Long Beach Unified School District

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The Long Beach Unified School District is a school district headquartered in Long Beach, California.

LBUSD serves most of Long Beach, all of the city of Signal Hill, and portions of Lakewood, and Paramount, as well as Avalon and Two Harbors on Catalina Island.

1 School uniforms and single gender classes
2 District awards
3 Unusual schools
4 Secession movements
5 2000s population decrease
6 List of schools
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] School uniforms and single gender classes

On January 18, 1994, the LBUSD Board of Education voted to require school uniforms in all elementary and middle schools, with the wearing of school uniforms to start in September 1994. [1] The district was the first large urban school district in the United States to require school uniforms. [2] On August 23, 1994, SB 1269 the School Uniform Law was approved by the Governor of California to support schools that adopt a school-wide uniform policy, which also allowed parents to opt-out of the policy. [3]. At LBUSD, roughly 2% of the students opt-out of the uniform policy. [4]

Since starting the uniform policy, LBUSD found assaults dropped by two-thirds, suspensions dropped by almost a third, vandalism dropped, attendance improved, and test scores increased. President Bill Clinton mentioned LBUSD's uniform policy in his 1996 State of the Union Address. The uniform policy enjoys strong community and parental support. Numerous other large urban districts have now adopted school uniform policies. [5]

Some researchers, including David Brunsma of the Sociology Department of University of Missouri, have said that the benefits ascribed to the implementation of the LBUSD uniform policy were logically attributable to other factors; such as increased school security, collateral attendance enforcement efforts, and in-class programs designed to bolster sagging test scores. [6]

In addition, the data provided by LBUSD is suspect since the LBUSD Superintendent of Schools sent a directive to all principals changing the criteria for suspensions once the uniform policy had been implemented. Behavior that once called for suspension no longer did. [Contact any LBUSD principal]

LBUSD now has two high schools, Wilson Classical High School and Millikan High School, that require school uniforms as well. [7]

In 1999, Jefferson Leadership Academies became the first public middle school in the United States to convert entirely to single gender classes. Only a few dozen more schools have followed this trend, mostly because of Title IX of the 1972 Education Act, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded programs [8]. The school has plans to discontinue the program after scheduling conflicts and disappointing test scores [9].

[edit] District awards

LBUSD was the winner of the second annual $1 million Broad Prize for Urban Education (in 2003). The Broad Prize is the largest education prize in the country awarded to urban school districts [10]. In 2004, LBUSD received a second grant from the The Broad Foundation for $1.14 million to continue their efforts to improve the organization of the district's schools using Baldrige strategies [11]. In 2004 the Broad Foundation also awarded 55 Long Beach Unified School District seniors $500,000 in scholarships as Broad Prize Scholars [12].

[edit] Unusual schools

Two Harbors Elementary School, at Two Harbors on Catalina Island, is a one-room school. Enrollment, (as of 2005) is 12 students. [13] The district had planned to close the school in fall 2005, but Two Harbors residents and visitors raised enough money to keep the school open [14].

Hi-Hill Outdoor School (informally known as Camp Hi-Hill) is a former Girl Scout camp on 13 acres of land in Angeles National Forest near Mount Wilson owned by the district. The camp allows urban students to experience a week of outdoor education. The first class of sixth graders was on April 19, 1948 [15]. Now it is fifth graders who traditionally spend a week at Camp Hi-Hill [16].

[edit] Secession movements

Because students in the city of Lakewood are currently divided between four different school districts (ABC Unified School District, Bellflower Unified School District, Paramount Unified School District and LBUSD), there is an active movement to break away from those districts and form a new Lakewood Unified School District. After gathering the required number of petition signatures and an LA County review, the issue went before the California State Board of Education. The board rejected the petition on February 8, 2001 because the board said the proposed district failed to meet four of the state's nine criteria for new district formation. With that setback, the most current plans (as of 2005) are to try to merge those areas of Lakewood served by Paramount into either the Bellflower or Long Beach Unified School Districts. [17]