Indie Film: ‘Commie High’ a lesson in determination and flexibility
The documentary about the success of a Michigan hippie school is streaming through PMA Films.
By Dennis Perkins
Students at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Mich., in a scene from “Welcome to Commie High.”
Photo courtesy of Donald Harrison/7 Cylinders Studio
The documentary “Welcome To Commie High” is a feel-good success story centered on American public education, something you don’t hear often enough these days. Tracing the birth and growth of Ann Arbor, Michigan’s Community High School from its early 1970s inception as one of a raft of alternative “new schools,” through to its current place as one of the most coveted-after public high schools in the country, “Welcome To Commie High” is also a deeply personal appeal from educators, parents, and past and present students of this unconventional, publicly funded school for people to let go of a whole lot of stereotypes, both about