) are still there. One lady in the office tried to name us in sequence A-G, but she didn't get very far. Now they say about a dozen or so kids go to top notch schools, but they say that we were the only family where every kid was as good as the top 1 or 2 kids in any year. CFAS math test scores are recently edging up into the 70s, on par with the highly rated Bellevue district. The building is still in pretty good shape, in much better shape than your average 1972 house, and it still looks cool relative to most of the high school buildings build before or since. Some of the landscaping in the courtyards has been neglected, and some of the classes have been moved around since the original signs cast into brick were put up. They finally got rid of the stupid tiny wooden cube lockers and installed conventional steel lockers on the walls, and just about closed up and walled off every open - school philosophy space that the school had, and carved out a new room here and there. They got rid of the house system too where the high school was split into two smaller home schools. So much for progressive 70's ideas. There's still a lot of controversy over the value of computers with Clinton demanding that every student get an internet terminal. At Lindbergh, there's PCs in art class, where painting is done with Corel Draw instead of ink, drafting where they still have some old fashioned drawing boards, but it's mostly PCs, Macs have replaced the card catalog in the Library, and computers running Word and Excel have replaced the typewriters in the business area. There is one dedicated computer lab with power macs in it. The Physics class is now in the old metal shop area, along with the robotics lab, (they have robot contest tropies now too). There's an awesome robot parked near the door, and they have a trophy to show for it. But I don't think any of the PC's are employed for the purposes of actual instruction, it's still the old "computers are good for word processing and computer science" and not much else, well make that "word processing, CAD, computer aided art, spreadsheet, database, and computer science, and card catalog" and not much else. The idea of putting a PC on every desk in every class for the purpose of instruction is still for the birds. They are now running TWO (yes 2) classes of Orchestra, which is funny since it was on its death bed it seemed when we went through. Must be all those Asian kids, who are over 20% now, and they haven't even started building that new Asian supermarket yet. They also have a class for keyboard / guitar now. I didn't notice how many band or glee classes they had, but it seems to be less. The lunch area is now all fast food sandwiches, salad and pizza, they don't have the standard one hot lunch fits all anymore. The high school yearbook has a wall full of vending machines that are all gone. Before, every table was a white table, but now now they have Asian tables, White tables, Black tables, Hispanic tables, and mixed tables. The magazines only go back to 1987 or so, I guess they had to get rid of the 1972 Popular Science magazines. Renton Park elementary looks pretty beat up now, and painted in somewhat subdued tones compared to the 60's crayola scheme it used to be in. They're also adding crosswalk piers to the road that leads up to LHS and Renton Park, don't know why they're bothering. Johnny's is now a QFC, but folks still remember. Nelsen still looks much as it did in 1970, (I met the son of Mr Okubo, one of the few Asian teachers back then that still works there) looks like Spring Glen still has some Head Start classes there, and of course, Cascade was completely nuked and rebuilt. PS, for some reason, my schools are the only ones in the district that now have web pages, if you want to see what these places look like: Cascade Elementary School: http://www.renton.wednet.edu/cascadees/cascade.html Nelsen Middle School: http://www.renton.wednet.edu/nelsen/nelsen_middle_school.html They have a virtual tour Lindbergh High School http://www.renton.wednet.edu/lindberghhs/lhs.html Looks like the PC police got rid of the silly Nelsen Braves character, they're hawks now.