Los Angeles City School District

Beginning of Los Angeles Public School System

(Below is an excerpt from - Bates: One Hundred Years of Public Education in Los Angeles, 1928)

"In May, 1854, Stephen C. Foster, the incoming mayor, said in his inaugural address:

First in imporatnace among the needs of our city is eduation. Our last censu shows mroe than five hundred children within the corrporate limits, of age to attend school, three-fourths of whom have no means of procuring an education other that that afforded by the public schools.

He suggested that a Board of Education be organized, a superintendent of schools appointed, and that two schools be built immediately to care for the educational needs of the community. Acting upon his suggestion, the Council appointed him to act also as superintendent, and asked three of its memebers to act in the capcity of a board of eduation. Stephen C. Foster, the mayor of the city, thus became the first superinetendent of Los Angeles City schools. This was a wise choice, for he was well educated man [sic], a graduate of Yale, and he had already proved himself a good executive in municipal affairs.

The First Two Schoolhouses The new officials set to work, and before the close of the year, the first school house owned by the city was underway. This was a two-story building costing about six-thousand dollars, and was located on the northwest corner of Second and Spring Streets, the site now occupied by the Bryson Building. The second school was started about the same time and was on Bath Street, a streat which was later absorbed by the opening of Main Street north of the Plaza. A description of these first buildings was included in a report of the superintendent of Los Angeles County to the State superintendent;

Number of school houses in County, eight; two brick, three frame, three adobe. The two of brick are forty by forty, two-storied, eight feet high, each having two school rooms and two recitation rooms; well built, but not well planned; indifferently well ventilated, only by windows and doors; well lighted, warmed by stoves, furniture well adapted and of medium quality.

These two school houses are in the city of Los Angeles, one at one extreme and one at the other. It would have been better, most decidedly, if but one had been built, and that in the center of the city, convenient to all, and adapted to a more perfet graduation of the schools. "

The first building on Spring Street was ready for occupancy on March 19, 1855 This date is traditionally marked as the beginning of the Los Angeles City Schools system and ultimately the Los Angeles Unified School District

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Los Angeles Schools (County)

Created September 19, 1853*

Charter School District-Created May 2, 1870 (Boundaries Same as City)

(*LA County, History of School District Organization in L.A. County, R-379-794L, Published by Office of the Los Angeles County Superientendent of Schools, Downey, California, July 1, 1976)