Berkeley High School (Berkeley, California)


Berkeley High School
Image:Berkeley Jacket.png
Type Public secondary
Principal Jim Slemp
Students 3,329
Grades 9–12
Location Berkeley, California, USA
District Berkeley Unified School District
Colors crimson and gold
Mascot Yellowjackets
Newspaper 'The Jacket'
Website bhs.berkeleyschools.org

Berkeley High School is the only public high school in Berkeley, California. It is located one long block west of Shattuck Avenue and three short blocks south of University Avenue in Downtown Berkeley, and is recognized as a Berkeley landmark. Berkeley High School has a current student enrollment of 3,329 in 2008-2009 school year from California school data website, drawn from a city of about 106,000 residents from Berkeley and is second largest and most populous high school in Northern California second only to James Logan High School in *Union City. The school mascot is the Yellowjacket.

Contents

History

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Berkeley High School, rear view of building showing toppled chimneys after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

The first public high school classes in Berkeley were held at the Kellogg Primary School located at Oxford and Center Streets adjacent to the campus of the University of California. It opened in 1880 and the first high school graduation occurred in 1884. In 1895, the first high school annual was published entitled the Crimson and Gold (changed to Olla Podrida by 1899.)

In 1900, the citizens of Berkeley voted in favor of a bond measure to establish the first dedicated public high school campus in the city. In 1901, construction began on the northwest portion of the present site of the high school. The main school building stood on the corner of Grove (now Martin Luther King Way) and Allston Way, where the "H" building is located today. At that time, Kittredge Street ran through what is today's campus site instead of ending at Milvia. The local office of the Bay Cities Telephone Company sat on the site of today's administration building at the corner of Allston Way and Milvia by 1911.

On Arbor Day of 1902, noted naturalist John Muir joined Berkeley's mayor William H. Marston in planting a giant sequoia in a yard south of the new high school buildings. [1] The tree is apparently no longer there.

The main building of the high school suffered moderate damage in the form of toppled chimneys, broken windows and some weakened walls as a result of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Professor Andrew Lawson of the University of California included one of his own photographs (shown at upper right) of the damage in his famous report issued in 1908. [2]

In 1955, Berkeley High School band director Bob Lutt (who eventually was made executive director of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra), founded Cazadero Performing Arts Camp.

In 1964, the West Campus of Berkeley High School was opened in the buildings of the former Burbank Junior High School at Bonar Street and University Avenue. It served all ninth graders while the main campus served grades 10-12, except for an interval from the mid - 1970s to the early 1980s when it was 7-9 to accommodate construction at Willard Junior High School. It was turned over to the Berkeley Adult School in 1986 which used it until 2004. West Campus is currently closed.

A number of famous performers have played at the Berkeley Community Theater which is located on the Berkeley High campus. In 1957, Stan Getz was one of the featured performers of the Berkeley Jazz Festival.[1] In the late Sixties, several bands and singers made the Community Theater their venue, including Jimi Hendrix.

A significant portion of students and faculty alike were also involved with the various forms of political activism which characterized the Sixties in Berkeley, including protests against the Vietnam War, advocacy for civil rights and third world studies, and supporting People's Park. The campus included a Black Students Union and a Chicano Student Union. In 1971, Berkeley High students elected a gay male as Homecoming Queen.

Berkeley High School has been innovative in its high school curriculum. In the Fall of 1970, a school within a school opened at Berkeley High called Community High School. It was "alternative", in keeping with the sixties culture which permeated life in Berkeley at the time. Berkeley High School was also the first public high school in the United States with an African American Studies department, established in 1969.[2]

The Berkeley High campus was designated a historic district by the National Register of Historic Places on January 7, 2008. [3]

Administration and organization

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Principal

The current principal is Jim Slemp, who is in his sixth year at the head. In the years preceding Slemp, Berkeley High was plagued by the lack of a consistent principal, and arson fires, most of which remain unsolved, which catalyzed the remodeling of several buildings (C, A), the demolition of one (B), and the building of a new administrative center and food court (D).

Small schools

In 2000, in an attempt to better serve the large student body, BHS began experimenting with the idea of small schools. In 2005, the school was officially reorganized into of a number of small schools:

  • The Arts and Humanities Academy (AHA)
  • Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS)
  • Community Partnerships Academy (CPA)
  • The School of Social Justice and Ecology (SSJE).

In addition to the smaller schools, there are two Comprehensive Learning Communities which contain a larger percentile of the student body. These are referred to as the "Larger Schools" within BHS. Academic Choice (AC) and the recently developed Berkeley International High School (BIHS)--part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program as of 2007--make up this Comprehensive Learning Community.

  • Berkeley International High School (BIHS)
  • The School of Academic Choice (AC)

Departments, parents, and student organizations

Campus and architecture

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The Berkeley High School campus covers four city blocks between Milvia Street and Martin Luther King Jr Way. It contains several buildings, built between 1901 and 2004, which display a variety of architectural styles.

In the late 1930s, Berkeley High was remodeled and old buildings were replaced with newer ones. The Florence Schwimley Little Theater, The Berkeley Community Theatre, and the science buildings are prime examples of the Streamline Moderne style designed by architects Henry H. Gutterson and William G. Corlett. The rebuilding was financed largely in part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program the WPA.

Notable people

Main article: List of Berkeley High School (Berkeley, California) people

The main article provides a list of individuals associated with Berkeley High School through attending as a student, or serving as a member of the faculty or staff.

Berkeley High in books, film, and theater

It is mentioned in the Danzy Senna novel Caucasia, when the character Cole Lee reveals on pages 411-12 that she attended Berkeley High in the early 1980s.

The non-fiction text Class Dismissed by Meredith Maran followed three Berkeley High seniors for the 1999-2000 school year.

Nancy Rubin - taught the class "Social Living" at Berkeley High from 1977 through 1996. She published a book titled Ask Me If I Care: Voices from an American High School by addresses teen social issues and is compiled entirely of journal entries by anonymous Berkeley High School students written during their Social Living classes (a mandatory course at the school).[4]

Yellow Jackets - Berkeley High School is the subject, and setting, for the 2008 play entitled Yellow Jackets. Written by Itamar Moses, Yellow Jackets premiered in August 2008, and ran for two months at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, in a production directed by Tony Taccone. The play focused mainly on the themes of race, multiculturalism in education, and the different facets and flipsides for political correctness.

Additionally, Berkeley High School compiled and published a dictionary of youth slang, available to the greater public.[5]

It was also the subject of an episode of PBS's Frontline about racial politics at Berkeley High School entitled "School Colors". The documentary was filmed throughout the 1993-1994 school year and aired on October 18, 1994. [3]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Oakland Tribune, Aug.2, 1957
  2. ^ http://www.dailycal.org/article/12003/fate_of_berkeley_high_african-american_studies_pro
  3. ^ Berkeley Daily Planet, January 22-24, 2008
  4. ^ Rubin, Nancy J. (1994). Ask Me if I Care. Ten Speed Press. ISBN 978-0898155976
  5. ^ Rick Ayers, Berkeley High School "Slang Dictionary"; most recent ed. 2003 (North Atlantic Books); ISBN 1556435207; ISBN 978-1556435201.

Further reading

  • Berkeley, California: the story of the evolution of a hamlet into a city of culture and commerce by William Warren Ferrier, Imprint Berkeley, Calif. (1933)
  • Berkeley: The Town and the Gown of It, by George A. Pettitt, Howell-North Books, Berkeley (1973)
  • Sanborn Insurance Map: Berkeley, California, Plate 83 (1911)

External links

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