Most students come in their junior year, play catch up and can finish at their home school. The Phoenix Program is at Cupertino High School. The idea is to learn new ways of behaving that mean success. Absenteeism or tardiness is not tolerated. Units are three weeks long, very structured and involve reading, writing and speaking.
Social responsibility is taught along with academics.
These students often have received little support until they enter this program. Ortiz is a widow with three children. Don and Anita Wolf were very much in the thick of the Flying Doctors tragedy where six volunteers died in a plane crash in Mexico recently. The Wolfs had known the six well in their 20-year Flying Doctors history. Indeed, it was the Wolfs who were coordinating the trip so that some 60 people in 13 airplanes could attend the first annual Flying Doctors seminar in Ensenada.