James A. Garfield High School is a public, year-round
high schoolHigh school is the name used in some parts of the world, particularly in Scotland, Northern America and Oceania, to describe an institution that provides all or part of secondary education...
founded in 1925 in
East Los AngelesEast Los Angeles is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2000 census, the area had a total population of 124,283. The CDP area includes the separate community of City Terrace...
, an unincorporated section of
Los Angeles County, CaliforniaLos Angeles County is a county in California and is by far the most populous county in the United States. Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau give an estimated 2008 population of 9,862,049 residents, while the California State government's population bureau lists a January 1, 2009, estimate of...
. The school suffers from many of the problems common to inner-city schools. Its strong
computer scienceComputer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that create, describe and transform...
magnetIn education in the United States, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities as school zones that feed into certain schools.There are magnet schools at the...
, Academic Decathlon, and Advanced Placement programs have led to unexpected academic success stories. The school was made famous by the film
Stand and DeliverStand and Deliver is a 1988 film dramatizing the work of Jaime Escalante, a dedicated high school mathematics teacher portrayed by Edward James Olmos.-Plot:...
about teacher
Jaime EscalanteJaime Escalante is a professor and teacher of mathematics who gained renown and distinction for his work at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, California in teaching students calculus, from 1974 to 1991.-Career:...
.
Garfield is administered by the
Los Angeles Unified School DistrictLos Angeles Unified School District is the largest public school system in California. It is the second-largest in the United States. Only the New York City Department of Education has a larger student population. During the 2007-2008 school year, LAUSD served 694,288 students, and had 45,473...
(LAUSD).
Garfield has been on a year-round, multi-track schedule to relieve overcrowding since July 1991.
James A. Garfield High School is a public, year-round
high schoolHigh school is the name used in some parts of the world, particularly in Scotland, Northern America and Oceania, to describe an institution that provides all or part of secondary education...
founded in 1925 in
East Los AngelesEast Los Angeles is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2000 census, the area had a total population of 124,283. The CDP area includes the separate community of City Terrace...
, an unincorporated section of
Los Angeles County, CaliforniaLos Angeles County is a county in California and is by far the most populous county in the United States. Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau give an estimated 2008 population of 9,862,049 residents, while the California State government's population bureau lists a January 1, 2009, estimate of...
. The school suffers from many of the problems common to inner-city schools. Its strong
computer scienceComputer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that create, describe and transform...
magnetIn education in the United States, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities as school zones that feed into certain schools.There are magnet schools at the...
, Academic Decathlon, and Advanced Placement programs have led to unexpected academic success stories. The school was made famous by the film
Stand and DeliverStand and Deliver is a 1988 film dramatizing the work of Jaime Escalante, a dedicated high school mathematics teacher portrayed by Edward James Olmos.-Plot:...
about teacher
Jaime EscalanteJaime Escalante is a professor and teacher of mathematics who gained renown and distinction for his work at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, California in teaching students calculus, from 1974 to 1991.-Career:...
.
Administration
Garfield is administered by the
Los Angeles Unified School DistrictLos Angeles Unified School District is the largest public school system in California. It is the second-largest in the United States. Only the New York City Department of Education has a larger student population. During the 2007-2008 school year, LAUSD served 694,288 students, and had 45,473...
(LAUSD).
Year-Round Calendar
Garfield has been on a year-round, multi-track schedule to relieve overcrowding since July 1991. Initially, there were four tracks. The students are, for the most part, randomly assigned to one of three tracks, and alternate two-month vacations. Only two-thirds of the student body is on campus at any given time.
Demographics
- From the 1930s through the 1950s, Garfield High was predominantly non-Hispanic White
White American is an umbrella term officially employed by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget and other U.S...
. However, since the 1960s, the majority of student body has been HispanicHispanic and Latino Americans are Americans of origins in Hispanic countries of Latin America or in Spain - "Mexican," "Puerto Rican," or "Cuban" - as well as those who indicate that they are "other Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino." Origin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or...
.
- The school had a total of 4620 students in the 2005–2006 school year; 99.26% of the students were identified as Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that historically denoted a relationship to the ancient Hispania . During the modern era, it took on a more limited meaning, relating to the contemporary nation of Spain....
.
May 2007 Auditorium fire
- On 20 May 2007, an 17-year-old arsonist set fire to the school's 82 year-old auditorium
An auditorium is where the audience is located to hear and watch performances at venues such as theatres. For movie theaters, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens.- Etymology :...
. It is estimated over $30 million dollars in damages in the fire, the auditorium is now completely destroyed. The 17-year-old arsonist boy who was a freshman at the school was sentenced to juvenile camp and ordered to pay restitution for setting the blaze. ChandeliersA chandelier is a branched decorative ceiling-mounted light fixture with two or more arms bearing lights. Chandeliers are often ornate, containing dozens of lamps and complex arrays of glass or crystal prisms to illuminate a room with refracted light....
were saved from the auditorium.
