Monterey High School

Rosette Gonzales Ebi Gabor told of her arrival into Auschwitz and how the Nazis made her stand naked in the cold while they stripped her of her dignity and shaved her head. Then she held up her arm to show a faded, green tattoo of numbers. Students at John Muir Middle School leaned forward to get a closer look. Gabor described the horrific events leading to that point and how her life changed forever when Gestapo pounded on her family's home at 2 a.m. one night and arrested them.

For many of the graduates of Monterey High School's class of 2006, the road to a diploma was not marked with the traditional milestones of the American high school experience. Since Monterey caters to students who, for a number of reasons, struggled in a traditional high-school setting, students often bring problems, hardship and tragedy with them into the classroom. "Each class is unique," said Barbara Forletta, a resource specialist at the school. "They all have their own set of circumstances for why they're at Monterey."

Block-by-block, six students from Monterey High School are building a legacy at John Burroughs High. Students are building a new dugout on the baseball diamond at Burroughs as part of their masonry class, taking their skills learned in the classroom onto a real-life construction site. Burbank Unified School District officials had to tear down the old dugout, after it was found to be noncompliant with the district’s structural standards, said Craig Jellison, senior director of facilities for the district.

BURBANK ? Burbank Unified School District administrators will reapply for $3.5 million in federal funding this year after declining the grant last summer because of a faulty application process, officials said. The funding would have come from e-Rate, a federally funded reimbursement for the installation of Internet and phone systems at school facilities. District officials declined the money after discovering they had not properly advertised for competitive bids on the work, said Jeff Marderosian, the district?

BURBANK ? Construction is underway on major technology upgrades at Luther Burbank Middle School as part of the school's campus modernization project comes to a close. In the coming weeks, the school will begin using a new culinary-arts classroom and lab. And work on faster Internet and computer-networking capabilities through use of a fiber-optics system is underway. As the first of eight schools set to have technological upgrades in the next year, Burbank Middle School leads the way with a $3.6-million project in the second year of the district's technology master plan.

I am responding to the editorial ?High school should be 5 days a week? Sept. 18. I attend Monterey High School and think this editorial has the wrong idea about our school. I came to Monterey from Burbank in my junior year. When I first started at Monterey, I wasn?t really sure what the school was about. I heard that Monterey was a bad school and that only bad kids get sent there. But when I got there I saw the same kind of kids I saw at Burbank High. I got sent to Monterey because I was behind on my credits, and just like almost every other kid, I didn?

CITY HALL — The council Tuesday approved $200,000 in funding to continue counseling services in the Burbank Unified School District junior high and high schools while increasing the program's reach on high school campuses. Currently, high school counseling programs are available exclusively on a referral basis, meaning a teacher or administrator must make a recommendation for a student to obtain services. While those services will be maintained, $25,000 of the funds approved on Tuesday will go toward expanding the program, enabling high school students to self-refer for counseling services, said Terry Stein, a deputy director for the Park, Recreation and Community Services Department.

ARTS AT MONTEREY The board approved a contract between the district and the HeArt Project, a Los Angeles-based art program for students in alternative and continuation high schools. A limited number of students will be allowed to participate in the art program and will have to have exhibited prolonged interest in the arts through classes at the school and write an essay for admission into the program. WHAT IT MEANS The HeArt Project will be integrated into the school's curriculum from Sept.

Monterey High School student Lisa Navarro moved side to side and waved her hands in the air on Monday with her classmates. They were moments away from premiering their choreographed dance in front of a packed audience at UCLA’s Glorya Kaufman Hall. “The dance was a great thing to do because it was something new,” said Navarro, who enrolled at Monterey High after falling behind in credits at Burbank High School. “I never thought I would be interested in dance until I got involved in the program.