If you’re a student at Jordan High who is always aiming for the highest of achievements, nothing represents J-Town success more than its International Baccalaureate Diploma (IB) program.

Its rigor—molding the minds of students to be able to face the world with critical, academic, social and creative eyes—is needed for a school that offers less AP courses than most schools in the district and a district whose stellar roster of high schools are always vying for a higher rank on national Best Of lists.

The program, running at Jordan for nearly two decades, is a large reason students attend the high school since Jordan is the only one who offers it. It might also be the last: LBUSD’s Board of Education will examine the viability of the program next Spring so that Jordan can focus on another honors program it rolled out this year simultaneously with IB, the Academic Path to Excellence (APEX) program.

But not if J-Town Community, a local group of parents, teachers, students, and education advocates, have their way.

“The experience this program gives its students is invaluable to their success in the future,” said Jordan IB alumna and J-Town Community member Ann West. “Jordan is a part of the North Long Beach community and that is attached to having a high amount of low-income families as well as a high number of ESL students. This is what reflects the majority of students on campus and the IB program helps them grow and then excel in order to be ready for college.”

Essentially, according to West, the IB programs provides students with college preparatory classes that most students’ families cannot usually afford. However, LBUSD officials feel the program lacks a few things, including a Magnet status—students participating in APEX have access to none AP courses and requires a minimum of four AP courses while IB requires none—and, most importantly, IB lacks participating and successful students involved with the program. School officials are also more invested in APEX, given the letter sent out to Jordan parents by principals Shawn Ashley and Jay Camerino earlier this year encouraging to enroll their children in the program.

“Some people would argue that if you don’t earn the IB diploma you weren’t successful,” West said. “This is an inaccurate statement; just because students aren’t earning the IB diploma doesn’t mean they are not reaping huge benefits from the program. Many of the IB alumni attribute their success in college and their careers to their experience and skills learned in the program.”

As of now, there are roughly about 70 students in each IB class while APEX has 30 newly-minted Freshmen partaking in its program.

“The numbers are not, in my perspective, the underlying motivation for terminating the program at Jordan,” West said. “It is because the IB students could be moved APEX, making it seem more popular.”

This led to an online petition that garnered 639 signatures to denounce replacing IB with APEX. Even more, West contends that this year’s freshman class could have been larger, but due to miscommunication and misinformation, some students didn’t know that the IB program was still being offered at Jordan.

J-Town Community hasn’t been demure, having appeared at multiple meetings including a one-on-one with LBUSD Superintendent Chris Steinhauser earlier this year which proved slightly fruitful: he not only sent out a letter reminding students that the program is still available (at least for this year) and also funded the Summer Bridge at Jordan for the IB students despite not being a part of the high school’s budget.

However, this is no guarantee that the program will exist come the 2015-16 school year, which is why J-Town Community is holding another meeting with Steinhauser this month.

“It is a premiere honors program that lifts up the negative reputation of Jordan,” West said. “But ultimately, even after all the work we have done and continue to do—tutoring students, hosting informational nights for parents, speaking at school board meetings, and planning further outreach to local middle schools… It’s up to the school board members to vote to keep the program at Jordan come.”