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Beverly Hills High School
Motto	Today Well Lived
Established	1927
Type	Public
Principal	Joseph Guidetti
Students	2,400
Grades	9–12
Location	Beverly Hills, California USA
Colors	Black, orange and white
Mascot	Normans
Yearbook	Watchtower
Newspaper	Highlights
Website	bhhs.beverlyhills.k12.ca.us

Beverly Hills High School (usually abbreviated as "Beverly" or as "BHHS") is the only major public high school in Beverly Hills, California. (The other public high school in Beverly Hills, Moreno High School, is a small alternative school located on Beverly's campus.[1])

Beverly is part of the Beverly Hills Unified School District and located on 19.5 acres on the west side of Beverly Hills, at the border of the Century City area of Los Angeles. Beverly, which serves all of Beverly Hills, was founded in 1927. The buildings were designed by Robert F. Farquhar in the French Normandy style.

Contents 1 Academics 2 Diversity 3 In the media 3.1 West Beverly Hills High School 4 News services 5 Student life in 1980s 6 Athletics 7 Performing arts 8 Oil well 9 Notable alumni 10 Notable alumni in mathematics and science 11 School trivia 12 References 13 External links

In 2004, Beverly Hills High School was honored as one of the schools in the No Child Left Behind-Blue Ribbon School Program.

About 2400 students currently attend Beverly Hills High School. About 35% of Beverly's current student body were born outside the United States, and over half of those 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, and Israel, as well as from many other countries and language backgrounds. [2] [3]

The student body is substantially Jewish.[4]

In the media, students of Beverly Hills High School are typically portrayed as absurdly affluent. For example, in the fictional version of Beverly in the film version of The Beverly Hillbillies, Davids serve students gourmet coffee in the hallways.

Beverly has been featured in many movies, including Clueless[5], Real Women Have Curves, and It's a Wonderful Life [6], which featured a scene in Beverly's unique "Swim Gym," perhaps the only gymnasium that has a basketball court that can split open to reveal a recreational-sized, 25-yard swimming pool. The clear-glass backboards originated on this court as did the orange color on the basket hoops.

Beverly has been featured in cartoons, including Beverly Hills Teens. The French animated series Totally Spies! also takes place at "Bev High."

Initially, the producers of the 1990s television drama Beverly Hills 90210 wanted the show to be set at Beverly Hills High School, and the show to be filmed on Beverly's campus. The Beverly Hills school board declined both requests, so the TV producers created the fictional "West Beverly Hills High School" (or "West Beverly") and the show was filmed at Torrance High School, in Torrance, California. "West Beverly" is a clear reference to Beverly, because Beverly's campus is located on the western border of Beverly Hills.

BHHS has two award-winning news services. KBEV-Channel 6 is a student-run television channel that began in 1974 on Theta Cable as part of the PEG requirements for cable companies (free access by Public Access, Education, Government entities in the community). KBEV airs the longest-running high school news program in the country, The Norman Newservice, now The Norman News, and has received two Telly Awards. Highlights, the school's newspaper, has also won various awards for its reporting and writing.

Perhaps the most recent published book on student life at Beverly is Hard Lessons: Senior Year at Beverly Hills High School, by Michael Leahy (ISBN 0316518158). Published in 1988, it is a comprehensive book that followed Leahy's sociological study of Beverly students in the mid-1980s. In 1984, Beverly had a 100% graduation rate, but three students committed suicide. Leahy "heard so many stories of excruciating academic pressure, cocaine abuse and drifting children" that he decided to study the school's student body by interviewing students, parents, and teachers. He followed the lives of six Beverly seniors from the day they started school until the day they graduated in 1985.

Leahy wrote, "It did not take long during my conversations with Beverly students before I understood that their world was nothing like the one I had imagined from casually observing teenage behavior in malls and at rock concerts. After that initial shock, the task became to listen to students long and carefully enough until I adequately understood the panorama of life at Beverly." Leahy learned that in spite of the media's typical portrait Beverly was "not a den of hedonism." Leahy observed that "Social attitudes and mores appear to be nearly identical to those found in the middle-class high schools of the Los Angeles Basin and the San Fernando Valley -- the evidence of drug and alcohol use no more or less high, the discussion of sex and birth control equally as obsessive."

Still, Beverly's academic and social pressures did create problems in the mid-1980s. Leahy quotes a teacher who said in 1985, "The admired kid here is not necessarily the good-looking athlete. The possibility of success in the future is important to someone's overall attractiveness. Kids are already planning their law practices or where they might set up their businesses. Sometimes you can't see their problems through that act of maturity they put on for you. If they're not well adjusted, then that illusion can be a real problem, because some of them are facing pressures that they don't know how to cope with. Your whole worth here, in these kids' eyes, is determined by how well you're doing academically and socially. A 'C' is a horrible grade to them, a failing grade. Sometimes a 'B' is, too. There's been a lot of cheating. The anxiety is only growing worse."

According to the 1985 edition of the school yearbook, "The Beverly Pursuit is the path to success. . . . One wrong move, and the student could be traveling in endless circles. Sure, he will have a chance to roll again, but he will have to take advantage of every opportunity. Sometimes a student will land in the wrong square, but he must be patient. Someday he will be able to cash in all his chips and reach the center of attention. Of course, everyone wants a piece of the pie. If a student does not have the right moves, he will go hungry. . . ."

