Burbank Unified School District

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Burbank Unified School District
Address
1900 W. Olive Avenue
Burbank
, California, 91506
United States
Coordinates34°09′55″N 118°19′28″W / 34.16528°N 118.32444°W / 34.16528; -118.32444Coordinates: 34°09′55″N 118°19′28″W / 34.16528°N 118.32444°W / 34.16528; -118.32444
District information
GradesK through 12
Established1908; 114 years ago (1908)
SuperintendentMatt Hill
NCES District ID0606450[1]
Other information
Websiteburbankusd.org/

Burbank Unified School District is a school district headquartered in Burbank, California, United States.

History[]

Originally students attended Burbank schools until the high school level, when they moved on to Glendale Union High School District. The Burbank school district established its first high school, Burbank High School, in 1908, and therefore withdrew from the Glendale High School district.[2]

The district passed a general obligation bond in the 1950s.[3]

In March 1993 the district board voted 5-0 to approve random metal detector searches of middle and high school students.[4]

In April 1994 the district failed to pass a $100-million bond. Superintendent Arthur Pierce resigned in May of that year.[5] The district successfully passed a $112 million bond in 1997, the first-such bond passed since the 1950s.[3]

In August 2015 Matt Hill, previously a chief strategy officer at the Los Angeles Unified School District, became the district superintendent of BUSD.[6]

In November 2015 the district approved board starting the following school year during the third week of August.[7][8]

In April 2019, the district board voted unanimously to rename the David Starr Jordan Middle School due to David Starr Jordan's involvement with the eugenics movement.[9] 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.[10]

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[]

Middle schools[]

  • John Muir Middle School
  • Luther Burbank Middle School
  • David Starr Jordan Middle School

Elementary schools[]

Providencia School
  • 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)

In 1992 the Brighton Community School, a school for students with disciplinary programs, moved to a site adjacent to the BUSD headquarters, on a 4-acre (1.6 ha) 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.[11]

Controversy[]

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 who object the banning of these books from the classroom.[12][13] Those who defined the district's decision as 'banning' misunderstood the decision of the district. The decision of the district was to update, diversify, and decolonize the CORE novel list, making space for voices and narratives that had been absent for decades. The decision was to protect students of color who had been harmed by excessive and extensive repetition of the "n" word in classrooms and on campus. The challenged books remain in school and classroom libraries, and are available for any student who wants to read them independently.

References[]

  1. ^ "Search for Public School Districts – District Detail for Burbank Unified". National Center for Education Statistics. Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved 16 October 2021.
  2. ^ "Brief History of Burbank High School" (Archive). Burbank High School. Retrieved on January 18, 2016.
  3. ^ a b "History" (Archive). Burbank Unified School District. Retrieved on January 18, 2016.
  4. ^ Bond, Ed. "Burbank Schools OK Metal Detector Use." Los Angeles Times. March 19, 1993. Retrieved on January 17, 2016.
  5. ^ Bond, Ed. "BURBANK : Superintendent of Schools Will Retire." Los Angeles Times. May 18, 1994. Retrieved on January 17, 2016.
  6. ^ Corrigan, Kelly. "Hill wowed by new post as Burbank Unified's superintendent." Los Angeles Times. August 11, 2015. Retrieved on January 17, 2016..
  7. ^ Corrigan, Kelly. "Burbank Unified to begin next school year three weeks into August." Los Angeles Times. November 24, 2015. Retrieved on January 17, 2016.
  8. ^ Fuller, Bruce (2019-08-27). "Op-Ed: Joe Biden seems to think school segregation is nearly unsolvable. These efforts prove him wrong". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2019-08-28.
  9. ^ Sahakyan, Marian (April 22, 2019). "Burbank school board votes to change name of David Starr Jordan Middle School". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2019-04-22.
  10. ^ Paredes, Lisa (March 5, 2021). "Jordan Renamed To Dolores Huerta Middle School". My Burbank.
  11. ^ Blankstein, Andrew. "Board Drops School Plan After Protests." Los Angeles Times. August 19, 1998. Retrieved on January 17, 2016.
  12. ^ Lock, Samantha (November 13, 2020). "'To Kill a Mockingbird,' Other Books Banned From California Schools Over Racism Concerns". Newsweek. Newsweek Digital. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
  13. ^ Jensen, Kelly (November 16, 2020). "Burbank, CA School District Faces Unique Anti-Racism Book Ban Situation". Book Riot. Riot New Media Group. Retrieved November 23, 2020.

External links[]

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