tronanews.com

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION
According to the Daily Insufficient:

Trona High School will wrap up the whirlwind of graduations at 8 p.m. on June 7 as graduating Tornado seniors walk down the aisles in the high school gym, 83600 Trona Rd, Trona.

Interestingly at Burroughs:

Tickets are required for the graduation ceremony. Each graduating student has eight tickets available for their families, which must be picked up by parents. Tickets will be available for pick up between May 17 and May 30 at the BHS front office during normal business hours of 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. Parents or guardians or families who don’t need all 8 tickets can donate extra tickets back to the office. Tickets not picked up by the deadline would be put into the “extra ticket” [sic: missing word]. Extra tickets will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis for $5 (cash only) on May 31 during normal business hours, with a max of four extra tickets per parent while supplies last.

Hell, I'd sell any tickets I didn't need if I were a HS student with limited resources. Last thing I'd do is turn them in for the school to sell!
LINK: https://www.ridgecrestca.com/news/20190517/graduation-season-hits-valley

pdm wrote:The website is ghetto and any school with a Facebook page is pathetically behind the times. Their twitter feed is crap.
It's just plain embarrassing!
WEBSITE: http://tronaca.apptegy.us/o/trona-high-school
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/tronahigh/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tronahigh
LATEST BULLETIN: https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_file/269229/December_7.pdf

I don't really care about what their webpages look like. It's the actual campus that matters and what I saw back in May at a school event was worse than just embarrassing. Is anyone even trying to keep the campus looking reasonably neat and clean and in good repair? Never seen a more "ghetto" looking school campus in my life. I graduated almost fifty years ago and everything about the school was in good shape then. I visited five years ago and it wasn't too bad, but since then it's been allowed to deteriorate badly!

I just checked out a couple posts to the latest board meeting thread (the one for August 2019) and I think the writing is on the wall.
It's time to close Trona High School!
It's a sinking ship and there's no need to take Trona Elementary down with it. At this point that's the plan, but as others have pointed out there's an alternative and that's to send high school age students to Ridgecrest. Let's face it, the high school has been a fail for years. Most graduates from Trona High School who were honor roll students who decide to go to college flunk out of college their first year. The high school sadly fails to properly prepare them for college. If they went to Burroughs, they'd at least have access to a solid education and maybe have a chance. If the school board and admin aren't willing to do the right thing, parents can. Step up and be responsible and just send your kids to Ridgecrest. Drive them if you have to or demand that the local school district pay for a bus and bus driver. It's the very least they can do!

shadylady: To hear you say that makes me sad. I can't say that keeping Trona High School going provides any benefit for the local kids, but it sure does make me feel bad to think we might lose it. I know that sounds selfish, but I don't think I can get used to the idea of it being a thing of the past.

As people sometimes like to say: CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT IN THE UNIVERSE. Although technically speaking that's not actually true, it's a nice sentiment for the most part except that the phrase is usually used as a part of a pitch to sell half-baked ideas to a group of people. The truth is that most of the time change is a bad thing. For every good idea, ninety-nine bad ideas are proposed. If you look at the process of evolution the ratio is even worse. For every one beneficial mutation, thousands of harmful ones are discarded through the process of natural selection. But I digress, it's very difficult for people to separate their selfish sentimental attachment to the high school from a realistic evaluation of what would be most beneficial for high school students. That's all I'm going to say on the topic.

The phrase you mentioned about change probably seemed profound when it was first used, but now it just seems ridiculously trite and superficial as a result of overuse and the types of situations in which it typically gets used and the type of person who often uses it. The one thing I'll say about Trona High School is that it is unique, but unfortunately, unique is not always a good thing. I think there is some value in keeping it open, but I'm not sure what in this case would be in the best interests of the children of Trona. A lot of money could be wasted trying to revive a dying patient, but there is a slim chance of survival, if only for a few more years. If one of your parents is in their eighties and dying of a terminal illness, there are treatments that may prolong their agony, but is that a good thing or not?

I heard a rumor that an offer will be made to high school students ninth grade an up to get bused to Ridgecrest beginning in January at the beginning of the second semester. I can't verify that this is absolutely true, but I heard that it's almost a done deal and almost a certain thing that's for sure going to happen. I can't reveal my source, but I have reason to believe that she's not just joshing. I hope it isn't true, but I have a feeling it is.

CoolChick: That's very interesting and whether it's true or not is not really the most interesting question. The more interesting question is how many students attending school in Trona would actually take advantage of the offer if it were available. It would mean over an hour a day on a bus, but they'd also have many more courses and teachers to choose from. I understand that the course offerings at THS are pretty limited. Then again, it's a small, comfortable community school. So there are advantages and disadvantages either way you go.

I don't think too many students would take the offer. Most would fail miserably if they tried to make it at Burroughs. The academic standards are too high there and students there get much less support in the way of individualized attention and tutoring. On top of that maybe one or two of the athletes at THS would even have a chance of making any teams there and you can forget about starting. Even what counts as high achieving kids in Trona would have a tough time at Burroughs and valedictorians in Trona probably wouldn't make the top 100 students there. I know that's a little harsh, but face it, the kids in Trona are coddled little snowflakes and they'd have a tough time at a real high school. Sorry if I hurt anyone's feewings.

pdm: There's no need to put anyone down and you really don't know if any of that's really true. Okay, yeah, the competition would be tougher, but kids in Trona aren't that far behind other kids at other schools. Burroughs is supposed to be a pretty good school, but there are plenty of high schools that are worse than Trona.