Type Public Grades 9–12 Newspaper The Oak Leaf Mascot Acorn | Principal Lloyd Webb Slogan Go Nuts! Phone +1 408-201-6100 Motto Go Nuts! | |
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Color(s) Forest Green and Harvest Gold Address 1505 E Main Ave, Morgan Hill, CA 95037, USA District Morgan Hill Unified School District | ||
Live Oak High School (LOHS) is a public high school located in Morgan Hill, California. Live Oak is part of the Morgan Hill Unified School District.
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History
Live Oak Union High School was established in 1904. Montgomery Hall was used to house the pupils for the first term. Construction of the first permanent facilities were completed in 1905. At the organization of Live Oak Union, Highland, Burnett, San Martin, Machado and Morgan Hill rural school districts were included, and, in August, 1921, Coyote, Llagas and Uvas districts were added. The name was later changed to Live Oak High School after the Morgan Hill Unified School District was established, which combined the aforementioned rural elementary school districts.
In 1940 a new campus was built on the north side of town, along Monterey Street, between West Central Avenue and Keystone Avenue. The main entrance was at 80 West Central Avenue.
The school was moved from West Central Avenue to its present location at 1505 East Main Avenue in 1975. The former campus on West Central Avenue was renamed and established as Lewis H. Britton Middle School. Due to the establishment of Britton Middle School, from 1979 Live Oak High School consisted only of grades 10 through 12, but as of the autumn of 2004, it once again functions as a four-year high school.
Cinco de Mayo incident
On May 5, 2010, five LOHS students arrived at school wearing T-shirts and bandanas bearing emblems of the American flag. The school's administrators, led either by Principal Nicholas L. Boden or Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez (reports vary as to which), sent home four of them for refusing to remove the T-shirts on the Pueblan holiday of Cinco de Mayo. School officials deemed the garments "incendiary" and "disrespectful," fearing that displaying the American flag would incite fights with the Mexican-American student body. The four students were told they could choose to change their clothes or go home for the day.
Some of Live Oak's Mexican-American students said that they felt disrespected by the boys' action and demanded an apology. One Mexican-American student stated, "I think they should apologize cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day. We don't deserve to be get disrespected like that. We wouldn't do that on Fourth of July."
The boys and their parents were livid over the school's actions, defending the students' right to wear the American flag. They alerted the local media to the event.
The Morgan Hill Unified School District bureaucratically distanced itself from the actions of Live Oak school officials, characterizing the incident as "extremely unfortunate" and stating the matter was under investigation. The school district superintendent, Dr. Wesley Smith, said, "While campus safety is our primary concern and administrators made decisions yesterday in an attempt to ensure campus safety, students should not, and will not, be disciplined for wearing patriotic clothing."
On May 6, approximately 200 Hispanic teens, most of whom were Live Oak High School students, walked out of their classes and marched through the downtown and to city hall in protest of what they regarded as disrespect from their American-flag-wearing peers. The crowd carried Mexican flags and sported the red, white and green of Mexico's national emblem. Two days later, a crowd of students led by several Hispanic students gathered in the amphitheater and held an anti-racism rally advocating acceptance and tolerance among the students.
On May 7, the school district held a press conference regarding the incident, in which Boden apologized for the school administration's handling of the incident and explained why it handled it in the way that it did.
On May 8, 100 members of the local Tea Party movement chapter protested in Morgan Hill in support of the four students.
On May 10, the ACLU of Northern California sent a letter to the Morgan Hill Schools Superintendent protesting that the students' First Amendment rights had been violated and asking that the School District "take additional steps to inform students that their rights to free speech will be respected in the future". On May 11, about 250 people attended the scheduled school board meeting. More than 30 people addressed the board about the incident, while many parents in attendance either cheered in unity or booed in opposition to the opinions expressed therein.
On November 8, 2011 United States District Court for the Northern District of California Chief Judge W. James Ware of San Francisco dismissed the students' lawsuit. While public school students have the right to engage in non-disruptive free speech, Chief Judge Ware found this "does not require that school officials wait until disruption occurs before they act". The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco affirmed, finding that when limiting school speech it does not matter if a substantial disruption is being caused by the speaker or by the listeners’ reaction. Petition for rehearing en banc was denied with three judges dissenting, decrying their colleges for giving in to the heckler's veto. The student’s final appeal to the United States Supreme Court was denied without comment.