Al Kennedy Alternative High School

Al Kennedy Alternative High School
Address
1310 S 8th Street Cottage Grove , Lane County , Oregon 97424 United States
Coordinates	43.786244°N 123.059503°W / 43.786244; -123.059503
Information
Type	Public
Motto	School of Sustainability
School district	South Lane School District
Principal	Tom Horn
Grades	9-12
Number of students	78
Mascot	Bear
Website	blogs.slane.k12.or.us/kennedy/

Al Kennedy Alternative High School is a public alternative high school in Cottage Grove, Oregon, United States. Kennedy High School does more than just educate students. It also preserves and restores the community’s ecosystems; helps build the social fabric of the community; and contributes to local economic development.

Kennedy has the following design characteristics:

• The curriculum is organized around the core theme of sustainability and stewardship.

• The learning design emphasizes experiential and service learning that allow students to work on real sustainable development projects in their communities. Students perform real work and contribute original research to natural resource management strategies.

• The school is linked to a set of working economic assets that seek to model sustainability principles in their operations. These assets create opportunities for experiential learning; generate income for the school; and create economic development opportunities for the community.

The Kennedy Philosophy

Kennedy High School integrates innovative aspects of student learning; environmental stewardship; and community development. It is our belief that the global sustainability revolution has the potential to rival the agricultural, industrial and information revolutions in the scope of change it will drive in our social systems, our political systems and our economic systems – with the exception that the pace of change will likely be even more rapid and dramatic than these other shifts in human history. Some of these shifts will include:

• Ecological economics -- A fundamental reorientation of economics (often referred to as “ecological economics”) in which the human economy is understood as a subset of the natural ecology, instead of visa-versa. In a renewable resource economy, wealth will be created in fundamentally new ways with new skills; eco-system services will be monetized; and waste will be highly taxed. The paradigm of the industrial revolution (an abundance of natural resources and a shortage of labor) will be turned upside down as we seek to create wealth with an abundance of labor and a scarcity of natural resources. Instead of “sustainable” business practices being an interesting luxury implemented by the few but ignored by most, renewable resource economics will become the core of most business enterprises.

• Built systems -- A radical redesign of our built systems (water, utilities, buildings, transportation; communications; etc.) to conserve resources and increase durability. Physical mobility will be significantly restricted and virtual mobility will be radically increased.

• Management of the commons -- Intensive regulation and management of our “commons” – water resources; air; the oceans; open spaces; etc. These assets, which have traditionally been treated as if they are “free” (and therefore open to exploitation by anyone) will be converted to different forms of communal ownership and management – a process that will create high levels of conflict and dispute.

• Rapid adaptation -- The need for rapid adaptation and change to accommodate shifts in climate, and higher levels of weather volatility.

• Global collaboration -- The need to be able to communicate and collaborate across multiple boundaries – economic, political, geographic and cultural. We will see the emergence of “global citizenship” – a sense of belonging to no single country or culture, but rather being comfortable in many countries and cultures.

• Student-centered learning -- Continuous “re-skilling” at a pace that even exceeds what we have seen in the last several decades. A premium will be placed on creative thinking and innovation (the emergence of the “innovation and design economy.”) The cycle time for new skill development will be continuously compressed.

• Social equity -- A renewed focus on social equity as the privileged classes of the world realize that there is eventually no “getting away” – that even gated communities can’t create security in a world with no boundaries and that the only real security comes through a world with fewer divisions of class and race.

Academics

In 2008, 44% of the school's seniors received their high school diploma. Of 48 students, 21 graduated, 21 dropped out, and 6 are still in high school.