High School Student

TAFT, Calif. - A 16-year-old was in critical condition Thursday night after a fellow student interrupted a first-period class at Taft Union High School southwest of Bakersfield, confronted him by name and fired a round from a 12-gauge shotgun into his upper body. The assailant, also 16, tried to shoot a second student and missed before a science teacher was able to talk him down, apparently taking the shotgun as the other students fled from the classroom through a door. Police officers arrived after the teacher had disarmed the assailant and took the teenager into custody.

Researchers have some new advice for high school students who want to improve their grades: Become friends with academically oriented classmates. It may sound obvious, but researchers went to considerable effort to prove it. They surveyed all members of the junior class at Maine-Endwell High School in Endwell, N.Y., and asked students to rate each of their classmates as either a “best friend,” a “friend,” an “acquaintance” or someone they didn't know. They got responses from 92% of students and used them to reconstruct the social networks among 158 11th-graders as of Jan. 11, 2011.

Murder charges were filed Friday against a North Hollywood High School student suspected of fatally shooting a female classmate, authorities said. Police have been searching for Jamarie Johnie Chatrie of North Hollywood since Monday night, when he allegedly shot and killed 18-year-old Shadene Thompson outside a party in North Hollywood, Los Angeles Police Det. Vince Bancroft said.

A triumphal march blared and the crowd roared Saturday afternoon as hundreds of competitors filed into the massive gymnasium at the Roybal Learning Center. The high school students were pumped - some teams danced a little to get warmed up, and at least one team had their school mascot there to root them on - and they were prepared, having spent months training for this moment. Some of the students carried themselves with the intensity of gladiators stepping into the ring. The challenge before them was a purely intellectual one, but it was still daunting: The last leg of Los Angeles Unified's regional Academic Decathlon was about to begin.

A 17-year-old girl was killed and two people were injured Sunday in a head-on collision in Poway. Kristal K. McNeese, a student at Mount Carmel High School, died after she reportedly crossed the center divider at 4:45 p.m. while going south on California 67 north of Mina de Oro Road, according to a San Diego Sheriff's Department spokesman.

A 16-year-old student wounded a special-education teacher in the leg when he fired three blasts from a pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun in an Albany high school hallway, authorities said. The student, a junior, was arrested at the school, police said. He pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted murder and was being held in jail. Police did not immediately disclose a motive for the shooting, which sent Columbia High School into lockdown before the arrest.

Police have arrested a 16-year-old Esperanza High School student on suspicion of raping one girl and attempting to rape two girls who were attacked as they walked along a horse trail. Police Detective Douglas Dickerson said Thursday that authorities are seeking to prosecute the youth as an adult "due to his age, the seriousness of the offense and the pattern of the offenses, the fact that it's not one isolated incident."

Erin Suzanne Hutchison, a Ventura high school student, died on Wednesday at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles from complications of cystic fibrosis. She was 14. She was born June 5, 1986, in Northridge. She attended Skyblue Mesa Elementary School in Canyon Country and moved with her family to Ventura in 1994. She attended Poinsettia Elementary School and then Anacapa Middle School. Erin, a freshman at Ventura High School, played the French horn in the school band.

A memorial service has been scheduled for 16-year-old Jason Sawdey of Ventura, who died in a traffic accident Tuesday on Old Rincon Highway. Jason was born Feb. 18, 1981, in Oxnard, and was a lifelong Ventura County resident. He attended Laguna Vista elementary and Ocean View junior high schools in Oxnard and would have been a junior this year at Ventura High School. He was an avid bowler and a member of the Buena Lanes Junior League in Ventura.

An 18-year-old high school student was diagnosed with meningitis, which within a week has caused the deaths of two other young adults in Alliance. The girl was hospitalized in critical condition with Neisseria meninigitidis, a hospital official said. Doctors expected to know by today whether the three cases were the same strain, the official said.

There's something uniquely Americana about high school students showing up at a basketball game to scream, yell and act a little silly rooting for their team to win. They call themselves The Cage, The Castle, The Bird Cage, The Pack, The Dome, The Green Hole … It takes energy, organization and desire to create an electric atmosphere in a gymnasium, and I spent all this past week witnessing the drama and excitement attending a series of...

TAFT, Calif. - A 16-year-old was in critical condition Thursday night after a fellow student interrupted a first-period class at Taft Union High School southwest of Bakersfield, confronted him by name and fired a round from a 12-gauge shotgun into his upper body. The assailant, also 16, tried to shoot a second student and missed before a science teacher was able to talk him down, apparently taking the shotgun as the other students fled from the classroom through a door. Police officers arrived after the teacher had disarmed the assailant and took the teenager into custody.

A curious high-schooler hurls a flurry of questions at a UC Riverside advisor. The student asks about tuition, SAT scores, study-abroad programs, diversity and whether she would need a car. Once she gets her answers, she leaves. She doesn't bother to say goodbye. The student was sitting at a computer in the Northern California town of Watsonville. And the advisor was on a computer at UC Riverside. Colleges nationwide have taken to using online chat rooms as a way of reaching high school students in what these days is their natural habitat: the Internet.

Sales of chewing tobacco and other such smokeless products rose sharply in California over the last decade, and officials are especially concerned about the increase in use among youths, state public health officials said Thursday. Smokeless tobacco use among high school students grew to 3.9% of students in 2010, up from 3.1% in 2004. Nearly $211 million in non-cigarette tobacco and nicotine products were sold in California in 2011, up from $77 million in 2001, according to a report released Thursday by the state Department of Public Health.

Colin Fischer A Novel Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz Razorbill: 256 pp, $17.99 Every high school student could use a friend like Colin Fischer, the protagonist in a new teen mystery novel called, as it happens, "Colin Fischer. " Not that having Colin for a friend is easy. Quite the opposite. He has a quality unusual in a high school student: He'll tell you the truth, even when that means telling the girl he's sweet on not only that her "breasts got bigger" over the summer but that that "is a perfectly normal reaction to elevated hormone levels during puberty.

Lee Childress, who touched the lives of thousands of Southern California high school drama students through a theater awards program she co-founded with her husband, John, more than 40 years ago, has died. She was 95. Childress, a former publicist, real estate agent and occasional actress, died Sept. 21 at a hospital in Mission Viejo, not far from her home in Laguna Woods, said her daughter Cathe Drino. She had suffered a heart attack, her daughter said. In 1969, Lee Childress and her husband, who was then a teacher and coach in the Los Angeles Unified School District, were invited by a former student of his to attend a student production of "Flower Drum Song" at Venice High School.

Four teenagers who say they were sexually hazed by soccer players at La Puente High School filed legal claims against the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District on Thursday. The claims allege that the attacks were captured on cellphone videos, that a coach knew about the hazing and that older players targeted younger players. The claims, precursors to civil lawsuits, allege that the coach "supported and conspired and abetted with students. " Four senior members of the soccer team have been arrested on suspicion of assault and the soccer coach has been placed on leave.

A lawsuit filed in 2010 by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange and Santa Ana Mater Dei against the CIF Southern Section lives on, and attorney fees for the CIF have exceeded $109,000, CIF Executive Director Roger Blake said Monday. A status conference is scheduled for Nov. 5 in Orange County Superior Court. No trial date has been scheduled after a previous date last February was vacated. The status conference will come just days after a scheduled Oct. 29 vote at the CIF State Federated Council, where Mater Dei and the Trinity League are supporting a proposal that would remove the wording "athletically motivated transfer" from all CIF rules.