Information about Beverly Hills High School

Beverly Hills High School
Motto	Today Well Lived
Established	1927
Type	Public
Principal	Joseph Guidetti
Students	2,400
Grades	9–12
Location	Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Colors	Black, orange and white
Mascot	Normans
Yearbook	Watchtower
Newspaper	Highlights
Website	bhhs.beverlyhills.k12.ca.us

Beverly Hills High School (usually abbreviated as "Beverly" or as "BHHS") is the only major public high school in Beverly Hills, California. (The other public high school in Beverly Hills, Moreno High School, is a small alternative school located on Beverly's campus.[1])

Beverly is part of the Beverly Hills Unified School District and located on 19.5 acres on the west side of Beverly Hills, at the border of the Century City area of Los Angeles. Beverly, which serves all of Beverly Hills, was founded in 1927. The original buildings were designed by Robert F. Farquhar in the French Normandy style.

Previous land

The land where the school is previously was the location of the Beverly Hills Speedway board track. The track was torn down in 1924.

Academics

In 2004, Beverly Hills High School was honored as one of the schools in the No Child Left Behind-Blue Ribbon School Program.

BHHS has a successful FIRST Robotics program that has won 10 awards in 3 years. The robotics team competes in an international competition known as the FIRST Robotics Competition. The Robotics program inspires students to study mathematics, science, technology, and engineering by providing design challenges and an annual competition. The team helps plan fundraisers for the Beverly Hills Education Foundation and raises money to go to their numerous competitions. The robotics team also has a television show on KBEV, MorTorq TV, an award winning website, a 3D animation team that has won the Autodesk Visualization Award two year in a row, and a solid business plan.

BHHS also has a Science Team, Academic Decathlon Team, and many other activities.

Student demographics

In 2007, about 17% of the 2,362 students at the school are of Asian extraction, about 4% are Latino and about 5% are African American. Nearly 70% of the students are white, a category that includes 450 students of Persian descent.^[1] Most of them are Persian Jews whose parents fled the Iranian Revolution.

About 2400 students currently attend Beverly Hills High School. About 35% of Beverly's current student body were born outside the United States, and over half of those students speak a first language other than English. Many of these students are of Persian descent. There are also many students from South Korea, and Israel, as well as from many other countries and language backgrounds. [2] [3]

In the media

Diversity Program Issue (2007)

For many years, Beverly has selected high achieving students from twelve LAUSD middle schools on diversity permits in an attempt to increase the number of minorities enrolled. Selections have been made based on test scores, grades and writing samples. However, according to enrollment data for the 2006-2007 school year, seven out of ten students who entered the school this way are of Asian ethnicity. In April 2007, due to pressure from parents and activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who criticized the school for not recruiting more African-American and Latino students, Superintendent Kari McVeigh agreed to extend the application deadline until April 27, as reported in the Los Angeles Times and the Beverly Hills Courier, hoping that more students from these minority groups would seek to enroll. According to the Beverly Hills Courier (May 25, 2007), "civil rights leaders hailed the final student selections" as "an honest effort to obtain ethnic diversity." ^{[2] [3]}

Other Media

In the media, students of Beverly Hills High School are typically portrayed as absurdly affluent. For example, in the fictional version of Beverly in the film version of The Beverly Hillbillies, Davids serve students gourmet coffee in the hallways.

Beverly has been featured in many movies, including Clueless[4], Real Women Have Curves, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, and It's a Wonderful Life, [5], both of which featured a scene in Beverly's unique "Swim Gym," perhaps the only gymnasium that has a basketball court that can split open to reveal a recreational-sized, 25-yard swimming pool. The clear-glass backboards originated on this court as did the orange color on the basket hoops.

Beverly has been featured in cartoons, including Beverly Hills Teens. The French animated series Totally Spies! also takes place at "Bev High."

The front of Beverly High's is even shown in a short clip of Nickelback's music video for their song "RockStar". Although it only shows the part part that says Hills High School( they cut out the "Beverly" portion).

