The Innovation Campus has grown from 70 students enrolled in the 2024-2025 school year to now having 122 students enrolled at the extension, Assistant Principal Robert Richardson said. New classes have been added for this school year, Richardson said.
As the ninth and 10th graders from last year moved up a year, the Innovation Campus had to add new classes for 11th graders, school counselor Valerie Lamb said. New engineering classes were also added to accommodate the amount of students, Lamb added.
“Last year we had Computer-Aided Design (CAD) I, and then we had Intro to Engineering,” she said. “We expanded it and added Exploring Engineering, which is the 11th grade class. We added CAD II, and then we added a ninth grade elective called Digital Electronics that Ms. Berbawy also teaches.”
The Innovation Campus also offers students an opportunity to take dual enrollment on campus, Richardson said. Currently around half of the students are taking a college course, he added. Last year the campus only offered San Jose City College’s engineering pathway, Richardson said.
This year, “we added a new pathway called Advanced Manufacturing, which is with Evergreen Valley College,” he said.
The campus also added a leadership class at the request of students, Lamb said. She hopes that leadership helps to connect students to the main campus, she added. Currently a representative from each campus’ leadership class keeps in contact with each other, Lamb said.
“I think creating leadership here and also doing the spirit days, and just having the students feel like they belong here and doing more activities here is awesome,” Lamb said. “The rallies, we really still try to keep that going with having them attend, and of course, for dances, we’re selling the tickets here as well.”
Last year the Innovation Campus had a Student Council Club, which generated enough student interest to form a leadership class, leadership and English teacher Sejee Kim said. The club helped build culture and plan events and fundraisers, Kim added. They planned Back to School Night, K-Pop night, and other events at the extension last year, she said.
“I had high expectations for this group because they were really motivated,” Kim said. “They all applied to be in this class (leadership). I will say it’s going really well because the kids are good and everyone is on the same page with trying to help the school out. So even though kids might not know each other that well, they’re working together.”
The class is planning a lot of community events and doing outreach with the main campus, Kim added.
“We want to do (a collaborative event), but we haven’t been able to plan together just because of the physical and logistics of it,” Kim said. “But in things like for hoco ticket sales, we have a way of selling them here. Our kids will continue to have full access and participation in MHS events.”
In the future, Richardson hopes to be recruiting 100 students each year into ninth grade, he said.
“If we recruit 100 students, and you retain those students over the course of four years, you have a school of 400 to 450, which means we’re full,” Richardson said. “There are tricks to recruitment, but as I often say, ‘If you build it, they will come, but if you build it right they will stay.’”
Currently the Innovation Campus’s recruitment efforts are focused on middle schools, Richardson said. It’s hard for them to recruit existing MHS students to the extension because they already have an established friend group and schedule at the main campus, he added.
“They (middle schoolers) don’t know where they’re going,” Richardson said. “They’re still making that decision. We go to their schools, we make presentations, and we bring our students with us. We don’t limit it to Rancho and Russell. We go to any of the private middle schools (because) a lot of them don’t have a high school option.”
Lamb is happy to see the growth within students at Innovation Campus, she said. She is glad that students have multiple different pathways to choose from, she added.
“That’s all I really care about, is a student finding where they belong,” Lamb said. “To me, it doesn’t matter where, I just want them to feel like they belong and thrive and be successful and graduate.
