Introducing Voice of San Diego’s Acorn Awards: This week we are giving out a new set of recognitions to highlight schools that outperform expectations on a metric comparing student income to test scores, which we developed in partnership with UC San Diego Extended Studies Center for Research and Evaluation.
On a warm January morning, Helix High’s 2,500 students slowly filtered onto campus. The charter school, in the hills of La Mesa’s southwestern corner, draws a diverse, working-class cross section of students from the neighborhoods nearby, southeastern San Diego and Lemon Grove.
A pair of boys tossed a lacrosse ball back and forth on a small patch of grass. A group of kids clustered, at times bursting into laughter, near the school’s arts complex. Another clique chattered excitedly in Spanglish about which songs Bad Bunny would perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show.
Being on campus felt surreal. It was one of just a handful of times I’d visited my alma mater since my graduation. Despite some new buildings, the school felt the same. Under the surface, though, Helix had changed.
Look no further than Voice of San Diego’s recently launched Acorn Awards to see how. The awards celebrate schools performing well on our income vs. test score metric, which offers a more nuanced way to identify schools moving the needle despite serving students facing barriers to success. We created the metric in partnership with UC San Diego for our A Parent’s Guide to San Diego Schools.
Helix is exactly that kind of school. Two-thirds of its students are socioeconomically disadvantaged. Only about one quarter of them are White. Our metric shows that something special is happening – and has been for years.
Helix is not only the best performing high school in San Diego County, it’s the highest overall performer of any school type. The school also has the highest post-pandemic average on our metric of any local school.
Digging into Helix’s performance data is striking. On basically every academic outcome – from chronic absenteeism to suspension rates – the high school performs far better than state, county and districtwide averages.
The same is true for test scores, where Helix students have even flipped the script on some of the seemingly inexorable racial and socioeconomic elements of the achievement gap that have bedeviled schools for generations. All of that likely contributes to the school’s quadruple digit waitlist.
None of this is news to Helix’s administrators.
Sitting in his sleek office adjacent to the performing arts complex, Helix Executive Director Kevin Osborn and Principal on Special Assignment Elena Smith asked why it has taken so long to notice their work.
When asked if their No. 1 ranking surprised them, the pair spoke frankly.
“It validates our work and it kind of depresses me,” Smith said. “There are a lot of schools out there committing educational malpractice.”
Osborn picked up where Smith left off.
“What surprises us – not to be egotistical – but why is it taking the educational community so long to figure it out?” he said. “We’re promoting something serious here. Because the truth is, if you look at the work we’re doing, where’s 60 Minutes?”
‘You Need People Exploring Possibilities’
Helix Charter High School Executive Director Kevin Osborn in his office on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026 in La Mesa. / Sandy Huffaker for Voice of San Diego
To the administrators now steering the ship, Helix’s current story really began nearly 30 years ago. Back then, the school was struggling. In 2000, only about half of the school’s seniors graduated. According to Osborn, the school’s students were near the bottom of the district when it came to performance.
“We decided we’re going to think outside the box. We’re going to write a charter, and we’re going to no longer be held back by the politics of school boards, where people run for political reasons and do bullshit things that are geared toward trying to make it to the next level,” Osborn said.
By writing a charter, the school would no longer be bound by the decisions of Grossmont Union’s board. Leaders would be able to manage the school as they saw fit and experiment with new programs. But that choice wasn’t well-received by many on the outside.
“The unions tried to sabotage us … We’d go to the superintendent’s meetings and they would try to mad dog (then-Principal) Doug (Smith),” Osborn said.
Three quarters of the staff eventually supported what they came up with. Osborn, and Helix science teacher Brian Kick, who drafted the charter, avoided many of the messy labor wars that have long tainted skirmishes over charter schools by writing a union into the governing document.
Despite the initial skepticism, in 1998, Grossmont Union’s school board backed the change. That made Helix the first comprehensive high school in California to transition to a charter.
