Venue: Independence High School (San Jose, California)
Town: California, US

Independence High School, also referred to as IHS, is a public high school located in the Berryessa district of San Jose, California, United States. The school is operated by the East Side Union High School District (ESUHSD). Its namesake is the United States Declaration of Independence, which celebrated its bicentennial in the same year Independence High was established in 1976. Independence is considered a magnet school, and it hosts three California Partnership Academies: Finance, Space Technology Engineering Academy Magnet (STEAM), and Teaching. Independence students are called "sixers" and their mascots are named "Sammy the Sixer," who is an interpretation of an American Founding Father, George Washington, and "Amerigo the Eagle," who is a Bald Eagle, America's national bird. Out of the twelve high schools ESUHSD operates, Independence services the largest student population, with 2,368 students as of the 2023-2024 school year. Out of these, 2.7% identified as White, 2.2% identified as African-American, 38.0% identified as Hispanic or Latino, 36.2% identified as Asian, 15.8% identified as Filipino, 0.3% identified as American Indian or Alaska Native, 1.0% identified as Pacific Islander, and 2.4% identified as two or more races. 21.5% of students were identified as English learners. As of the 2022-23 school year, the pupil-teacher ratio was 21.92 to 1, with 94.4% of teachers being fully credentialed; as of the same time, the full-time equivalent of Independence's teachers is 157.4. Class size at Independence is an average of 26.8 students. Frank Fiscalini, the then-superintendent of the East Side Union High School District, conceived of a singular "super" campus which simultaneously functioned as a community center. This concept replaced three planned schools, which would've been racially imbalanced due to residential segregation. The singular campus drew from a wider area of students, creating a racially diverse school body without the need for desegregation bu