Los Angeles High School is the oldest public high school in the Southern California Region and in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Its colors are royal blue and white and the teams are called the Romans.
Los Angeles High School is a public secondary high school, enrolling an estimated 2,000 students in grades 9–12. After operating on a year-round basis consisting of three tracks for ten years, it was restored to a traditional calendar in 2010. Los Angeles High School receives accreditation approval from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Concurrent enrollment programs, provided in large by the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles Community College District, are offered with West Los Angeles College, Los Angeles Trade–Technical College, Los Angeles City College, or Santa Monica College.
Los Angeles High School is a large, urban, inner-city school located in the Mid-Wilshire District of Los Angeles. The attendance boundary consists of a contrasting spectrum of economic diversity ranging from affluent Hancock Park and Lafayette Square to the low-income, densely populated immigrant community of Koreatown. Within the school is a College Incentive Magnet Program. Forty-four percent of the student population is identified as LEP, or Limited English Proficient. Currently, 66% of the students are identified as eligible to receive supplemental instructional services and materials through the Federal Title I Program.
The magnet high school has a university preparatory secondary high school program and a "school within a school." First established as a part of student integration services in the 1970s, the Los Angeles High School Math/Science/Technology magnet prepares students with an intensive, rigorous course load in order to better prepare them for university entrance. There are 317 students enrolled in the magnet program, grades 9-12.
Typically, the senior class has approximately 50% of seniors entering into four-year universities and schools. The magnet senior class typically has 90% of its senior class entering into four-year colleges and universities.
History
Early buildings commissioned to house the Los Angeles High School were among the architectural jewels of the city, and were strategically placed at the summit of a hill, the easier to be pointed to with pride. One of the school's long standing mottos is "Always a hill, always a tower, always a timepiece."
Construction on Los Angeles' first public high school, (the private Loyola High School is older) began on July 19, 1872, at the former site of Central School on what was then known as Poundcake Hill, at the southeast corner of Fort Street (later Broadway), which the front of the school faced, and Temple Street, with the back of the school to New High Street (later Spring Street). The approximate coordinates are . As it was on the hill, a few hundred feet from the streets below, steep wooden stairways led up to the schoolyard.
The two-story wooden structure was so big and grand, the finest school south of San Francisco at that time, with classic lines and a tower with a clock in it, that people traveled from miles around to see it. The teachers liked the wide corridors, walnut banisters, generous windows and the transoms over the doors.
The schoolhouse was completed at a cost of $20,000 in 1873 (). Nearby, in succession, was the Court House, the City Hall, the Jones-Lindley Market and the Post Office. The first principal was Rev. Dr. William T. Lucky (1821–1876) and the first graduating class, in 1875, consisted of seven students. In 1879, a natural science club, the Star and Crescent Society, was founded at LAHS and consisted then of the entire student body. It soon left its specific focus on science and became a de facto student government and organizational body.