“It’s what you need to happen in education,” Doug Smith told the Union-Tribune at the time. “You need people exploring possibilities.”
But the journey wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Battles with district officials flared up now and again over the years, particularly during a two-year period in the late aughts, when four teachers pled guilty to sex crimes with students. The high-profile cases rocked the campus and inspired efforts to revoke the school’s charter.
Those efforts, however, ultimately failed.
‘This Constant Evolution’
Students bake muffins in Home Economics class at Helix Charter High School on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026 in La Mesa. / Sandy Huffaker for Voice of San Diego
To many at Helix, the charter was the game changer. It gave the school the autonomy to implement changes staff feel have genuinely moved the needle.
In 2005, for example, the school adopted a quarter system schedule, often referred to as a 4X4. The schedule replaces shorter classes that run all school year with longer classes that run for half of the year, allowing students to take additional classes per year.
There are also more unique innovations. Helix is separated by cohorts, with grade-level teams consisting of a principal, academic advisor and social worker. Those administrators and support staff follow each class to the next grade, offering more personalized connection.
“In a district setting, you are limited by what you’re allowed to do. Since we went charter, we’ve consistently challenged what we’re allowed to do,” Smith said. “It’s just this constant evolution of ‘Well, that doesn’t work. How do we improve that? What do we do better?’”
That’s left Helix doing some unconventional things. For one, while many charters pay teachers less, Helix pays beginning teachers nearly 10 percent more than its district counterparts.
Since pre-pandemic, the school has also more than doubled the number of professional development days to eight and created a program wherein a half dozen teachers a year are given time to provide coaching to other staff. Over the past three years, each teacher was also given one full class period for prep, which in a 4X4 schedule is 90 minutes.
Many of these decisions, though, aren’t just made by leaders at the top. Staff across campus repeatedly referenced the importance of Helix’s shared decision-making systems.
“How we make decisions here involves admin, but there’s also committees and task forces involving teachers,” said Stefanie Meza, the manager of Helix’s academic support programs. “We’re really taking that time to meet and to collaborate, in order to figure out what’s best for our students.”
Those collaborations seem to have paid dividends. Helix now has a waitlist of over 1,000 students, and on nearly every single metric, its students perform remarkably. Osborn and Smith tripped over themselves offering data point after data point to underline that fact. It wasn’t hard to do.
The percentage of Helix students who are chronically absent is nearly one quarter of the statewide average. The school’s 98 percent graduation rate is 10 points higher than California’s overall rate. About 90 percent of Helix graduates are career and college ready according to a recently created state metric – nearly 40 percentage points higher than California’s average.
Then there are the test scores.
The percentage of Helix students who meet state English standards is nearly 30 points higher than the statewide average. The percentage of those who meet math standards is well over double the statewide average.
When you drill down into student racial subgroups, one of the key divides of education’s achievement gap, the results are even more eye-popping. While familiar divides within Helix still exist, they disappear when comparing to statewide results. A higher percentage of Helix’s Latino and Black students meet standards than the statewide averages for nearly every other subgroup, including White students.
The school’s charter status, however, also adds an asterisk to performance, said Tyrone Howard a professor at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies. Because students must choice into a charter, they often draw a more academically committed student body than traditional public schools.
“But there’s lots of charter schools who have nowhere close to what these data demonstrate. We’ve got to take test scores with a grain of salt, but these numbers do jump out at being quite stellar,” Howard said.
So, what gives?
At the root of the school’s success seems to be not only a slew of programmatic innovations administrators and educators have been evolving for years, but three simple planks: “We set really, really high expectations for kids, and then we provide lots of supports and put our money where our mouth is and do everything possible to make sure that our people, programs and facilities align to provide kids powerful learning experiences,” Osborn said.
Osborn and Smith fixate on those three planks: high expectations, high levels of support and powerful learning experiences.
“Improving how we do that is all we care about,” Osborn said. “And we’re not going to waste our time on frivolous bullshit.”
“That’s educational speak, by the way,” Smith said with a laugh.
