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Venice Senior High School and Venice Foreign Language Magnet
Rowing, not drifting
Location
13000 Venice Boulevard, Mar Vista, Los Angeles, California
Information
Principal	Janice Davis
Type	Public
Campus	Urban
Color(s)	blue, white
Established	1911 (LAUSD 1925), (Magnet 1988)
Enrollment	3209 (including 538 from magnet)
Homepage	Official website

Venice High School is a public school located in Los Angeles, California within the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The school's English-language newspaper is The Oarsman and its Spanish-language newspaper is El Heraldo Latino. A bohemian literary journal characteristic of the area, Written Voice, features students' poetry, short stories, and other work. An unofficial newsmagazine, The Venice Independent, was formerly run by Venice students.

The school's current principal is Janice Davis.

Even though it is called Venice High School the school is east of Walgrove Avenue, which forms the boundary with the adjacent neighborhood of Mar Vista. An explanation of the school's name might be that the school predates the clear establishment of Mar Vista as a distinct community, and the importance of Abbot Kinney's "Venice of America" to the local economy when the school was founded or because it is located on Venice Boulevard.

Several neighborhoods, including Venice, Mar Vista, and Del Rey, feed into Venice High School. Mar Vista Gardens, a public housing project, feeds into Venice.

Several elementary schools, including Beethoven Elementary School, Westminster Avenue Elementary School and Coeur d'Alene Avenue Elementary School, feed into Venice. Marina Del Rey Middle School, Daniel Webster Middle School, Mark Twain Middle School, and Palms Middle School feed into Venice.

The school was first established in 1911 when classes were held in an old lagoon bathhouse.

On March 10, 1933, the school was seriously damaged by the Long Beach earthquake. As a result, classes were held in hastily constructed tents for two years until a replacement school was built. New, modern, and earthquake-resistant buildings were built in 1935 which are still used by the school today.

On June 5, 2006 around 3:05 PM, 17-year old Augustin Contreras, an 11th grader at Venice, was fatally shot in the school's faculty parking lot. Contreras had intervened in a fight between his two younger brothers (16-year old Alejo Contreras and 15-year old Andres Contreras) and a few other men, who did not attend the school. The victim lived in Culver City.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

In fall 2007, some neighborhoods zoned to Hamilton High School were rezoned to Venice High School [3].

Venice High School was used as the Rydell High School location for the movie Grease starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. It was also used in other movies such as American History X, and Matchstick Men, as well as in several music videos, including Britney Spears's international hit ...Baby One More Time, Bowling for Soup's "High School Never Ends", and Young MC's "Principal's Office" [4]. Venice is also in The Faders "No Sleep Tonight".

Notable Venice High alumni and students include:

• Larry Atkins, Professional Football Player
• Clifford Bourland, 1948 Olympics 4X400 gold medal; US 400m champion
• Craig Breedlove, Land Speed Record Holder [5]
• Russell Brines, Foreign correspondent to Asia, author
• John Bromfield, Motion picture actor, television actor [6]
• Beau Bridges, Motion picture actor, son of Lloyd Bridges [7]
• A.J. Causton, popular punk metal guitarist and singer
• Leon Clarke, NFL end 1956-63. twice Pro Bowl
• Gary Collins, motion picture actor
• Walter Cunningham, NASA Astronaut [8]
• Leon Farley, Chief executive officer, Leon A. Farley Associates, National executive search firm
• Crispin Glover, Actor (10th and 11th grades only)
• Gogi Grant, Singer
• Barry Hirsch, Entertainment lawyer [9]
• Marty Klein, State championship tennis coach
• J.P. Losman, Professional Football Player
• Myrna Loy, Motion picture actress, voted "Queen of Hollywood" in 1938
• Teena Marie, singer/songwriter/producer
• Tara Correa-McMullen, actress
• Phranc, alternative rock performer
• Laurie Prang, Television actor
• Mark Sabatini, Famous surfer
• Doug Slaten, Arizona Diamondback pitcher
• Richie Slick, lead vocalist for The Diffs [10]
• Joanie Sommers, singer, motion picture actress
• Gerald Sutton, U.S. diplomat
• Sam Whipple, Motion picture actor
• Sylvia Hirsch Jones, Ph.D, Psy.D, Faculty, Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies

Gerald Comisar, Professor of Physics, Univ.of California (Berkely. UCLA, Santa Cruz

• Venice High School website (sometimes down during the summer)
  • Venice High School history
• Venice High School Alumni Website
• The Oarsman's official website
• Venice High's demographics from LAUSD
• LAUSD demographics for the foreign language magnet run out of the same campus