South Pasadena High School

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South Pasadena High School
Motto Fair play, Strength, Scholarship, Leadership
Established 1906
Type Public secondary
Principal Janet Anderson
Students 1,600
Grades 9–12
Location South Pasadena, California USA
Mascot Tigers
Newspaper Tiger
Website sphstigers.org

South Pasadena High School (SPHS or "SouthPas") is a public high school serving grades 9-12 located in the city of South Pasadena, California.

The school is a part of the South Pasadena Unified School District.

Established in 1906, it was the first and only high school in South Pasadena. The campus is situated on west portion of the city on Fremont Avenue. The school is comprised of several main academic buildings, a performing arts auditorium, a swimming pool, three sets of tennis courts, two indoor gymnasiums, a 400-m outdoor track, and three athletic fields. Housed within these facilities are the departments of English, foreign language, math, science, social science, performing arts, athletics, physical education, ESL (English as a second language) programs, special education, and the ROP (regional occupational program). The school's motto is "Scholarship, Leadership, Strength, and Fair Play". The school colors are orange and black and the school's mascot is the tiger.


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SPHS opened in 1906 after South Pasadena residents approved a measure that would construct a public high school.

Before 1955, South Pasadena High School was known as South Pasadena-San Marino High School, serving both South Pasadena and San Marino. San Marino opened their own high school in 1955.

In 2000, SPHS underwent a major renovation and modernization project, which was completed in 2003. All the buildings except the auditorium were renovated and are now modernized. The auditorium was repainted.

In 2003, SPHS dedicated a concrete wall honoring former superintendent George C. Bush, who was murdered in 1940 by administrator Verlin Spencer.

In 2004, the South Pasadena Board of Education unveiled plans to renovate the SPHS football/track stadium. The field will be replaced with FieldTurf and the dirt track will be replaced with an all-weather track. Currently, due to financial problems, the plans are on hold. The only such improvements since the proposals is the replacement of the football goal posts after the previous ones (used for football and soccer) were damaged, primarily the north post. The damage occurred when a lawn mower was driven into the north post.

In 2005, SPHS students and faculty successfully saved principal Janet Anderson from reassignment, proposed by then-superintendent Rob Arias. Anderson was principal of SPHS since 2001. Arias originally reassigned Anderson to a nearby elementary school. On March 18, 2005, faculty picketed outside of school, protesting the reassignments before school and students walked out of class to protest the reassignments as well. The board of education repealed the reassignments, leading to the resignation of Arias. Two school board members, both of whom favored the reassignments, were voted out months later in an election.

In 2006, SPHS celebrated 100 years since its opening in 1906. As part of the celebration, on March 17, 2006, all students received a gray t-shirt saying "South Pasadena High School, Celebrating 100 Years of Tiger Tradition" at no cost.

The Class of 2006 is the centennial graduating class for SPHS. As part of the celebration, banners along Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena were displayed, showing the senior portraits of past alumni, the most recent graduates, and the class of 2006. To honor the 100th graduating class, students of the class of 2006 chose "100 Years" by Five For Fighting as their class song. There were 304 students that graduated as the Class of 2006 on June 16, 2006. As a class gift, the class presented to SPHS a bronze tiger statue to be placed in front of the SPHS library.

Due to the South Pasadena Unified School District's budget problems, there will be numerous changes: Two teachers were laid off at the end of the 2005-2006 school year (a math teacher and a social science teacher), geography (known by SPHS as "Global Studies") will be eliminated (and no longer a requirement for freshmen), Calculus BC eliminated, Virtual Enterprise will not count for economics credit, home study eliminated, and many more. According to the South Pasadena Board of Education, SPUSD owes the teachers union (Teachers Association of South Pasadena) a 5.98 percent pay increase. An estimated 80 percent of the SPUSD budget went to teachers, thus there is less funding for classes and textbooks.

Because of SPUSD layoffs, only one teacher was added to the SPHS faculty for the 2006-2007 school year.

For the 2006-2007 school year, new policies were adopted. The senior class was required to sign an agreement to not have more than ten absences. Students belonging to the senior class were not allowed to paint any of the tables and students will have harsh penalties if violating the policy. Also, students who are assigned Saturday School detention are to serve Saturday School on a Saturday instead of making up the detention after school or during late-start days.

Recently, the South Pasadena Board of Education is considering improving the track and field at SPHS within the next three months. This will affect the graduation of the class of 2007 and the Board of Education has considered relocating graduation. Some members of the graduating class have spoken out against moving commencement outside of the track and field stadium at SPHS.

SPHS's API score as of 2006 is 830, up by 13 points from 2005.

The on-site screen printing company, SPHS PawPrints, has received numerous orders from clients, including the American Cancer Society for the Relay for Life event. Pawprints has won third place at the Project ECHO competition at UCLA Anderson School of Management. In the same competition, the other business, which is the student store, received second place.

Homecoming takes place during the last home football game of the season.

Since the opening of SMHS, each school had a tradition of having a plaque being awarded to one of the two schools whenever one of the schools wins the football matchup between the two schools. SMHS won the first game in the history of the rivalry. Since 2003, SPHS has held the plaque and the record is in favor of SPHS 27-24-3

SPHS has been used as a set for these TV shows:

The following movies included scenes filmed at SPHS:

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