Eastside succeeds by focusing on the students HIGH SCHOOL SUCCESS STORY

Seniors Alejandro Gutierrez (from left) talks with Victor Carranza and Andrew Cruz on the Eastside College Preparatory campus in East Palo Alto, Calif., on Tuesday, June 9, 2009. Seniors Alejandro Gutierrez (from left) talks with Victor Carranza and Andrew Cruz on the Eastside College Preparatory campus in East Palo Alto, Calif., on Tuesday, June 9, 2009. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Eastside succeeds by focusing on the students 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

This is the kind of school Hollywood makes movies about - a seat-of-your-pants high school where the first class of students, all poor, gathered at an East Palo Alto picnic bench in 1996 for the lack of a classroom.

Today, Eastside College Preparatory School sits on nearly 6 acres nearby and for 10 years straight has had a 100 percent graduation rate, with every graduate heading to four-year colleges across the country, most of them the first in their families to make it.

It's a Cinderella story with an academic record any school, public or private, would envy. It also shows one way to set at-risk students squarely on the academic path to success, closing the seemingly unmovable achievement gap between poor and often minority students and their white, Asian and wealthier peers.

Yet public schools will have a hard time following Eastside's recipe for success.

The private school's price tag is $17,000 per year for each child, and that doesn't include an additional $10,000 for each of the 30 students who participated this year in the school's boarding program, which offers a stable living environment for those who need it.

The students don't pay any of it. Eastside is a nonprofit school, funded by foundations and individuals. The school apparently appeals to deep-pocket donors: Eastside maintains an endowment and property portfolio of about $80 million.

State public schools get a little more than half of Eastside's budget per child and post a graduation rate of about 68 percent.

At Eastside, 11 African American students graduated Wednesday, college-ready and university-bound. Compare that with all six of the high schools in the neighboring Sequoia Union High School District, where 12 college-ready African Americans graduated last year.

State of the art

The Eastside facilities are expansive and state of the art, the teacher and staff unconditionally dedicated and certain that every student can and will succeed.

"It's the full package," said founder and Principal Chris Bischof, a former East Palo Alto public school teacher. "I think that's what it takes."

The private school appears to brush aside any doubt that closing the achievement gap can be done.

Eastside's 37 graduating seniors Wednesday received 267 college acceptance letters from 90 colleges across the country, according to the schools' award-winning student newspaper.

College in Atlanta

Senior Shayla Bunch, 18, started at Eastside as a ninth-grader and is headed to Emory University in Atlanta this fall. She was raised by her single mother who never finished high school.

"She really wanted us to get a college education," said Bunch, a star athlete with a 3.7 grade point average. Without the pushing and prodding and academic peer pressure at Eastside, the East Palo Alto resident said she isn't sure what her future would have held.

"I probably never would have heard of Emory," she said.

A key is believing that the students can make it, and that's part of the recipe public schools can follow, said Phil Halperin, president of the Silver Giving Foundation, which has helped fund the school for the past 10 years.

"There are people out there who say these kids can't succeed and (Eastside) proves that wrong day in and day out," Halperin said. "This is a place where every adult in the building believes every kid can succeed. I fully think half the secret sauce is the expectation piece."

Bischof, a Stanford University graduate, planted the seeds of success with just eight students at that picnic bench, moved into a house a year later and has since pulled in enough support to build what the community calls an oasis in the middle of historically crime-ridden and poverty-plagued East Palo Alto.

Enrollment growing

This year the school enrolled 200 students in grades six through 12, although that number is expected to continue to grow. The dorms can hold up to 160 students.

Eastside boasts state-of-the-art science and media labs, art studios, a theater, a gymnasium, a cafeteria, study rooms, tutoring centers bordering manicured lawns and an ever-present staff.

Students are served two meals a day, three for those who live there.

Classes run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., but the campus is open until 10 p.m. each day and also on weekends.

"It takes a really dedicated staff," he said. Teachers earn $45,000 to $90,000 annually, on par with public school salaries.

Various summer programs are mandatory, including an all-expenses-paid trip junior year to East Coast colleges - the first plane ride for many students.

Senior Orlando Pineda, 17, took that trip last year.

This year, he's New York City-bound to study engineering at Columbia University, where he received a full financial ride.

"It's one of the top engineering schools in the whole country," he said with a smile. Someday, he said, he'd like to work in the automotive industry to help design better cars or maybe in aeronautics to help send people into space.

Arguably, the Eastside students are motivated and might have succeeded wherever they went to school. But many of them started at the school performing academically well below their grade levels.

The admission process is selective, but it's not about grades or test scores, although students do submit those too. Motivation is key.

It's a choice

"It's really important the kids make the choice to be here," Bischof said.

Bischof said the school's first goal has always been to get the students into college, but it's now improving the preparation to help them finish college.

Eastside students who are now college graduates have landed in a variety of careers, including banking, insurance and teaching.

To date 76 percent of alumni have a college degree or are still enrolled in a four-year university. The national college completion rate is 60 percent for students given six years to finish.

Of the Eastside students who didn't stay at four-year colleges, half went back to enroll in community colleges, Bischof said.

Fred Carr, a 2008 Eastside graduate recently finished his freshman year with a 2.9 grade point average at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

The 18-year-old, the first in his immediate family to go to college, said he always wanted to go to college, but Eastside "molded me into the kind of student I am now."

The natural science major is thinking about teaching high school biology someday but isn't ruling out pediatric medicine. This summer he's a full-time Hewlett-Packard marketing intern during the day and taking a community college chemistry course four nights a week to stay on the pre-med track.

"I don't want to close any doors," he said.

Carr laughed when asked about summer fun.

"That's what the weekends are for."