Beverly Hills High School
| Beverly Hills High School | |
|---|---|
| File:BHHS logo.png | |
| Location | |
 | |
| , | |
| Information | |
| Type | Public |
| Motto | Today Well Lived |
| Established | 1927 |
| Principal | Dan Stepenosky (stepping down at the end of semester. New principal: TBA) |
| Grades | 9–12 |
| Enrollment | 2,400 |
| Color(s) | Black , Orange , and White |
| Mascot | Normans |
| Newspaper | Highlights |
| Yearbook | Watchtower |
| Website | bhhs.beverlyhills.k12.ca.us |
Beverly Hills High School (usually abbreviated as "Beverly" or rarely as "BHHS") is the one of two high schools in Beverly Hills, California. The only other public high school in Beverly Hills is Moreno High School, a small alternative school located on Beverly's campus.[1] Beverly is part of the Beverly Hills Unified School District and is located on the west side of Beverly Hills, at the border of the Century City area of Los Angeles. Beverly was founded in 1927. Over 2,000 students currently attend the school. Beverly used to hold its senior prom at the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel, but Beverly now has its prom on the backlot of Sony Pictures Studios.
Academics
Beverly Hills High School has on numerous occasions won the Blue Ribbon award for its excellence.
Beverly Hills High School also has an award winning US FIRST Robotics Team that made it to the US First Nationals in Atlanta by winning the Rookie All-Star Award at the Los Angeles Regionals.
News services
BHHS has two award winning news services: KBEV, the first student TV news broadcast channel in the nation as well as the longest running one, and Highlights, the school's newspaper, which has also won various awards for its reporting and writing.
An online, non-school affiliated publication, the Beverly Underground, is also maintained by several students of Beverly Hills High School. [2]
Athletics
- Baseball
- Basketball
- Cheerleading
- Cross Country
- Football
- Golf
- Lacrosse
- Soccer
- Softball
- Swimming
- Tennis
- Track and Field
- Water Polo
- Wrestling
Diversity of Student Body
About 35% of Beverly's current student body were not born in the United States, and over half of Beverly's students speak a first language other than English. Many of these students are from Iran, or are of Iranian descent. There are also many students from South Korea, Israel, and Russia, as well as from many other countries and language backgrounds. [3] The vast majority of Beverly's students, along with the vast majority of the population of Beverly Hills, are Jewish.
This led nationally syndicated newspaper and magazine columnist Joel Stein to observe Beverly's claims of diversity after he spoke at Beverly's "Career Day." Stein wrote in his column "I was pleased to find the student body was racially diverse. There were Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews and Persian Jews."[4]
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.[5]
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, etc and most recently Beauty and the Beast. In addition, the performing arts department also holds smaller performances in the form of short plays.
The marching band is well known throughout Beverly Hills as they perform in many community events. This group travels to Disneyland almost every year where they march down Main Street playing "It's a Small World."
The performing arts teachers at Beverly are partly responsibe for the reputation of the department, but the fact that many of Beverly students have parents that are connected to the entertainment industry is also partly responsible for the department's reputation. After columinist Joel Stein spoke to Beverly's students, he wrote that "From their questions, it was obvious that these kids already knew about the intricacies of journalism, television writing, publicity and on-air work. I was basically giving guidance about whether to work for daddy's production company as a producer or as a development executive."[6]
Oil well
Owned by the Venoco Oil Company, the well can be easily seen by any car driving by Beverly on Olymic Boulevard on the way to Century City. The oil well has drilled most 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 approx. $300,000 a year in royalties [7].
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. 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 name was called "Project 9856."
Beverly gained notoriety when Erin Brockovich and Ed Masry 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 lawsuits claim that toxic fumes from the oil well caused the former students 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. Nearly all Beverly students, not just the athletes but any student taking a required physical education class from the 1970s until the 1990s were required to run near the oil well. Masry claims that Beverly Hills High School's cancer rate is 20 to 30 times the national average. 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. Many parents were concerned and have refused to send their children to Beverly Hills High because of the possible cancer link. [8][9]
Notable alumni
BHHS has a number of famous alumni, many of whom are well-known entertainers or the children of entertainers or of other celebrities. In addition, many famous people have taught at the school; soap opera actor John Ingle taught the drama and acting program at the school for twenty years.
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In the media
Typically, the media portrays Beverly Hils High School's students as absurdely affluent. For example, in the film version of The Beverly Hillbillies, their is a fictional version of the high school, where robots serve students gormet coffee in the hallways. This is an exaturation.
There is no doubt that Beverly has many students who are wealthy. Columinst Joel Stein described Beverly's student body as "some of the richest children in the nation." Stein wrote that while he was speaking to Beverly's students "it became clear that career day for Beverly Hills High School students is the lamest charity invented since the Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones wedding registry."[11]
Beverly has been featured in the movies Clueless[12] , Real Women Have Curves, and It's a Wonderful Life [13]. It's a Wonderful Life featured a scene in Beverly's unique swim gym, perhaps the only swim gym that has a basketball court that can split open to reveal an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Built in the 1930s as a New Deal project, Beverly's swim gym can be used for volleyball, basketball, water polo, swimming, and for general physical education.
The 1990s television drama Beverly Hills 90210 was set at the fictional "West Beverly Hills High School" (or "West Beverly") and was filmed at Torrance High School, in Torrance, California. Initially, the show's producer Aaron Spelling wanted to call the show "Beverly Hills High School" and wanted to film at Beverly, but the school board did not let him do either. "West Beverly" is an obvious reference to Beverly, because Beverly's campus located along the extreme west border of Beverly Hills.
Other interesting facts
- Part of the stage in the K.L Peters Auditorium can be lowered.
- The Goodyear Blimp once landed on the football field.