The Los Angeles Unified School District, then operating as the Los Angeles City School District, knew it was headed for a crisis as soldiers began returning from World War II and settling down in housing tracts that were rapidly being built to accommodate their families.
The crisis: the district had nowhere near enough schools and classrooms to handle what was shaping up to be a baby boom for the ages. It wasn’t alone. The newly independent Torrance school district had one high school in 1954; by 1962, it had four.
The city school district presciently got a $75 million bond issue passed in 1946 that provided for the building of 66 new schools. The measure called for the funding to build a new high school in the Westchester area of the city.
The need for schools in the Westchester area was especially acute. Workers in nearby aerospace plants were moving into suburban houses as fast as they could be thrown up, and there were few schools nearby for their children to attend.
The school district adopted a novel two-for-one plan for the high school’s construction. It would start by building a school at 6550 W. 80th St. that would be called Westchester High School, but would also include junior high school students.
There wasn’t enough money to build the kind of full-scale high school needed, so in the meantime, students would share the facility. When funding became available for the permanent high school, its students would move there and the 80th St. school would become strictly a junior high school.
The school was built in 1948, and 500 students attended the new combined Westchester high/junior high school when it opened that September. The arrangement would continue for the next eight years.
In late 1949, the district announced that it would erect additional buildings onsite that would be solely for high schoolers at a cost of $1.34 million. A groundbreaking ceremony took place in January 1950.
The plans also called for a swimming pool and an auditorium, but a lack of funds delayed those structures. The pool was built in 1954, thanks in no small part to a community funding drive that raised much of the money. The auditorium followed in 1955 at a cost of $448,000, and the high school portion of the campus was complete.
A 1952 bond issue provided funding for three new free-standing high schools, in Reseda, Gardena – and Westchester. Planning thus began for its construction on a 37.1-acre plot of land at 7400 W. Manchester Blvd.
The Board of Education awarded the $4.2-million contract for the construction of Westchester High on Oct. 7, 1954. At that time, it was the largest single contract ever awarded by the district. Construction costs for the school, built to accommodate 2,500 students, eventually would top $5 million.
The school was scheduled to open in the spring of 1956, but a shortage of construction materials forced a delay. Westchester High finally opened to students that September, and its official dedication took place on Nov. 4, 1956.
Back on 80th St., the district announced in June 1956 that the original school would now become Orville Wright Junior High School which officially opened in Sept. 1956. (The city’s junior high schools, grades 7-8 or 7-9, would later become middle schools, grades 6-8.)
The school has since been transformed into Wright Middle School STEAM Magnet and Gifted Magnet. (STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics.)
Westchester High turned out several famous graduates over the following years. In addition to gifted Comets athletes such as NBA players Trevor Ariza, Hassan Adams and Amir Johnson, the late comic actor Phil Hartman, actresses Nia Long and Regina King, and several members of the 1960s band The Turtles also attended the school.
A combination of factors led to declining enrollments and slipping academic achievement standards in recent decades. Expansion at nearby Los Angeles International Airport dislocated thousands of residents, leading to lower enrollments. By 1989, enrollment had dipped from 3,000 students to 1,550.
In order to boost enrollment, the school attendance area was widened to allow minority students from outside of Westchester to attend. This alienated white parents, who began sending their children to private schools instead. The school then had to counter community perceptions that it had become a violent and dangerous place for students.
The downward spiral continued through the early 2000s, when talk of converting it into a magnet school began to gain traction. The alternative, closing the school altogether, was a much less attractive option.
After the school’s attendance continued to bottom out, Principal Bobby Canosa-Carr decided the time had come to convert Westchester from a conventional high school into a full science magnet. The conversion began in the fall of 2011. The move has proven generally successful, removing the threat of closure.
Westchester High now operates under a new name, Westchester Enriched Science Magnets (WESM). It offers three courses of study: the Gifted & High Ability STEAM Magnet, the Environmental & Natural Science Magnet, and the Health & Sports Medicine Magnet.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
Los Angeles Times archives.
Los Angeles Unified School District: Historic Context Statement, 1870-1969, prepared by Sapphos Environmental for the Los Angeles Unified School District Office of Environmental Health and Safety, March 2014.
Westchester Enriched Science Magnets website.
Wikipedia.
Note: Longtime Westchester basketball coach Ed Azzam will be the subject of a future post.
