MVLA Community Scholars Articles


Local grads garner scholarships
Los Altos Town Crier Wednesday, 11 June 2008

Each year local organizations and businesses present qualified graduates with scholarships. Below is a listing of this year’s recipients:

MVLA Community Scholars grants 14 scholarships
The MVLA Community Scholars Selection Committee has awarded four-year college scholarships and mentoring opportunities to 14 graduates of the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District.

The recipients include five young men and nine young women. Three recipients graduated from Alta Vista, seven from Mountain View, and four from Los Altos. All but three are the first in their families to attend college. Four graduates will attend Foothill College; six, California State Universities; two, University of California campuses; one, a private college and one student will attend a state university in another state.
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MVHS graduate wins Pulitzer
Los Altos Town Crier April 16th, 2008
Mountain View High School graduate Jose Antonio Vargas was one of several reporters atThe Washington Post recognized in the Breaking News Pulitzer Prize awarded last week.

Two articles Vargas contributed to The Washington Post’s Virginia Tech massacre coverage earned him the award. The Washington Post won six Pulitzer Prizes — one for its team effort on nine breaking news stories covering Virginia Tech.

"On the day of the shooting, less than three hours after the rampage, I landed an interview with Trey Perkins, who sat in the back of Room 207 when shooter Seung Hui Cho barged in," Vargas wrote in an e-mail to friends. "I found Trey on Facebook, ’friended’ him, chatted with him on AIM and convinced him to talk to me on the phone. It ended up being the key interview of the day."

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'Scholars' group offers a shot at college
Mountain View Voice, February 1, 2008

MVLA Community Scholars provides financial assistance, mentors and more

Los Altos High School graduate Guadalope Garcia says he would not be a student at California State University, East Bay without the one-on-one mentoring, seminars and scholarships he received from MVLA Community Scholars.

Since it began in 2000, the organization has offered financial assistance and programs for 127 underserved students in the Mountain View-Los Altos high school district. Currently, MVLA Community Scholars has 64 students in the program, and three graduated this December.
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‘From High School to College’ - how can students succeed?
Los Altos Town Crier, February 28, 2007
By Nancy Lippe and Laura Casas Frier

“The transition to college is not an easy one” according to Santa Clara University freshman and Mountain View High School graduate Leslie Cervantes, who introduced the panel for the recent education forum “From High School to College.”

The forum featured Stanford Professor Emeritus of Education and Business Administration and author Michael Kirst, Chancellor Martha Kanter of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District (FHDA) and Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District Superintendent Barry Groves.

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Honored local students head for college
Los Altos Town Crier, September 12, 2007

MVLA Community Scholars has awarded need-based four-year grants and one-on-one mentoring to students graduating from the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District.

The scholarship selection committee chose seven students from among 32 applicants - five from Los Altos High School and two from Mountain View High School.

Two of the scholarship recipients will attend local community colleges, three will attend UC Davis, one Cal Poly Pomona and one Santa Clara University.
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Schools chief and protégé exemplify successful Partners for New Generations

Los Altos Town Crier, December 21, 2005
By Nancy Lippe, Special to the Town Crier
     Rich Fischer, retiring superintendent of the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, ended a day that began much earlier than most of us wake up, spanned several campuses, and encompassed too many meetings and phone calls to count, but included a conversation with his protégé, Jose Vargas.

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Washington Post Magazine, Sunday, November 6, 2005; Page W24
The Education Review
Shelter From The Storm
She started out as his high school principal but ended up as so much more
By Jose Antonio Vargas
She was a nobody to me. I knew her name (Pat Hyland, "PJ" to everyone) and her position (principal of my California high school), but little else. She was just a woman with a megaphone, clad in school colors (yellow and black), standing in front of the gym during assemblies at Mountain View High….

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Los Altos Town Crier, Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Student mentoring is a two-way street
By Pam Lehner
I used to work with high school students and knew I wanted to be a mentor so that I could do something to benefit others as well as myself.

A few years ago, I learned about Partners for New Generations (PNG), a Los Altos Rotary Club-sponsored mentoring and tutoring program for students in Los Altos and Mountain View schools. I waited until my own son left for college to begin one of the most rewarding journeys of my life with Leslie, Alicia and Olivia.

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