Vanden High School

My girls each went there for all four years. I would have pulled them out if I could. The office staff is RUDE!!! LAZY!!! Nasty!!! That’s from the top down. Sports director is a lazy fool, never fund raises, says it’s not his job. They treat the young adults like little kids. My daughter got introuble for giving her friend baloons and candy for her b-​day. Was told that not every student can get those type of things and it’s unfair to the students that can’t buy those things for others or themselves and that her friend can pick them up after school and take them off campus. The band is great and so is the teacher. The cheer team is ran by a students mother who made her and her friends captains of the team.

My son is a new student here this year and some things have been really great and some not so much. The office staff is truly terrific! They started a new lunch program this year and it has really been such a mess. After a month of realizing it is not going to work, they are changing it again today. I don’t understand why they only have 1 lunch period and no lunch room. Just weird to me. My son has been so frustrated some days that has not even eaten because of the lines and the sluggish system. I’m hoping they will have it all figured out soon. I know anything new takes some time to work out the kinks. The teachers seem to be fine and they are pretty quick with communication. The online grading can be frustrating sometimes if teachers don’t stay on top of entering grades on time. The band and Mr. Tipton is great. My son loves the band and is involved in everything he possibly can be. Overall this seems to be a great school and I’m sure some of the things that have been frustrations as a new student will work out fine. I know this because of the office staff and principle’s impression.

I remember taking the bus to school one morning and there was a dead horse in the grass next to the baseball field. That’s because Vanden High School is located in the cuts of Fairfield across from the Clorox manufacturing building. The horse could very well have been murdered by a chemical leak from the factory whilst a group of oblivious spectators were cheering at a nearby sporting event wondering about that putrid smell.
On the days that I had no choice but to buy lunch at school, I always had cheese fries and a soda because Vanden High wasn’t very conscious about the quality of their school lunches. Cheese fries and soda were the only items that didn’t induce involuntary esophageal spasms. I even wrote a front page story about the lunch menu in our school newspaper when I was the co-​editor-​in-​chief; this was back in 1999 mind you. I think most of the student body was more interested in reading about TLC’s «No Scrubs» single release in the features column.
There were some good parts: we had the best high school football team within a 50 mile radius. This comes as no surprise; if you take a bunch of military brats and put them all in one place, they are bound to attack people and knock them down.
Vanden High is a California Distinguished school. Our 10 year reunion was in a bowling alley.