West Beverly Hills High School

Initially, the producers of the 1990s television drama Beverly Hills 90210 wanted the show to be set at Beverly Hills High School, and the show to be filmed on Beverly's campus. The Beverly Hills school board declined both requests, so the TV producers created the fictional "West Beverly Hills High School" (or "West Beverly") and the show was filmed at Torrance High School, in Torrance, California. "West Beverly" is a clear reference to Beverly, because Beverly's campus is located on the western border of Beverly Hills.

News services

BHHS has two award-winning news services. KBEV-Channel 6 is a student-run television channel that began in 1974 on Theta Cable as part of the PEG requirements for cable companies (free access by Public Access, Education and Government entities in the community). KBEV airs the longest running high school news program in the country, The Norman Newservice (now The Norman News). Highlights, the school's newspaper, has also won awards for its reporting and writing.

Student life in 1980s

Perhaps the most recent published book on student life at Beverly is Hard Lessons: Senior Year at Beverly Hills High School, by Michael Leahy (ISBN 0316518158). Published in 1988, it is a comprehensive book that followed Leahy's sociological study of Beverly students in the mid-1980s. In 1984, Beverly had a 100% graduation rate but three students committed suicide. These suicides piqued Leahy's interest in Beverly; Leahy had "heard so many stories of excruciating academic pressure, cocaine abuse and drifting children" that he decided to study the school's student body by interviewing students, parents, and teachers. He followed the lives of six Beverly seniors from the day they started school until the day they graduated in 1985.

Leahy wrote, "It did not take long during my conversations with Beverly students before I understood that their world was nothing like the one I had imagined from casually observing teenage behavior in malls and at rock concerts. After that initial shock, the task became to listen to students long and carefully enough until I adequately understood the panorama of life at Beverly." Leahy learned that in spite of the media's typical portrait Beverly was "not a den of hedonism." Leahy observed that "Social attitudes and mores appear to be nearly identical to those found in the middle-class high schools of the Los Angeles Basin and the San Fernando Valley – the evidence of drug and alcohol use no more or less high, the discussion of sex and birth control equally as obsessive."

Beverly's academic and social pressures created problems in the mid-1980s. Leahy quotes a teacher who said in 1985, "The admired kid here is not necessarily the good-looking athlete. The possibility of success in the future is important to someone's overall attractiveness. Kids are already planning their law practices or where they might set up their businesses. Sometimes you can't see their problems through that act of maturity they put on for you. If they're not well adjusted, then that illusion can be a real problem, because some of them are facing pressures that they don't know how to cope with. Your whole worth here, in these kids' eyes, is determined by how well you're doing academically and socially. A 'C' is a horrible grade to them, a failing grade. Sometimes a 'B' is, too. There's been a lot of cheating. The anxiety is only growing worse."

According to the 1985 edition of the school yearbook, "The Beverly Pursuit is the path to success. . . . One wrong move, and the student could be traveling in endless circles. Sure, he will have a chance to roll again, but he will have to take advantage of every opportunity. Sometimes a student will land in the wrong square, but he must be patient. Someday he will be able to cash in all his chips and reach the center of attention. Of course, everyone wants a piece of the pie. If a student does not have the right moves, he will go hungry. . . ."

Athletics

The Beverly Hills High School "Swim Gym" was designed by Stiles O. Clements and built in 1939 as a New Deal project. It features a basketball court that opens to reveal a 25-yard-long swimming pool underneath. Sports including volleyball, basketball, swimming and water polo can all be played in this facility. Beverly offers the following sports:

• Baseball
• Basketball
• Cheerleading
• Cross Country
• Football
• Golf
• Lacrosse
• Robotics
• Soccer
• Softball
• Swimming
• Tennis
• Track and Field
• Water Polo
• Wrestling

BHHS's stadium is a multipurpose facility that is used for football, soccer, baseball, lacrosse, and track and field.

