| Venice Senior High School and Venice Foreign Language Magnet | |
|---|---|
| Venice High School
Rowing, Not Drifting
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| Address | |
| 13000 Venice Boulevard Venice, Los Angeles, California, 90066 United States |
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| Information | |
| Type | Public high school, Language Magnet |
| Established | 1911 (LAUSD 1925), (Magnet 1988) |
| Principal | Dr. Elsa H. Mendoza |
| Enrollment | 2773 (including 526 from magnet) |
| Campus | Urban |
| Color(s) | Blue, White |
| Mascot | The Gondolier, (Gondo) |
| Website | Official website |
| [1] | |
Venice High School is a public high school located in western Los Angeles, California within the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The school contains a Foreign Language and International Studies Magnet, Bilingual Business and Finance Academy(BBFA) and a New Media Academy. The school is known for offering a large number of Advanced Placement classes.
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.
A famous statue modeled by movie legend Myrna Loy when she was a student stood for 70 years at the front of the school. Due to vandalism a cage had to be erected, but ultimately the statue had to be taken down somewhere around 1997/1998. A bronze-cast replacement statue was mounted before 2000 onlookers in an April 2010 ceremony.
The school's current principal is Dr. Elsa H. Mendoza. The vast majority of the students are Mexican American, with small minorities of European Americans, African Americans and Asian Americans.[2] Despite the fact that the school is east of Walgrove Avenue, which forms the boundary with the adjacent neighborhood of Mar Vista, the boundaries of the neighborhood of Venice actually extend east of Walgrove to encompass the campus.
Several neighborhoods, including Venice, Marina Del Rey, Mar Vista, and Del Rey, feed into Venice High School.
Elementary schools in the Venice High district include Beethoven Elementary, Mar Vista Elementary, Playa del Rey Elementary, Braddock Drive Elementary, Stoner Avenue Elementary, Short Avenue Elementary, Westminster Avenue Elementary School and Coeur d'Alene Avenue Elementary School. Marina Del Rey Middle School, Daniel Webster Middle School, Mark Twain Middle School, and Palms Middle School feed into Venice. Until LAUSD established sufficient capacity in the area during the immediate post-World War II period, Culver City-based Betsy Ross Elementary, now closed, was actually the principal feeder to the then 7–12th grade high school.
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The school was first established in 1911 (then called "Venice Union Polytechnic High School") when classes were held in an old lagoon bathhouse. It moved to a new neo-romanesque structure at its present location a decade later.
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. Art Deco earthquake-resistant buildings were built in 1935, and are still used by the school today.[3]
On June 5, 2006 around 3:05 PM, 17-year old Augustin Contreras, an 11th grader at Venice, was fatally shot in the school's faculty parking lot. Contreras had intervened in a fight between his two younger brothers and a few other men who did not attend the school. The victim lived in Mar Vista, California.[4][5][6][7][8]
In fall 2007, some neighborhoods zoned to Hamilton High School were rezoned to Venice High School.[9]
On May 15, 2009, students staged a walk out in response to LAUSD increasing class sizes and cutting teachers.[10] Students who engaged in the walkout are receiving support by the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild in clearing their truancies on that particular day. A similar walkout occurred in 1951 when school administration disqualified a candidate for student body office because of a questionable campaign speech. Administration retaliated by focusing on agitators within the heretofore self-selective service clubs, suspending the clubs and then reorganizing them later with a more pliant membership. Small protests (e.g. graffiti, lawn burnings, tree fellings) continued sporadically for a year.[11]
Venice High School was used as the Rydell High School location for the 1978 movie Grease starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John and 1982 movie Grease 2 starring Maxwell Caufield and Michelle Pfeiffer. It was also used in other movies such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, American History X, Matchstick Men, and Heathers, as well as in several music videos, including Britney Spears' international hit ...Baby One More Time, Bowling for Soup's "High School Never Ends", and Young MC's "Principal's Office".[12] Venice is also in The Faders "No Sleep Tonight". Additionally, aerial photographic images of the school were used to show the location of the high school in the 1987 movie Masters of the Universe. It was also recently used on the TV show Glee.
Venice High will be used on an episode of Glee (airing January 17, 2012), which will recreate the classic "Summer Nights" scene from Grease, as made famous by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John (and filmed on the same location). Glee creator Ryan Murphy has expressed interest in using the school's pool as the pool set for William McKinley High School, which is the school the cast of Glee attends. The school was compensated financially for the use of the facilities. The school expressed interest in having more productions filmed there to raise funds. [13]
Three University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) student housing facilities for families are zoned to Venice High School.[14] They include Rose Avenue Apartments,[15] University Village,[16] and Venice-Barry Apartments.[17] Rose Avenue had been rezoned from Hamilton High School to Venice in 2007.[18]
Notable Venice High alumni and students include:
|title= specified when using {{Cite web}}". Glee at Venice High. http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/articleid/483903/newspaperid/54/TV_show_Glee_films_Grease_episode_at_Venice_High.aspx.
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