Placentia : Newspaper Revived at El Dorado High

With a mix of stories covering pep rallies and a play about AIDS, El Dorado High School’s student newspaper published its first edition in three years this month.

El Gavilan was revived by the school’s new principal, Joe Quartucci, who was reassigned from Valencia High School over the summer.

“I think it’s detrimental to the school not to have” a student newspaper, Quartucci said. “It’s important for students to have an outlet to express themselves.”

The student publication ceased production at the end of the 1991-92 school year for a variety of reasons, including declining enrollment in the journalism class.

The current editorial staff writes and edits stories during their free periods, lunch and before and after school, because the school still does not offer a class specifically for production of the paper.

“It was too late to add the class to the schedule when I got here,” Quartucci said. “My intention is to add it next year.”

In the meantime, a group of about 15 students is getting a crash course in reporting, editing and layout from adviser Al Leonard.

“Most of us don’t have any experience, because we were freshmen the last time there was a school paper,” said co-editor Sharon Lee, a senior.

“The hardest thing has been enforcing deadlines,” said Lee’s co-editor, Mike Steinberger. “Everybody on the paper is involved in a lot of other things.”

The next issue of El Gavilan (Spanish for sparrow hawk) is scheduled to come out Oct. 21. The paper will be published monthly until next semester, when it will come out twice a month.