High Expectations
Students in Rebecca Skullerud’s AP English class at Helix Charter High School on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026 in La Mesa. / Sandy Huffaker for Voice of San Diego
Helix’s high expectations begin with their graduation requirements.
In addition to requiring students meet the A-G requirements to qualify for admission to a public college, students must complete 40 hours of community service along with a senior project and a technology class. They also have to earn at least three college credits before graduation.
“Our goal wasn’t just to graduate all kids with low expectations. We said, we’re going to have kids graduate with good degrees and stuff they can use,” Osborn said.
But over the years, Helix has begun to turn away from the traditional means of earning college credit – AP classes. Last year, the school only offered 10, an anemic number for a college prep high school.
In their place, administrators have doubled down on dual enrollment. Since 2017, the number of dual enrollment courses passed by Helix students has tripled to 2,303. Last year, nearly half of the high school’s 2,500 students took one. This year, Helix is offering 76 such courses.
They offer multiple benefits. For one, AP courses require students to take paid tests to earn college credit. Dual enrollment courses just require they pass the course. By turning to dual enrollment, it also means the local community college picks up some of the tab for teachers’ pay. That saves Helix about half a million dollars for other purposes.
And that’s not the school’s only bit of financial ingenuity. The school installed solar panels in its student parking lot, which offset its electricity costs. And since schools are funded based on average daily attendance, Helix’s strikingly low rates of chronic absenteeism also guarantee they receive additional funding.
“Total, we have $3 to $4 million dollars more a year to spend,” Osborn said.
The school has also capitalized on grants for everything from wellness to professional development. Those extra funds open the door to all sorts of specialized programs. Those include the high school’s makerspace, a corner of its library filled with 3D printers, laser cutters and T-shirt and button makers.
That’s where I spoke with Aleen Jendian, the chair of Helix’s English department. Over her nearly 20 years, she said, what’s stood out most to her is the school’s greater focus on becoming what she calls “warm demanders,” who focus not just on academics, but the whole child.
“We’ve always focused on student success,” Jendian said. “But something that’s changed is focusing more and more on the relationship we have with students. We can have high expectations, but we need to support students and be warm and welcoming so their minds are actually open to learning.”
High Levels of Support
Lauren Knuth speaks with La Mesa Mayor Mark Arapostathis at Helix Charter High School on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026 in La Mesa. / Sandy Huffaker for Voice of San Diego
In a large, squat building on the northeast side of campus, six groupings of tables were clustered in U-shapes around the wide, open room. Each of the learning pods featured an academic coach specializing in a specific subject – English, math, science – shuttling between students working on laptops.
The center, referred to as The Den, is also open before and after school. But the academic coaches floating throughout were just a handful of the 45 such coaches in half a dozen classrooms on Helix’s campus every day.
When Meza, the manager of the school’s academic supports system, talks about her work with peers from other districts, she often gets puzzled looks. They remind her that this isn’t the norm at all schools. But it seems invaluable to her.
“We have kids that go home and they have responsibilities. They have to take care of siblings, they have jobs, so having that support built into their schedule is huge,” Meza said. “I think the main takeaway for a lot of them is that they’re learning how to be a better student and how to ask for help.”
Sophomore Da’Mere Johnson said he wasn’t prepared for the rigor at Helix. Programs like this helped him transition.
“There are higher standards here than I was used to,” Johnson said. “This helps set standards and bring our grades up and keep us focused.”
That’s by design. As a complement to the school’s Helix First class, a homespun course designed to help students integrate into the high school experience, about 80 percent of Helix’s freshman take the extended learning course every other day. About 50 percent of students in later grades continue to take similar academic support courses each year.
It was features like this that really impressed some of Helix’s most influential admirers, like San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Fabiola Bagula.
During her time at the San Diego County Office of Education, Bagula visited a lot of schools. What she saw at Helix stood out. So much so, that she decided to send her son. Though, she noted, that decision was made before she took the helm at San Diego Unified, and while she lived nearby in Spring Valley.