Performing arts

Beverly Hills High School claims that its Performing Arts Department is "nationally famous for the quality of its musical and theatrical productions and for its famous alumni," and the school claims that the department "is highly visible in the industry, with casting directors, writers and producers attending performances and visiting classes to speak with the students."[6]

Each year around late March to early April, the school hold its annual musical performance by performing arts students. Many of these musicals are based on Broadway award-winning musicals such as Anything Goes, Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man, Hello, Dolly!, and Beauty and the Beast. This year, the Spring Musical was How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Every fall, performing arts students put on a dramatic play. In 2006, the play was Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, yet more progressive works such as The Laramie Project have been tackled by the students. In addition, the performing arts department holds smaller performances in the form of short plays.

BHHS also has an almost 200 member marching band. The BHHS marching band has had the privilege of performing at Disneyland for the past couple of years, after strict training in the skills of marching and playing at the same time. After several months of training, the band auditions in front of a strict jury of professional marching specialists. About 300 world-wide marching bands audition every year and only 20 get accepted. The BHHS marching band has gotten bigger and stronger each year under the direction of Richard Farmer.

BHHS now has a very successful competitive Winter Drumline. The BHHS Drumline is in its second competitive season. They compete in the SCPA and WGI circuits. The BHHS Drumline has performed such shows as "A Tour of Technology: The Inner-Workings of a Computer" and "Censor State: The State, The Conceded, The Resistance". The Drumline hopes to participate in its third competitive season next winter. [7]

Beverly Hills High School also has two award-winning groups, the Madrigal Singers (a chamber choir) and Minnesingers (an all-women's choir), headed by Joel Pressman, a Beverly alum. Both groups have won a wide range of awards for their performances, usually at Heritage Festivals. They have traveled across the United States to well-known locales such as San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York, Chicago, Orlando,Washington, D.C. and even internationally to France and New Zealand. Additionally, in December, both groups go Christmas caroling to raise money for their festival trips in April.

BHHS's Dance Company is renowned for their success in dance. They hold annual shows in January, which they practice for immediately when the school year starts. Last year, the Dance Company traveled to its sister school in Cannes, France, where they performed in front of many French students. This year, dancers from Cannes came to BHHS and put on a performance for BHHS students. BHHS also has a hip-hop group, AP Posse, which also performs in between Dance Company numbers.

Many Beverly Hills residents are connected to the entertainment industry, which accounts in part for the national reputation of the school's Performing Arts Department.

Oil well

Owned by the Venoco Oil Company, an oil well on Beverly's campus can easily be seen by drivers heading west on Olympic Boulevard towards Century City. The oil well has drilled most of the oil out of Beverly's campus and has been slant drilling under many homes and apartment buildings in Beverly Hills for decades.

As of May 2006, the Beverly Hills High School well was pumping out 400 to 500 barrels a day, earning the school approximately $300,000 a year in royalties [8].

In the mid-1990s, an art studio volunteered to cover the well, which at that point was solid gray in color, with individual tiles that had been painted by kids with cancer[9]. The studio created the design and drew the lines on the tiles, but children painted the tiles in between the lines. The studio made the design rather abstract: the design consists of random shapes on different-colored backgrounds. A ceremony inaugurating the design was held in 2001. The project's name was "Project 9865."

Beverly gained more notoriety when Erin Brockovich and Ed Masry announced having filed three lawsuits in 2003 and 2004 on behalf of 25, 400, and 300 (respectively) former students who attended Beverly from the 1970s until the 1990s. (The number of actual cancer claims filed in Santa Monica was only ninety-four [10]). The lawsuits claim that toxic fumes from the oil well caused the former students [11] to develop Hodgkin's lymphoma or cancer. The oil well is very close to all of Beverly's sports facilities, including the soccer field, the football field, and the racetrack. Beverly students -- not just athletes but students taking required physical education classes from the 1970s until the 1990s -- were required to run near the oil well. The city, the school district, and the oil companies named as plaintiffs dispute this assertion, claiming that they have conducted air quality tests with results showing that air quality is normal at the high school. [12][13]

