History
The high school was opened in September 1910 after 10 acres (40,000 m2) of desert brush land was donated. CVHS is the oldest public school in the Coachella Valley. It was incorporated into the Coachella Valley Unified School District in 1966 to include a high school instead of only elementary schools in nearby Coachella. A second high school, Desert Mirage High School opened in 2003 to ease overcrowding (at 2,500 maximum in the early 2000s).
The school's location was decided on because it was the central point of the Coachella Valley. In 2002, social studies teacher Chauncey Veatch was honored as National Teacher of the Year.
Rumor has it the school mascot was named to honor the once large imported Arab colony involved in the date palm growing industry, but the mascot namesake is the local desert foundation. In 2002, CVHS officials had a meeting whether to rename the mascot out of concern it might produce negative stereotypes against Arabs and Middle Eastern people, after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The mascot name remains unchanged and concerns over the sensitivity of "Arabs" continues.
Read more about this topic: Coachella Valley High School
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)