Rio Mesa High School

Rio Mesa High School (RMHS) is a high school in Ventura County, California. Located northeast of Oxnard, the school is surrounded by strawberry fields and other crops growing on the Oxnard Plain. The school is part of the Oxnard Union High School District (OUHSD) and serves a portion of northeast Oxnard (including the neighborhood of RiverPark) and western Camarillo as well as the unincorporated communities of El Rio, Strickland, and Nyeland Acres. The name "Rio Mesa", conceived by OUHSD board member Bob Matthews at the time of the school's founding in 1965, is derived from the two original elementary school districts that fed the school — Rio and Mesa Union; since then, it has also regularly received students from the Pleasant Valley and Oxnard Elementary districts. Rio Mesa High School offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. History Rio Mesa High School is surrounded on all four sides by agricultural fields; as such, the campus is subject to pesticide exposure. Rio Mesa has been at the center of a Title VI Civil Rights Act complaint since 1999, covering three generations. Title VI prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Such funding includes U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants that are routinely awarded to California pesticide regulators in millions of dollars. Plaintiffs in the case argue that California pesticide regulators violated Title VI by approving permits for toxins that disproportionately impacted Latino schoolchildren, who attended schools adjacent to fields with the highest methyl bromide levels in the state. Academics Rio Mesa High School has offered the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program since 2008. It is the second school in Ventura County (after Newbury Park High School) and the only OUHSD campus to do so. Athletics