High Schools Los Angeles

Last September, Dave Gardetta, Eagle Rock High School class of 1979, returned to his alma mater to teach English. In doing so, he became one of the 5,472 uncredentialed teachers brought in with emergency permits into the Los Angeles Unified School District. Eagle Rock High School, like the small town of Eagle Rock just north of downtown L.A., has changed in the last 20 years. Once predominantly Anglo, Latinos and Asians now compose a majority of the student population.

Imagine a system that determines where a person is placed based on skin color or gang ties or territorial lines. Sound like what happens in the state prison system? It also happens in the high schools of the Los Angeles Unified School District. When the Los Angeles school system's busing czar tries to find space for kids crowded out of their neighborhood high schools, he must consider more than bus routes and classroom seats.

Hollywood High School keeps its doors open 12 months a year to ease overcrowding. The year-round schedule allows the campus to run hundreds more students through its cramped classrooms. It also chips away at their education. Teachers skip pages of material, assign less homework and give fewer tests because their school year has been slashed by 17 days. Hundreds of pupils take the Stanford 9 exam shortly after returning from an eight-week vacation.

When Sylvia Rousseau began visiting Locke High School this fall, she found students running through hallways during class and playing hooky in the middle of the day. She found teachers griping about incessant noise and fights. Rousseau, the "local superintendent" in charge of schools in much of South Los Angeles, hoped that the atmosphere would improve at the campus near Watts.

Countering a blistering study last fall that attacked the performance of minority high schools in four Southern California counties, including Los Angeles, a group of California education professors said Wednesday that minority pupils have made academic gains, particularly since a series of school reforms were initiated.

The Los Angeles school district has identified sites for 15 new high schools and officials say they are confident they have secured the land for more than half of them. After months of quiet efforts to nail down land for badly needed new high schools, negotiators for the Los Angeles Unified School District are closing in on two deals that may be announced as early as next week, officials said Friday.

Harvard may be one of the toughest colleges in the country to get into, but when it comes to using the school name in movies--it's easy. From "The Paper Chase" to "Soul Man" and "With Honors," numerous feature films have been set at Harvard University. The Harvard nameplate once again gets significant screen time in "Legally Blonde," a "Clueless"-like comedy that opened earlier this month.

In blunt and eager voices, students quickly reveal their assessments of the Los Angeles Unified School District's most immediate, crucial needs and problems: * "Metal detectors don't work, because kids can hide weapons in their shoes and no one will say anything." * "The covers are falling off of my textbooks. Some of them look like they were here since my parents went to school. I have a health book that's older than I am." * "I'd rather wait until I go home to use the bathroom."

In a program conceived as a national model, the U.S. Department of Defense will announce today a new $5-million program to retrain laid-off scientists and engineers for teaching careers in Los Angeles' inner-city high schools. The first 20 "teaching fellows" will be selected in the coming months and by summer should begin their studies--a specially tailored combination of classwork out of Cal State Long Beach and hands-on experience with mentor teachers in Los Angeles Unified School District.

A robber armed with an assault weapon stole $7,000 from the student store at James Monroe High School in Sepulveda on Monday, but was captured an hour later when he returned in the guise of a student to retrieve the loot he had left stashed on campus, authorities said. School police officials said Kenny Anderson, 19, returned to Monroe to recover the cash hidden in his car, which he was forced to leave behind locked gates in the school's parking lot.

The Los Angeles City Council gave final approval Tuesday to the $50-million sale of a Department of Water and Power office building to the Los Angeles Unified School District to use as a high school. The terms and conditions of the sale include an option for DWP to lease back much of the building for up to 20 years to continue operating a water-testing laboratory and telephone call center.

The Los Angeles City Council gave final approval Tuesday to the $50-million sale of a Department of Water and Power office building in Sun Valley to the Los Angeles Unified School District to use as a high school. The council adopted an ordinance setting the terms and conditions of the sale, including an option for the DWP to lease back much of the building for up to 20 years to continue operating a water-testing laboratory and telephone call center from the site.

The Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday cleared the way for the school district to convert its huge downtown headquarters into a 2,200-seat high school within four years. The board agreed to buy a 29-story office building on South Beaudry Street for its new headquarters, half a mile from the current home on Grand Avenue. In a press release, the district said it paid $74.5 million for the building, but did not disclose other costs.

Harvard may be one of the toughest colleges in the country to get into, but when it comes to using the school name in movies--it's easy. From "The Paper Chase" to "Soul Man" and "With Honors," numerous feature films have been set at Harvard University. The Harvard nameplate once again gets significant screen time in "Legally Blonde," a "Clueless"-like comedy that opened earlier this month.

Before the TV game show "The Weakest Link" came along, the City Section already had its version. It's called the City Invitational baseball tournament. That's where 16 teams, most of them mediocre at best, are given a chance to play for a diluted championship at Dodger Stadium. They are granted, despite their shortcomings during the regular season, the chance to reap the same ultimate reward as the 16 teams in the Championship bracket.

4-A Division *--* Year Champion Winning Coach Runner-up 1939 Fremont Les Haserot Unknown 1940 Dorsey Sid Witherow Unknown 1941 Dorsey Bud Brubaker Unknown 1942 Fremont Les Haserot Unknown 1943 Fremont Les Haserot Unknown 1944 Washington Frank Darrow Los Angeles 1945 Dorsey Bud Brubaker Los Angeles 1946 Fremont Les Haserot Washington 1947 Fremont Les Haserot San Pedro 1948 Fremont Les Haserot Dorsey 1949 Fairfax Frank Shaffer North Hollywood 1950 Dorsey Bud Brubaker San Pedro 1951 Washington Bob

More than half the high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District are doing worse than similar schools across the state at preparing their students for college, but others--including four of the district's six magnet high schools--are performing far above their counterparts in other cities.

The Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday narrowly approved the distribution of condoms on high school campuses, but gave parents the option of denying their children permission to obtain them. The action brings to an end more than two years of study and often-rancorous debate over the proposal. Drawing cheers and jeers from more than 200 parents, activists and religious leaders who packed its meeting room, the board members adopted the measure by a 4-3 vote.

Oh, those 'D' words. Pick one, two, three descriptors--degrading, demeaning, devastating--and they describe Chatsworth High's tough luck in City Section baseball championship games. Another word, this one more appealing to Chatsworth fans, now comes to mind: Dynasty. After the Chancellors defeated Roosevelt, 2-1, for the City Championship before 3,546 Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, the on-field soiree began. Most of the attendees were underclassmen.

Twenty-four students from eight Los Angeles high schools affected by the 1992 riots were awarded higher education scholarships totaling $100,000 from the Shell Oil Co. on Wednesday. The high schools are Crenshaw, Dorsey, Fremont, Jefferson, Jordan, Locke, Manual Arts and Washington Prep. Most of the recipients already have been accepted to colleges and universities, including Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Spelman College, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside and UCLA.