High School Students

Marine Pfc. Garrett Miles-McCarthy graduated from boot camp in San Diego only last month, but he is already in his first battle: against his hometown school board. The 18-year-old wants to wear his dress blues uniform at his high school graduation ceremony in El Paso. Miles-McCarthy finished his course work in December and immediately shipped out to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. School officials have said all graduates have to wear cap and gown, with no exceptions.

More than 500 parents filed into the auditorium at Van Nuys High School Tuesday evening to take part in a lottery to determine whether their children will be walking to school this fall or spending up to an hour a day riding a bus. The two-hour meeting was called by administrators at Van Nuys to head off the overcrowding problem the school will face this fall when it converts from a three-year to a four-year high school and receives more than 1,400 additional ninth- and 10th-graders.

The group of aspiring young entrepreneurs checked their balance sheets, then gave each other high fives and beamed as the impact of making a huge quarterly profit sunk in. "That's a nice increase, kids," said Chuck Smith, an advisor for California Business Week, a program running this week to teach local high school students how to survive in the corporate world. "You should have seen them at the beginning.

Aaron Young, 17, was at a Santa Monica beach watching five people trying to combat the heat under one small umbrella when a business venture hit him: umbrella rentals. "I figure if I find a heavily populated beach I could make some pretty good money," Young said. With some help from a business camp in Santa Monica, Young prepared a marketing plan that he hopes will launch him in the business world.

Benjamin J. Newton, 19, a recent graduate of Servite High School, has won a $1,000 scholarship from the International Thespian Society, an educational theater organization based in Cincinnati. Newton plans to use the scholarship this fall to attend DePaul University in Chicago, where he will major in acting. Newton was one of eight high school graduates out of 2,200 candidates to receive the award this summer at the Thespian Festival at the University of Nebraska.

Woodcrest tract residents this fall may get a break from the hassles of Los Alamitos High School students parking on neighborhood streets. The City Council on Monday approved residents' request to prohibit parking in their neighborhood from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, excluding holidays. Residents complained that they were inconvenienced by students who park on their streets during school hours, often blocking driveway entrances and sidewalk access.

John Paul Lopez, 18, drilled plywood boards to add to a maze of ceiling frames. Isabelle Izquierdo, 17, pounded nails to the roof. Gevon Hubbard, 18, sawed floorboards and lined them with insulation. From the ground up, the teenagers started building two single-family houses at 53rd Steet and Vermont Avenue in South-Central Los Angeles two months ago. But construction of the homes is not their only goal. They also are rebuilding their lives under a national program called YouthBuild.

Orange County high school seniors continued to score above the state and national averages on the Scholastic Assessment Test, with Irvine Unified once again posting the highest marks among the county's high school districts, according to SAT scores released Thursday. Several districts in the county improved their average scores considerably, including Fullerton Joint Union, Newport-Mesa Unified and Santa Ana Unified.

Geoffrey Scott Marecek, a student at Fountain Valley High School, has earned the Boy Scouts' highest honor, the Eagle Scout Award, for his campaign to repaint a church damaged by floods in 1995. Marecek, 15, a member of Troop 442, organized the church project at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Seal Beach. He has also served as a patrol leader and received the Order of the Arrow. An honor student at Fountain Valley High, Marecek will be a sophomore this fall.

Battle lines are being drawn in city council and school board meetings throughout Orange County over a bid by local law enforcement to impose a daytime curfew for school-age children. On the one side are civil libertarians and home-schooling advocates, who are warning that the imposition of a countywide curfew could result in a police state for kids, turning school-age children into second-class citizens.