- A benefit concert was held in collaboration by Los Lobos
Los Lobos are an American Chicano rock band. They are 3-time Grammy Award winners. Their music is influenced by rock and roll, Tex-Mex, country music, folk, R&B, blues and traditional Spanish and Mexican music such as boleros and norteños....
, and a donation from boxer Oscar De La HoyaOscar "The Golden Boy" De La Hoya is a retired American boxer of Mexican descent. He won a gold medal at the Barcelona Olympic Games. De La Hoya comes from a boxing family. His grandfather Vicente, father Joel Sr., and brother Joel Jr. were all boxers...
. No further progress has been shown.
L.A. Unified contends that the 1925 auditorium needs to be rebuilt from the ground to meet state building codes. But nine insurers insist that the walls are salvageable and could support a new building, district officials said.
Designs for a new auditorium are almost complete and will be submitted soon for state approval, said facilities chief Guy Mehula. But in a further hitch, Garfield's main
administrationIn business, administration consists of the performance or management of business operations and thus the making or implementing of major decisions...
building, which is attached to the auditorium, must be retrofitted to meet earthquake standards, and officials have not determined the level of demolition needed.
Academics
Overall, Garfield has a student population that places significantly below average in the California Standards Test.
Classes are approximately 63 minutes in length and meet five times per week. Sixteen weeks constitute a semester. The highest mark possible is an "A" ; the lowest passing mark is a "D".
Academic Performance Index (API)
API for High Schools in the LAUSD District 5 and local small public
charterCharter schools are elementary or secondary schools in the United States that receive public money but have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth...
high schools in the
East Los Angeles regionEast Los Angeles is the portion of the City of Los Angeles, California that lies east of the Los Angeles River and Downtown Los Angeles, west of the San Gabriel Valley and the unincorporated area of East Los Angeles, California and City Terrace, California, south of Cypress Park, and north of...
.
| School |
2007 |
2008 |
| Los Angeles County High School for the Arts Los Angeles County High School for the Arts is a public high school located on the campus of California State University, Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, United States. Though it shares facilities with the university, the two schools' activities are usually separate. It is operated by the...
|
831 |
840 |
| Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School is a competitive senior high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District with a focus on serving students who plan to major in the healthcare field. It is located at 1200 N. Cornwell Street, Los Angeles, California 90033, in proximity to the Los...
|
807 |
818 |
| Marc and Eva Stern Math and Science School |
718 |
792 |
| Abraham Lincoln High School Abraham Lincoln High School, usually referred to simply as Lincoln High School, is a secondary school located in the Lincoln Heights district of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is located in the East Los Angeles-area community, surrounded by El Sereno, Chinatown, Boyle Heights and...
|
594 |
609 |
| James A. Garfield High School James A. Garfield High School is a public, year-round high school founded in 1925 in East Los Angeles, an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County, California. The school suffers from many of the problems common to inner-city schools. Its strong computer science magnet, Academic Decathlon,...
|
553 |
597 |
| Woodrow Wilson High School |
582 |
585 |
Theodore Roosevelt High School See also Roosevelt High School for schools of the same nameTheodore Roosevelt High School is a high school located in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles, California named for the 26th president of the United States....
|
557 |
551 |
Thomas Jefferson High SchoolFor schools with a similar name, see Jefferson High School.Thomas Jefferson High School is a public high school located at 1319 East 41st Street in Los Angeles, California, United States...
|
457 |
516 |
| Santee Education Complex Santee Education Complex is a secondary school located at 1921 South Maple Avenue in Los Angeles, California, United States.Santee, which serves grades 9 through 12, is a part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Santee is located in the South Los Angeles area. The school was located in a...
|
|
502 |
Advanced Placement
Garfield achieved fame because of
Jaime EscalanteJaime Escalante is a professor and teacher of mathematics who gained renown and distinction for his work at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, California in teaching students calculus, from 1974 to 1991.-Career:...
who, in the 1980s, along with the administration of Henry Gradillas built an exceptional advanced placement program. In 1982, 18 of his students passed the advanced placement calculus test. The
College BoardThe College Board is an examination board in the United States that was formed in 1900 as the College Entrance Examination Board . It manages many different standardized tests used by academically oriented post-secondary education institutions to measure a student's ability...
suspected cheating and required the students to re-take the examination. Further testing showed that the students had actually learned the material..
