Burbank Unified School District is a
school district headquartered in
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in the southeastern end of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located northwest of downtown Los Angeles, Burbank has a population of 107,337. The city was named after David Burbank, w ...
, United States.
History
Originally students attended Burbank schools until the high school level, when they moved on to
Glendale Union High School District
Glendale Union High School District No. 205 is a school district headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, United States.
The union high school district operates nine comprehensive high schools and serves most of Glendale and a portion of Phoenix. It ...
. The Burbank school district established its first high school,
Burbank High School, in 1908, and therefore withdrew from the Glendale High School district.
[Brief History of Burbank High School]
. Burbank High School. Retrieved on January 18, 2016.
The district passed a general obligation bond in the 1950s.
[History]
Archive
. Burbank Unified School District. Retrieved on January 18, 2016.
In 1992 the Brighton Community School, a school for students with disciplinary programs, moved to a site adjacent to the BUSD headquarters, on a property. In 1998 BUSD sold the property to the city government for $8 million. The city planned to build a park and a library branch on this land. The district planned to move the Burbank school on the same site as Monterey High School, a school for students with academic problems, but by August 1998 the district withdrew these plans due to a negative response from area residents.
In March 1993 the district board voted 5–0 to approve random metal detector searches of middle and high school students.
In April 1994 the district failed to pass a $100-million bond. Superintendent Arthur Pierce resigned in May of that year. The district successfully passed a $112 million bond in 1997, the first-such bond passed since the 1950s.
[
In August 2015 Matt Hill, previously a chief strategy officer at the ]Los Angeles Unified School District
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is a public school district in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the largest public school system in California in terms of number of students and the 2nd largest public school district in ...
, became the district superintendent of BUSD.
In November 2015 the district approved board starting the following school year during the third week of August.
In April 2019, the district board voted unanimously to rename the David Starr Jordan Middle School due to David Starr Jordan
David Starr Jordan (January 19, 1851 – September 19, 1931) was the founding president of Stanford University, serving from 1891 to 1913. He was an ichthyologist during his research career. Prior to serving as president of Stanford Univer ...
's involvement with the eugenics movement
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
. The middle school kept Jordan's name for the next two years while the school district searched for a replacement name that everyone could agree with. In March 2021, the district board finally decided to rename their middle school in honor of labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta.
On September 9, 2020, the school district removed Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Theodore Taylor's The Cay and Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry from middle school and high school whole class instruction after complaints were received from four parents of students. The decision gained the attention of anti-censorship organizations such as PEN America and the National Coalition Against Censorship
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), founded in 1974, is an alliance of 50 American non-profit organizations, including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties groups. NCAC is a New York-bas ...
who object the banning of these books from the classroom.
Governing Board
Burbank Unified School District's Governing Board is composed of five members, elected to a four-year term. Elections were held at the same time as the Burbank City Council elections with the primary in late February and the runoff in mid-April of odd-numbered years. The school board voted to eliminate the primary/runoff format and replace with a plurality election and moved its Governing Board elections to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November effective with the 2020 election to coincide with the California general election. Board members whose terms expire in April 2019, will extend to December 2020 and members whose terms expire in April 2021 will extend to December 2022.
Schools
High schools
* Burbank High School
* John Burroughs High School
* Monterey High School ( Continuation)
Middle schools
* John Muir Middle School
* Luther Burbank Middle School
* Dolores Huerta Middle School
Elementary schools
* Walt Disney Elementary School
* Thomas Edison Elementary School
* Ralph Emerson Elementary School
* Bret Harte Elementary School
* Thomas Jefferson Elementary School
* William McKinley Elementary School
* Joaquin Miller Elementary School
* Providencia Elementary School
* Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School
* R.L. Stevenson Elementary School
* George Washington Elementary School
Other schools
*Burbank Adult School
*Community Day School
*Magnolia Park School
*Horace Mann Children's Center
Former schools
* Abraham Lincoln Elementary School
* Henry M. Mingay Elementary School (Now Burbank Adult School)
* Monterey Elementary School (Now Monterey Continuation High School)
* Benjamin Franklin Elementary School
*Horace Mann Elementary School (Now Horace Mann Children's Center)
* John Quincy Adams Middle School (Now Thomas Edison Elementary School)
References
External links
Burbank Unified School District
*Articles about
Burbank Unified School District
at the '' Los Angeles Times''
{{Education in Los Angeles County, California