Glendale High School is a high school in Glendale, California, United States. The school is part of the Glendale Unified School District.
History
Glendale High School was founded as Glendale Union High School in 1901 by the residents of the villages of Glendale, La Crescenta, Burbank, Eagle Rock, Ivanhoe, Tropico and West Glendale.
The first classes were held at the Glendale Hotel. The first principal was Mr. Llewellyn Evans and the school had two teachers and 29 students. The next year, a new school building was built at the corner of what is today Brand Boulevard and Broadway.
George Moyse was appointed principal and continued in his role for 35 years until 1937. The school continued to grow rapidly and the school moved several times, in 1907 to Harvard Street and in 1914 to Maryland Street.
The school continued to grow, as enrollment reached 800 in 1920 and 1,050 in 1921. During the 20's Women Right's activist Ella Lillian Wall Van Leer would help create and manage various Art and Architecture departments. It was decided then to move the Grade 10, 11 and 12 classes to a new campus at the corner of the present-day Broadway and Verdugo Road (Grade 9 students remained at the Maryland Street campus, and were later integrated into area Middle Schools). The school has remained in this location (1440 East Broadway, at the southeast corner of Verdugo) since 1924.
The Class of 1960 was Glendale's largest, with 903 graduates. Crescenta Valley High School opened in September 1960, taking a sizable portion of Glendale's students.
The school suffered extensive damage during spring break on March 22, 1964, when a student who was concerned about his grades set fire to the room in which he thought the grade information was stored. The fire quickly spread throughout the administration building and to adjacent buildings on the campus. The decision was made to reconstruct the campus, leaving the swimming pool, baseball field, tennis courts, and football stadium as the only remnants of the old campus.
In 1966, Captain Max Schumacher, an aerial traffic reporter for a local radio station KMPC, landed his helicopter on the football field during a school assembly and spoke about traffic safety. He was later killed in a crash with a police helicopter near Dodger Stadium.
In the early 1990s, the decision was made by the School Board to reintegrate ninth graders into the Glendale Unified School District high schools (with the exception of Crescenta Valley High School, which had already transitioned to a four-year high school in September 1983). As a result, the 'J' building was constructed in 1994–1995, opening in September 1995.
In 2001, Glendale High School celebrated its centenary. The student population was then 3,500 and there were over 100 teachers.
In 2001, the Glendale High School Visual and Performing Arts Program (VAPA) was awarded the BRAVO Award for excellence in arts education by the Los Angeles County Music Center. In 2003, the program won another award, the Creative Ticket National School of Distinction Award from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Glendale High School was the only public high school to be awarded this honor.
On July 1, 2005, Katherine Fundukian replaced LeRoy Sherman and Lou Stewart as co-principals, as part of a School District decision to move Glendale High School back to a "traditional" one-principal system from the two-principal system that had been in place.
In 2006, eight students from Glendale High School represented the United States at the Junior G8 summit in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where they discussed world issues and met with the leaders of the G8 nations.
Glendale High's mathematics department received the highest average AP scores in the United States in 2012.
Dance/Drill Team
Since 1999, the dance/drill team program has won over 50 National Championship titles. The Glendale High School Junior Varsity and Varsity dance/drill team competes annually at the United Spirit Association Nationals competition and starting in the 2018 Season now competes annually at the West Coast Elite Dance Nationals competition. This is held at the Anaheim Convention Center and Long Beach Convention Center, respectively. The Glendale High School dance/drill team consists of more than 80 dancers with ten coaches and a director.