Unfortunately that statement is a falsehood and it continues to be shameful that these individuals do not take the time or care to find out the truth.
Within the yellow lines in the photograph below are the Industrial Arts buildings that were, in fact built at San Pedro High School and completed in 1970.
I have placed identification labels on some of the buildings so you can have a better sense of where these buildings stand on the high school's site.
If you notice, with even very little help, you will see a building outlined by red lines.
Many folks call this building, "The two-story bungalow.
I graduated from San Pedro High School in June, 1973. I worked on two different theatrical productions at the high school during the summer of 1973, and then again during the summer of 1974. "The two-story bungalow" was not built even when I worked on the production of "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel" during the summer of 1974.
So, if anyone states to you that the last permanent building at San Pedro High School was built in 1970, kindly inform them they are stating something that is not true, and help them out with the facts.Now about "the two-story bungalow". It is a permanent two-story classroom building with two classrooms on the ground floor and two classrooms on the upper floor.
The classrooms on each floor are connected to its next door neighbor by a doorway between the rooms, thus allowing for shared spaces for multiple educational experiences. The classrooms in this building are some of the largest 'regular' classrooms on campus.
One would expect by the size of each classroom that these four rooms would help educate the most number of students per class, somewhere near the 40-students per classroom that many classes have, currently at the high school.
Here again, you would be quite incorrect with that expectation. These four classrooms, some of the largest on campus, are used for Special Education classes and have somewhere between 12-20 students per classroom.
Perhaps the administration at San Pedro High School should be made more aware that it is easier to instruct a greater number of students if that instruction is conducted in a larger environment than what is happening now.
The administration should move the Special Education students to smaller classrooms and allow the truly over crowded classrooms and their students and teachers, more room with these four classrooms.
Before "the two-story bungalow" was built, there were wooden-sided bungalows that were utilized by students and faculty including the "Fore-N-Aft" classroom, and the "Black and Gold" classroom. Many students fondly remember the late Lewis Curtis Sheffield and the classes he taught in one of the old bungalows.
But I digress.
I still haven't heard or read anything from Ms. Rita Davis, the leader of the high schools part of Ms. Linda del Cueto's eighth district, which covers the harbor area and up to the south-central area.
A reliable source within LAUSD suggests that Ms. Davis was just "thrown to the wolves" by someone else in LAUSD and was completely unprepared for the questions she was given by meeting attendees at the last Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council's Board of Governors meeting. It was quite obvious to just about everyone in the room that Ms. Davis, even having the position she claims to have, may continue to be ill informed about many of the true facts concerning San Pedro High School.
I don't know how many of you attended classes in the stage craft classroom, which was part of the Industrial Arts buildings, built in 1970.
This particular classroom was built with something that has every professional stage person laughing whenever they see it and it is one more lasting testament to how LAUSD really thinks and considers thing.
A "fly gallery is the area above a stage where set pieces, props, curtains, and other things that are large and go up and down during a production, are stored and moved.
In most theaters the "fly gallery" is twice as tall as the area between the stage floor and the top of the normal curtains.
At San Pedro High School's auditorium, it has a "fly gallery" that is about as high as twice the distance from the stage floor to the top of the main curtains.
When the stage craft classroom was planned and built at San Pedro High School, in 1970, the room has a section that had a 30 foot ceiling, which essentially was a "fly gallery" for building, painting, and decorating set pieces and walls that would be used in productions inside the auditorium.
So, the auditorium has a "fly gallery" and side doors that are about as tall as the "fly gallery".
The classroom right across the alley has a "fly gallery" that can accommodate anything that would be used in the auditorium's "fly gallery".
Unfortunately, when the designers and builders of the new Industrial Arts Buildings came to creating the doors for the stage craft classroom's "fly gallery" they only designed and allowed for eight-foot tall doorways.
So the auditorium has a "fly gallery" and doors on the side for use, the stage craft classroom has a "fly gallery" for the benefit of the auditorium, but there is no way to move the very tall set pieces from the stage craft classroom's "fly gallery" to the auditorium's "fly gallery" because one set of doors is too short.
This is the planning done by LAUSD, it appears.
Wait, wait, it gets even better.
Nowadays there really is not problem with having doors too short for the stage craft classroom, because that classroom has been divided and now houses Special Education students.
So, a classroom designed to be used for a particular purpose, in an Industrial Arts set of buildings, claimed to be the last permanent buildings built at S.P.H.S., but really aren't, houses Special Education students and the students attending stage craft classes must meet in the auditorium just like they did before the Industrial Arts Buildings were built.
What comes around must go around, at S.P.H.S. it seems.
O.K. had enough? I've got just one more, for now.
By 1971, the light board for the stage lighting at San Pedro High School's auditorium was well beyond its last legs. We who 'worked the board' did whatever we could to keep it working as best as we possibly could.
In 1971 we had an earthquake, a big one. The earthquake did some light damage to S.P.H.S., but the school that really took a pounding in the harbor area was Banning High School.
The damage caused at Banning High School was so great that the entire school had to be demolished and rebuilt.
Banning was an old school by the time the earthquake hit and its own light board was in not much better shape than the one at S.P.H.S. was.
So what did LAUSD do? Well, they provided the brand new Banning High School auditorium with a brand new light board and you can probably guess what happened to the old light board that came out of the old Banning auditorium.
Should I continue? I guess I should for those of you who deal with LAUSD on a more daily basis.
LAUSD spent thousands of dollars taking out the old light board at San Pedro High School and installed the almost equally as old light board that came out of Banning High School.
It seemed to be no matter that LAUSD could have probably gotten a better deal if they bought two new light boards instead of one, but I guess somebody needed to make a bit of extra cash, somehow.
In fact there are so many things at San Pedro High School that came from other schools or other places, the school should probably be renamed "Hand-Me-Down High".
Oh and you are really, really going to like this last bit of trivia, which happens to be all too true.
Several years ago a vote was taken by the faculty, staff, parents, and others concerned with providing the best educational possibilities for students at San Pedro High School.
The vote taken was to find out if the voters favored having a new sports complex built at San Pedro High School, or have more classroom facilities built at San Pedro High School.
The next time you visit San Pedro High School, you will see how the voting turned out.
And yes, at this point, all three gymnasiums are slated to remain on the campus even after the newest one is completed.
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