Beverly Hills High School

After a statewide search, the Beverly Hills Board of Education has named Ben Bushman as the new principal at Beverly Hills High School. Bushman, who will take the post July 1, has been acting principal this year after serving nine years as assistant principal at the school. He succeeds Sol Levine, who resigned last July to become the Beverly Hills Unified School District's assistant superintendent for educational services. Bushman started as a physical education teacher at the school in 1965.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti has amended two years of financial disclosure statements to belatedly report his ownership interest in a Beverly Hills property linked to an oil drilling operation. Garcetti, who has the Sierra Club's backing in his race against Wendy Greuel, signed a 20-year lease in the late 1990s that gave Venoco Inc. the right to drill under the retail property from the company's oil wells at nearby Beverly Hills High School. However, the city councilman from Silver Lake failed to report in his 2010 and 2011 disclosure filings that he co-owned the Wilshire Boulevard property, which houses a hair salon.

Like baseball and rock and roll, Beverly Hills High School has its own Hall of Fame. Each year since 1984, the school has selected a group of graduates who have gone on to fame and fortune. Past recipients have included Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Andre Previn (Class of '46) and actress Betty White (Class of '39). But "we are not just talking about celebrities," said John Suckling, president of the school's Alumni Assn., which makes the selections.

Beverly Hills' embarrassing battle against the Westside subway extension, which emerged as a major political issue last year, is becoming one of the key issues in the March 5 city elections. With the lines hardening between those determined to take legal action to stop the construction of a tunnel under the local high school, which they fear will endanger students, and those who see that route as the safest alternative, we urge residents to consider the scientific and engineering reality rather than merely relying on emotion.

ORDINARILY, CALIFORNIA takes pride in being in the vanguard of national trends. But a depressing report in The Times this week about an outreach program at Beverly Hills High School demonstrates that in one area -- racial diversity -- the trail blazed by the state goes in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court may soon force the rest of the country to follow California's lead.

For someone who reached high school's end without experimenting with drugs, sex or Cliff's Notes, reading what one's peers were up to can be a bit of a shock. Michael Leahy's "Hard Lessons: Senior Year at Beverly Hills High School" traces the last year in the high school careers of six very different seniors. Extensive interviews were conducted with many Beverly Hills High School seniors, and all the book derives from real-life experience.

Beverly Hills High School seniors Eric Greene, Dani James and Lionel McPherson are among 1,500 semifinalists in the National Achievement Scholarship Program for Outstanding Negro Students. More than 70,000 black students across the country entered the 1986 achievement program. The winners of more than 700 scholarships, worth more than $2 million, will be announced next spring.

Olympic gold medalist Janet Evans, a swimmer at El Dorado High School in Placentia, was selected as Southern California high school female athlete of the year by the Amateur Athletic Foundation. Michael Moore, a three-sport star at Beverly Hills High School, was chosen as male athlete of the year.

Déjà vu 90210. The scariest movie in town isn't at the Cineplex,  it's the one that has been crafted at the behest of some parents of Beverly Hills High School students who don't want the Metro subway to go under their kids' school. There have been movies featuring that school before, notably “It's a Wonderful Life” and “Clueless.” But this video runs to 5 minutes and change, and was produced with intercut images of happy schoolkids, green lawns, lovely building, and dire predictions of disaster, up to and including fireballs.

Los Angeles County transportation officials set the stage Thursday for a showdown with Beverly Hills leaders over a small portion of the much-anticipated Westside subway extension. Officials on Thursday certified environmental documents for the entire $5.6-billion project, moving a step closer to construction of nine miles of rail that would mostly run underneath Wilshire Boulevard. But the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board only formally approved the first 3.9 miles of the project — as far west as La Cienega Boulevard — because of a request for a hearing from the city of Beverly Hills, where many school officials and city leaders hope to derail efforts to build part of the line underneath Beverly Hills High School.

The long-awaited Westside subway extension appears to be getting closer to reality, but the Beverly Hills Unified School District contends that tunneling for the project could squelch its plans to expand and update the city's aging 22-acre high school campus. One of two routes that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering would burrow directly beneath the school, on the way from Koreatown to Century City and on to the Veterans Affairs campus between Westwood and Brentwood.

One student enrolled in Beverly Hills High School this year using a virtual address obtained on the Web. Other Beverly Hills students have falsely claimed to live with grandparents or cousins who reside in the city. Unethical owners of Beverly Hills properties have even sold mailing addresses to out-of-area students. The use of fraudulent addresses to enroll in the city's acclaimed schools is an age-old problem, according to officials with the Beverly Hills Unified School District who recounted these examples.

At a packed and emotional meeting, the Beverly Hills Unified School District board Tuesday heard from dozens of speakers divided over whether to end special permits for students who live outside the city but attend its public schools. The meeting at Beverly Hills High School pitted supporters of students holding so-called opportunity permits, who believe they should be allowed to graduate, against some residents who maintain that if the permit-holders want to attend schools they should move to the city.

One of the most sought-after tickets in Southern California, a permit to enroll a child in the academically acclaimed Beverly Hills Unified School District, may soon disappear. Because of a funding shift, the wealthy district's financial incentive for accepting out-of-town students will end, probably within the next two years. So, as the district prepares for the change, many Beverly Hills residents say they want its $57-million budget spent for only students who live within its boundaries.

If only for a few hours, New Yorkers living in Southern California could feel at home Saturday night. At, of all places, Beverly Hills High School. Nearly 1,500 people gathered in a courtyard there to eat Coney Island hot dogs, reunite with long-lost high school classmates and celebrate their hometown. Banners hung for each borough of New York -- the largest contingent was from Brooklyn.

Somewhere in Vernon, among rendering plants and metal furniture factories, G.T. Dave, a 30-year-old Beverly Hills High School dropout, and the 45 employees of his steadily growing beverage company, Millennium Products Inc., lovingly tend to a repulsive organism that's reproducing like mad in a room with purple walls. We can't tell you exactly what it looks like. Or really anything about it. The fastidious and secretive Dave won't let us see it. The organism, a gelatinous melding of bacteria and yeast, is essential to the production of kombucha, a fermented tea that tastes a little like cider vinegar and has been credited with health benefits as varied as clearing up acne and boosting the immune systems of people with HIV. These claims aren't backed by scientific research, but that hasn't prevented supporters from latching on to kombucha as a cure-all--or kept Whole Foods and other national retailers from stocking GT's Kombucha, available in two varieties and 13 flavors, on their shelves.