After receiving complaints about Beverly's oil well, the region’s air-quality agency investigated Venoco Oil (doing business as Veneco, Inc) and in 2003 issued three "notices of violation" regarding the operation of the well. Venoco, Inc's penalty settlement included requirements that the company maintain continuous air quality monitoring at the high school, and prevent any oilfield gas (which is primarily methane gas) from being released into the atmosphere.[14]

On December 12, 2006, the first 12 plaintiffs (of over 1000 total) were dismissed on summary judgment because there was no indication that the contaminant (benzene) caused the diseases involved and the concentrations were hundreds to thousands of times lower than levels associated with any risk. [15] The CDC's cancer registry did an epidemiological study of Hodgkin's disease occurrence that negated Masry's claims: Community Cancer Assessment Regarding Beverly Hills, California[16] In June 2004 Beverly Hills Courier Editor Norma Zager was named "Journalist of the Year" in the Los Angeles Press Club's Southern California Journalism Awards competition for her coverage of the Erin Brockovich-Edward Masry lawsuit[17].

The oil well may have inspired a 1991 episode of the sitcom Saved By the Bell titled "Pipe Dreams." In it, oil is discovered at fictional Bayside High School in Pacific Palisades, California. There's excitement about the financial possibilities, but when a company comes in to drill, the character of Jessie realizes that it could be detrimental to the local environment.

Notable alumni

BHHS has a number of famous alumni, many of whom are entertainers, the children of entertainers or the offspring other prominent people. In addition, many famous people have taught at the school; soap opera actor John Ingle taught the drama and acting program at the school from 1964 to 1985. Ina addition, while Beverly Hills High School alumni are known predominantly for their connections with the entertainment industry, BHHS has also produced well-known scholars in many scientific disciplines.

Jack Abramoff David Ascalon Mickey Avalon Corbin Bernsen Jacqueline Briskin Albert Brooks Michael Burkett, a.k.a. Fat Mike, (NOFX, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes) Steve Burton Nicolas Cage Shaun Cassidy Richard Chamberlain Liz Claman Bryan Dattilo Frank Drew Richard Dreyfuss Nora Ephron Travis Fine Carrie Fisher Joely Fisher Rhonda Fleming Bonnie Franklin Gina Gershon Crispin Glover Randall Graham Joel Grey David Kushner Angelina Jolie Daryn Kagan Julie Kavner Michael Klesic Lenny Kravitz Saul Hudson aka Slash (Slash dropped out in the 11th gradehttp://www.imdb.com/name/nm0805298/bio) Serge Lang (mathematics) Monica Lewinsky (did not graduate from BHHS: she transferred to a private school) Amy Linker Gabriel Macht Maria McKee Benny Medina Leighton Meester Erik Menendez Breckin Meyer Frank Morriss http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0607359/ Laraine Newman Ariel Pink Andre Previn Rain Pryor Rob Reiner Antonio Sabato Jr. David Schwimmer Robert B. Sherman Richard M. Sherman Pauly Shore Jonathan Silverman Alicia Silverstone Bahar Soomekh Tori Spelling Marlo Thomas Peter Tomarken Tracy Torme Edward Tufte Katie Wagner Jill Whelan Betty White Kelli Williams Daniel Yergin Youth Brigade (Mark Stern, Adam Stern, and Shawn Stern)

References

• Leahy, Michael; Hard Lessons: Senior Year at Beverly Hills High School, Chapter 1, Little, Brown & Co., 1988

External links

• Beverly Hills High School
• Beverly Hills Unified School District homepage
• Beverly Hills High School Alumni Website
• Official Beverly Hills High School academic achievement profile
• Highlights, Beverly's newspaper, available online.
• Beverly Hills High School Drumline
• Beverly's Robotics Team's Website
• Aerial Photograph from Google Maps