Venice High School (Los Angeles)

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Venice Senior High School and Venice Foreign Language Magnet
VHS Picture
Rowing, not drifting
Location
13000 Venice Boulevard, Mar Vista, Los Angeles, California
Information
Principal Lonnie Wallace
Enrollment

3209 (including 538 from magnet)

Type Public
Campus Urban
Color(s) blue, white
Established 1911 (LAUSD 1925), (Magnet 1988)
Homepage

Venice High School is a public school located in western Los Angeles, California within the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school contains a Foreign Language and International Studies Magnet, and a New Media Academy. The school is known for offering a large number of Advanced Placement classes, and for its successful sports programs, especially football.

The school's English-language newspaper is The Oarsman and its Spanish-language newspaper is El Heraldo Latino. A bohemian literary journal characteristic of the area, Written Voice, features students' poetry, short stories, and other work. An unofficial newsmagazine, The Venice Independent, was formerly run by Venice students.

The school's current principal is Lonnie Wallace. The vast majority of the students are Mexican-American, with small minorities of non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians.[1] Even though it is called Venice High School the school is east of Walgrove Avenue, which forms the boundary with the adjacent neighborhood of Mar Vista. An explanation of the school's name might be that the school predates the clear establishment of Mar Vista as a distinct community, and the importance of Abbot Kinney's "Venice of America" to the local economy when the school was founded or because it is located on Venice Boulevard.

Several neighborhoods, including Venice, Marina Del Rey, Mar Vista, and Del Rey, feed into Venice High School.

Several elementary schools, including Beethoven Elementary School, Mar Vista Elementary, Westminster Avenue Elementary School and Coeur d'Alene Avenue Elementary School, feed into Venice. Marina Del Rey Middle School, Daniel Webster Middle School, Mark Twain Middle School, and Palms Middle School feed into Venice.

Contents

[edit] History

The school was first established in 1911 when classes were held in an old lagoon bathhouse.

On March 10, 1933, the school was seriously damaged by the Long Beach earthquake. As a result, classes were held in hastily constructed tents for two years until a replacement school was built. New, modern, and earthquake-resistant buildings were built in 1935 which are still used by the school today.

In fall 2007, some neighborhoods zoned to Hamilton High School were rezoned to Venice High School [1].

[edit] Filming location

Venice High School was used as the Rydell High School location for the movie Grease starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. It was also used in other movies such as American History X, Matchstick Men, and Heathers, as well as in several music videos, including Britney Spears's international hit ...Baby One More Time, Bowling for Soup's "High School Never Ends", and Young MC's "Principal's Office" [2]. Venice is also in The Faders "No Sleep Tonight".

[edit] Notable alumni

Notable Venice High alumni and students include:

  • Gerald Sutton, U.S. diplomat
  • Jaye Alonzo Topete, Model/Actor
  • Sam Whipple, Motion picture actor
  • Sylvia Hirsch Jones, Ph.D, Psy.D, Faculty, Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies
  • Gerald Comisar, Professor of Physics, Univ.of California (Berkeley), UCLA (Santa Cruz)
  • Anthony Soto, College baseball player, Loyola Marymont University
  • Curtis " Moody " McNeal, running back, corner back, punter, wide receiver, and return specialist, Scholarship from the University of Southern California
  • Jerry Johnson, Wide receiver, Scholarship from the University of California Los Angeles

[edit] References

  1. ^ See Demographics external link.

[edit] External links

http://alabama.scout.com/a.z?s=14&p=8&c=1&nid=2938919

  • Jerry Johnson Rivals.com profile

http://footballrecruiting.rivals.com/viewprospect.asp?pr_key=56700