Principal's Welcome

Welcome to the Gaucho Family!

I am so excited for the start of the 2023/2024 school year, El Capitan High School’s 11th year.  Our campus has completed the brick project from last year.  We have also finished adding fencing around our campus, the gym and B buildings to ensure we can secure our entire campus in the event of an emergency.  Once school is in session, the only entrance is the Administrative Building.  

We will be installing several hydration stations around campus in the upcoming months so students and staff can refill water bottles throughout the day.   Our new stadium is expected to break ground this fall.  The stadium will hold approximately 3,000 spectators and have state of the art lights and scoreboard.  The stadium will include a grass field for football, flag football, and soccer, as well as an all weather 8 lane track.  A ticket booth and restrooms will also be included in the project, providing restroom facilities for all athletics. 

Instructionally, El Capitan High School’s focus is on the 4Cs (communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking).  The 4Cs are skills that both colleges and employers seek.  Our end of year goal is to increase rigor in the classroom and have students critically think about the curriculum.  We will continue to support students with social emotional learning throughout the year and we are excited for the new lessons our counselors will be providing to all students in the classrooms. 

A few things that I want to emphasize for the 2023-2014 school year are attendance, cell phone use, and parent engagement.  The staff at ECHS will be working with students and families to have all students reach at minimum of 90% attendance.  Students are expected to be in attendance unless they are ill with flu-like symptoms (e.g. fever or vomiting).  Our school is also adopting a new cell phone policy that is linked here and committed to teaching appropriate technology skills for teenagers.  All teachers will be utilizing a red, yellow, or green code system in the classroom to limit cell phone distractions.  Teachers will call home if the cell phone use is interfering with your child’s learning. Lastly, we would like to invite parents to attend parent workshops this year that will cover a variety of topics related to students.  Parent workshops will be offered the first Wednesday of each month starting on September 6, 2023.  

Be on the lookout for weekly updates on ParentSquare and also on the ECHS Instagram page.  

Learning, loving, leading, and leaving a legacy,

Ms. Megan Cope

Principal

El Capitan High School

Merced Union High School District