Los Gatos High School

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Los Gatos High School is located on Main Street in Los Gatos, California.
Los Gatos High School is located on Main Street in Los Gatos, California.

Los Gatos High School (LGHS) is a high school in Los Gatos, California, a small town near San Jose in the Silicon Valley. Los Gatos High School was founded in 1908 and is part of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District. During the late 1880s up until the establishment of Los Gatos High School, high school aged students were taught at Los Gatos Central School, a grammar school which was established in 1886. [1]

The school enrolls approximately 1700 students and employs about 100 teachers. In 2004, 94% of graduating seniors went on to attend college, including 64% to four-year colleges. Los Gatos High School is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and has regularly received six-year accreditations, the highest possible. The school has been recognized twice as a National School for Excellence. LGHS is also notable for its sports programs and exceptional athletes, making it unique among academically distinguished public schools in the area.

The current school landscape is notable for its spacious extensive front lawn and neoclassical main building, which was designed by W. H. Weeks, a famous architect of schools of California. His Greek Revival style was famous in the 1920s and 1930s. The main building was dedicated on January 17, 1925, built using a $250,000 bond measure which passed in 1923. [1] Other buildings and various additions to the main building were built in the period between the dedication of the main building in 1925 and 1970. The school underwent no major construction from 1970 until 1998, when the school successfully passed a $79 million bond measure in the town of Los Gatos to renovate the aging buildings. Since then, several new buildings have been constructed, and all of the old buildings have been renovated.

Due to the unusual joint cooperative nature of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District, up until 2005, Saratoga High School shared Los Gatos High School's Prentiss Brown Auditorium for performing arts and up until 2006, they shared Helm Field for football games. Both are located on the grounds of Los Gatos High School but are available for equal use by both schools. Up until 2006, when the Los Gatos High School football team played Saratoga, both were actually the home teams since they shared the field. The title of home team was switched each year when the two schools played each other.

The Los Gatos High School mascot is the wildcat. Although the wildcat is a very common school mascot, it is perhaps uniquely suited to Los Gatos High School, as los gatos is Spanish for the cats.

Contents

[edit] Notable alumni

Notable alumni at Los Gatos High School include:

Olivia de Havilland spoke at the school's centennial commencement in 1988.

[edit] In the media & School News

Los Gatos High School was originally called "Los Gatos Union High School", which still appears engraved on the front of the main building.
Los Gatos High School was originally called "Los Gatos Union High School", which still appears engraved on the front of the main building.

The front exterior of the school was used on The Amanda Show starring Amanda Bynes. It was used in the show's soap opera spoof segment called "Moody's Point".

The school was also used as a filming location for several scenes in the 1996 made-for-TV movie Lying Eyes.

The school, its stadium and track, and nearby Santa Cruz Ave. were also used for filming an episode of the 1986 television series Starman; drama students played the role of some extras.

The film Quiet Victory: The Charlie Wedemeyer Story, was based on the life of former Los Gatos High School head football coach Charlie Wedemeyer, who was stricken with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and continued to coach the football team for several years.

On the night of October 12, 2006 there was a two-alarm fire at the high school where the storage shed for the school's softball, soccer, and field hockey teams, had been set on fire. The fire was considered arson by F.B.I. arson investigators. The fire was thought to be the 5th fire in a set of arsons that had rocked the downtown area of Los Gatos but still no one has been found guilty of any of the arsons.

On January 5, 2007, a student was arrested with three felony charges after trying to sell illegal firearms. He had allegedly sold sawed-off shotguns out of the trunk of his car in the large parking lot. According to local officials, he had intent to sell two stolen shotguns and a laptop stolen out of another car late last year. Police arrested the student on January 5 at his home after school hours. On Monday, January 8, 2007, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department SWAT team arrested the man's accomplice in the large parking lot before school. He had allegedly stolen one shotgun and the laptop from another car mentioned earlier. The school was kept on alert with extra police officers on campus to make sure there were no more armed students. Sawed-off shotguns are illegal throughout the U.S. because the sawed-off barrel makes the normal shotgun spray a lot wider and makes the gun much more concealable like a pistol.[1]

[edit] Principals

  • Doug Ramezane (2005–Present)
  • Trudy McCullough (1998–2005)
  • Ted Simonson (1979–1998)
  • Dr Allen Coryell (?-1978)
  • Fred Canrinus (1957-1970)
  • Prentiss Brown (1931-1956)
  •  ? (1888-1931)

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Conaway, Peggy [2004]. "Cultural Memory", Images of America: Los Gatos (in English). Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 119-121. ISBN 0-7385-2903-6. 

[edit] External links

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