In 1987, 73 students passed, while another 12 passed the second year calculus test. In 1988, a popular film titled
Stand and DeliverStand and Deliver is a 1988 film dramatizing the work of Jaime Escalante, a dedicated high school mathematics teacher portrayed by Edward James Olmos.-Plot:...
starring Academy Award-nominee
Edward James OlmosEdward James "Eddie" Olmos is a Mexican American actor and director. His most memorable roles are Commander/Admiral William Adama in the Battlestar Galactica re-imagined series , Lt...
was made about the events of 1982. In 1990, there were over 400 students in Escalante's math program from
algebraAlgebra is the branch of mathematics concerning the study of the rules of operations and the things which can be constructed from them, including terms, polynomials, equations and algebraic structures...
to calculus. In 1991, he had a falling out with the school administration
and as a result left the Garfield school system. By 1996, only seven passed the basic calculus exam, with four passing the advanced exam. That was a total of eleven passing students, down from a high of 85 nine years earlier. In 2001, the school made a slight recovery in its calculus scores, with 17 passing the basic test and seven passing the second year test.
The legacy of Jaime Escalante can be seen in the 722 students who took AP tests of some sort in 2000. They had a 44% overall pass rate, which is comparable to the national average.
In 2004,
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly newsmagazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
ranked Garfield 581
st top high school in the nation. The rank was based on the number of Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school in 2004 divided by the number of graduating seniors.
Academic Decathlon
Garfield has the following record in the California Academic Decathlon from 1998 to 2006:
| Year |
State standing |
State points |
LAUSD standing |
LAUSD points |
| 2007 |
9th |
44,509.7 |
5th |
43,992.4 |
| 2006 |
10th |
42,707.9 |
6th |
44,310.4 |
| 2002 |
13th |
42,645.0 |
7th |
41,677 |
| 2001 |
12th |
39,398 |
3rd |
41,702 |
| 1999 |
8th |
44,557 |
2nd |
45,780 |
| 1998 |
6th |
45,912 |
2nd |
Unknown |
Marching Band and Colorguard
The Garfield High School
Marching BandA marching band is, in the broadest terms, a group of performers that consist of instrumental musicians and sometimes dance teams / color guard who generally perform outdoors and incorporate some type of marching with their musical performance. Instrumentation typically includes brass, woodwinds,...
and Colorguard (formerly Marching Band and
Drill TeamA drill team can be one of four different entities:# A Military Drill Team is marching unit that performs routines based on military drill. Military drill teams perform either armed or unarmed....
) is one of the most successful groups in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Since the late 1980s, Garfield has won 14 City Championships, and has won 5 in the last 7 years. In 2007, the Band and Colorguard became the 4th LAUSD school to make the
Southern CaliforniaSouthern California, or SoCal, is defined as the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its population centers around three major metropolitan areas, each of which have over 3 million people; the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area with over 12 million inhabitants, the San Bernardino-Riverside...
Schools Band and Orchestra Association's Field Championships, tying for 6th place. As a side legal note, the school was posthumously deafeated in 1991 by West Central's Belmont High School. In response for their undeniable defeat the school filed a lawsuit against the students of Belmont after the public championship in the Los Angeles Sports Arena. Their case was lost and an appeal was filed. Nevertheless, the Belmont Sentintels remain champions. To date, the Sentinels, will not be denied and the case remains a thorn in the Los Angeles Unified School District as a case of poor sportsmanship.
Even though the Bulldog Marching Band and Colorguard have suffered some hardships, they have the determination to move forward for further victories.
Football
Garfield High School participates in the
"East L.A. Classic"The East LA Classic, or East Los Angeles Classic ' is the homecoming football game for both James A. Garfield High School and Theodore Roosevelt High School. It is known as the East L.A. classic as the two mentioned high schools were among the first schools to be established in the East Los Angeles...
against
Theodore Roosevelt High School See also Roosevelt High School for schools of the same nameTheodore Roosevelt High School is a high school located in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles, California named for the 26th president of the United States....
, in football, a game that traditionally draws over 20,000 fans. The East LA classic has been held at the
East Los Angeles CollegeEast Los Angeles College is a community college, of the Los Angeles Community College District, located in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park. It compliments 14 communities comprising its primary service area. With an enrollment of 20,000 students ELAC, as it is known, is the largest campus in...
at the
Weingart StadiumWeingart Stadium is a 20,355-seat multipurpose stadium located at East Los Angeles College. It was built in 1951 at a cost of $3.1 million, and following renovations in 1984 it was renamed....
although it has been held at the The
Los Angeles Memorial ColiseumThe Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is a large outdoor sports stadium in the University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California at Exposition Park that is home to the University of Southern California Trojans football team. It is located next to the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena adjacent to...
. Garfield has the following record in the classic:
| Year |
W/L |
Score |
Source |
| 2007 |
L |
23-15 |
|
| 2006 |
W |
35-13 |
|
| 2005 |
W |
27-26 |
|
| 2003 |
L |
0-33 |
|
| 1999 |
W |
16-13 |
|
- Garfield beat University to become 2007 (CIF) 3a City Invitational Champions, during the (2007) season, Garfield was not part of the City Division.
- As of June 5, 2008 Garfield would longer participate in the Invitational Division, instead would participate in the City Division. However the League Alignment remains the same, and should not be confused with Division Alignment.
External links