By AISHEE DAS
News Editor
UHS has received the 6-year accreditation status from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). This accreditation means that UHS will be visited again for reevaluation in 6 years (2022), with no check ups in between.
This is the highest evaluation from WASC. According to the organization’s website, a 6-year accreditation is awarded to schools who provided “compelling evidence that the school needs little, if any, additional support for high-quality student learning and the implementation, monitoring, and accomplishment of the schoolwide action plan, which includes the identified critical areas for follow-up.”
“I think we earned it. Our students and parents all worked so hard. I’ve done this before, and I felt like our staff and focus chairs were more focused and remarkably committed to the process,” said Ms. Jeanne Jelnick (English Dept.), who organized and led the UHS WASC self-evaluation process.
“It’s not that we’re just a great school, which we are. It’s just that they trust that we have made systematic our self evaluation and that we are honest with ourselves and not afraid to ask hard questions and not afraid to publish scary data that suggest we need to improve.”
UHS started its 2-year self-evaluation process in September 2014. A major component of the self-evaluation process is compiling a report on the school’s strengths, areas of improvement, and the school’s progress from the past 6 years. WASC read the report and visited the school last March for the assessment.