Students arrive for classes at Helix Charter High School on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026 in La Mesa./ Sandy Huffaker for Voice of San Diego
“I did send my child to my favorite high school, but it was also a favorite high school in the community that I lived in,” she said with a laugh.
When Bagula started at San Diego Unified, she brought all of her high school principals on a field trip to Helix. She knew they couldn’t adopt everything, but she felt some of the systems could be ported over, like the way Helix kept families in the loop. Also important to her was how the school provided help on the front end, rather than waiting for students to come forward.
“As a teenager, sometimes you don’t want to go to an adult and say, ‘Hi, I need help because I don’t understand,’” Bagula said. “They removed that completely. Help is embedded.”
That preemptive support is replicated in the school’s approach to mental and emotional health. In a set of offices on the north edge of campus, lies the district’s Wellness Center, which the school opened after Covid hit.
Over the years, and with the help of some federal funding, they expanded from one social worker to two, to three. The school has an additional six counselors working throughout the campus, two psychologists, a full-time nurse and two speech/language/hearing specialists.
According to Danielle Yee, who has worked at the school for nearly two decades, those evolutions only came because faculty made them a priority.
And with staffing additions came the ability for more complex projects. For example, each year, freshmen undergo a schoolwide screening meant to identify if students may be at risk of mental health struggles. That’s been a gamechanger, Yee said.
“It gives us a great starting place with them because we can address that stuff, and with mental health, if you can catch it early, it’s always better,” Yee said. “Now I feel like we’re graduating more students, and more of them are actually prepared for life.”
Programs like these have earned Helix the admiration of officials like Bagula and fellow educator, La Mesa Mayor Mark Arapostathis. Arapostathis, himself a Helix grad, has taught for more than 35 years, many of those spent at the neighboring La Mesa Arts Academy.
When we stumbled into him on campus, he marveled at the way Helix has changed.
“The students here are not anonymous, and as a teacher of 30 plus years, anonymity is your biggest enemy,” Arapostathis said. ““These teachers take students and find what their gifts are, and they channel them in all directions and give them opportunities to show them to the world.”
Powerful Learning Experiences
View of Theater at Helix Charter High School on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026 in La Mesa. / Sandy Huffaker for Voice of San Diego
During my last two years at Helix, the school’s theater was a sanctuary, though a somewhat dilapidated one. It’s now long gone, replaced by a gleaming $15 million arts complex.
But there are some familiar faces, like Paul Reams, Helix’s theater and theater tech teacher. For Reams, theater is an opportunity to give kids the opportunity to develop agency and see their thought unfold on stage.
“I want to treat our students as collaborative living artists rather than vessels I mold,” Reams said.
Over the course of the semester, his class read a series of plays, from Hamlet to Oedipus Rex. He wanted students to help choose a play that felt relevant to the times they were living through.
They landed on Arthur Miller’s seminal drama, The Crucible.
“They thought it had something to say about rushing to judgment or hysteria,” Reams said. “There are a number of people who are doing things they are uncomfortable with, but there’s an inertia toward people of power that carries them to do things that are immoral.”
His concept for the staging will channel the tension around today’s immigration enforcement onslaught. But, he added, ensuring all students, regardless of political views, feel welcome is a key goal for him.
“I would love for audiences to leave and ask, ‘In what way am I interrupting or facilitating systems that are problematic,’” Reams said. “Which side do I want to be on?”
The freedom to take risks is why he thinks Helix acts almost like a tractor beam for grads. Out of 200 total staff, 45 are alum.
Leadership has noticed the trend. They’ve created an education career pathway to encourage students to enter the field and more recently tried to foster a diverse group of students to join the pathway. The hope is they’ll return and diversify Helix’s staff.
“There have been a lot of moments where we could say, ‘Hey, we’re good, let’s just stop here,’” Reams said. “But there’s this constant desire to iterate and push the envelope and make sure we’re serving all students. Every single one.”
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