The Beverly Hills High School "Swim Gym" was designed by Stiles O. Clements and built in 1939 as a New Deal project. It features a basketball court that opens to reveal a 25-yard-long swimming pool underneath. Sports including volleyball, basketball, swimming and water polo can all be played in this facility. Beverly offers the following sports:

• Baseball
• Basketball
• Cheerleading
• Cross Country
• Football
• Golf
• Lacrosse
• Soccer
• Softball
• Swimming
• Tennis
• Track and Field
• Water Polo
• Wrestling

BHHS's stadium is a multipurpose facility that is used for football, soccer, baseball and track and field.

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," and the school claims that the department "is highly visible in the industry, with casting directors, writers and producers attending performances and visiting classes to speak with the students."[7]

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!, and most recently in 2006 Beauty and the Beast. This year, the Spring Musical will be How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Every fall, performing arts students put on a dramatic play. In 2006, the play was Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, yet more progressive works such as The Laramie Project have been tackled by the students. In addition, the performing arts department holds smaller performances in the form of short plays.

BHHS now has a very successful competitive Winter Drumline. The BHHS Drumline is in its second competitive season. They compete in the SCPA and WGI circuits. The BHHS Drumline has performed such shows as "A Tour of Technology: The Inner-Workings of a Computer" and "Censor State: The State, The Conceded, The Resistance". The Drumline hopes to participate in its third competitive season next winter. [8]

Many Beverly Hills residents are connected to the entertainment industry, which accounts in part for the national reputation of the school's Performing Arts Department.

Owned by the Venoco Oil Company, an oil well on Beverly's campus can easily be seen by drivers heading west on Olympic Boulevard towards Century City. The oil well has drilled most of 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 approximately $300,000 a year in royalties [9].

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's name was "Project 9865."^{[citation needed]}

Beverly gained more 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. Beverly students -- not just athletes but students taking required physical education classes from the 1970s until the 1990s -- were required to run near the oil well. 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. [10][11]

After receiving complaints about Beverly's oil well, the region’s air-quality agency investigated Venoco Oil and in 2003 issued three "notices of violation" regarding the operation of the well. Venoco's penalty settlement included a requirement that the company maintain continuous air quality monitoring at the high school.[12]

On December 12, 2006, the first 12 plaintiffs (of over 1000 total) were dismissed on summary judgment because there was no indication that the contaminant (benzene) caused the diseases involved and the concentrations were hundreds to thousands of times lower than levels associated with any risk. [13]

The oil well may have inspired a 1991 episode of the sitcom Saved By the Bell titled "Pipe Dreams." In it, oil is discovered at fictional Bayside High School in Pacific Palisades, California. There's excitement about the financial possibilities, but when a company comes in to drill, the character of Jessie realizes that it could be detrimental to the local environment.

BHHS has a number of famous alumni, many of whom are entertainers, the children of entertainers or the offspring other prominent people. In addition, many famous people have taught at the school; soap opera actor John Ingle taught the drama and acting program at the school from 1964 to 1985.

Jack Abramoff David Ascalon Corbin Bernsen Jacqueline Briskin Albert Brooks Michael Burkett, a.k.a. Fat Mike, (NOFX, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes) Steve Burton Nicolas Cage Shaun Cassidy Richard Chamberlain Liz Claman Bryan Dattilo Frank Drew Richard Dreyfuss Nora Ephron Travis Fine Carrie Fisher Joely Fisher Rhonda Fleming Bonnie Franklin Gina Gershon Crispin Glover Joel Grey David Kushner Angelina Jolie Daryn Kagan Julie Kavner Michael Klesic Lenny Kravitz Saul Hudson aka Slash Monica Lewinsky (did not graduate from BHHS: she transferred to a private school)

Amy Linker Gabriel Macht Maria McKee Erik Menendez Breckin Meyer Frank Morriss [14] Laraine Newman Ariel Pink Andre Previn Rain Pryor Rob Reiner Lil' Romeo (currently attending) Antonio Sabato Jr. Julian Sabur David Schwimmer Robert B. Sherman Richard M. Sherman Pauly Shore Jonathan Silverman Alicia Silverstone Margaret Simons Bahar Soomekh Tori Spelling Marlo Thomas Peter Tomarken Tracy Torme Edward Tufte Katie Wagner Jill Whelan Betty White Kelli Williams Daniel Yergin Jennifer Young Youth Brigade (Mark Stern, Adam Stern, and Shawn Stern)

While Beverly Hills High School alumni are known predominantly for their connections with the entertainment industry, BHHS has also produced well-known scholars in many scientific disciplines.

Serge Lang (mathematics)

• 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.

• Leahy, Michael; Hard Lessons: Senior Year at Beverly Hills High School, Chapter 1, Little, Brown & Co., 1988

• Beverly Hills Unified School District homepage
• Beverly Hills High School Alumni Website
• Official Beverly Hills High School academic achievement profile
• Highlights, Beverly's newspaper, available online.
• Aerial Photograph from Google Maps
• http://www.boston.com/sports/schools/football/articles/2006/09/15/east_meets_greets_west/