Henry Ramirez, meet Kyle Gosselin.
We thought you should be introduced, at least virtually, because you have some things in common. You're a couple of low-key, low-drama, low-maintenance 17-year-olds who have just navigated 11th grade at large public high schools. Both of you are planning to go to college. Both thinking about careers in medicine. Both willing to work hard (but not insanely hard). Both smart (but not gunning to be No. 1).
Yet how different two young lives can be.
In the 20 or so miles that separate Jefferson High School from La Canada High, in the miles between inner city and suburb, there exists a social chasm so deep as to seem unbridgeable. It is possible that, growing up in the same metropolitan area, you have never been in the same place at the same time.
Twenty miles, as we'll see, can be farther than 1,500.
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La Cañada High is about as good as public education gets in California. It is the reason why many people live in La Canada Flintridge, where tasteful, multimillion-dollar homes sprawl at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. College is a given for almost everyone. The dropout rate is close to zero. Students don't qualify for free lunches, but they can buy sushi. Built in the 1960s and oddly evocative of the television show "The Jetsons," the campus recalls a time when California schools didn't so much anticipate the future as embody it.
Jefferson, in hard-core South L.A. gang territory, is an improving school that nevertheless exemplifies all the challenges of urban education. It has an inspiring history, but its recent past has been troubled. Today it is a landing pad for the children of immigrants. Nearly half the students learn English as a second language. Free lunch is available to anyone willing to stand in line. About 800 freshmen arrive each year, most ill-prepared for high school. Four years later, about 200 pick up diplomas.
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You began your junior years in September: Kyle at La Canada, Henry at Jefferson.
Conventional wisdom says 11th grade is the toughest, most stressful year of high school for college-bound students: the hump, the back stretch, when students load up on Advanced Placement classes and take a slew of tests -- including the SAT -- while juggling a full-tilt social schedule. If the pressure got to either of you, you hid it well.
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