High school will offer cutting-edge, interdisciplinary curriculum for training the next generation of young leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs
Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner, music producer and entrepreneur Jimmy Iovine and artist, producer, and entrepreneur Andre “Dr. Dre” Young have announced a joint effort to launch a new high school in South Los Angeles. The school’s curriculum will build on USC Iovine and Young Academy’s groundbreaking approach that combines design, business, and technology with hands-on, real-world learning to help develop young leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs.
The school, known as Regional High School #1 until the official naming process is completed, will be co-located on the Audubon Middle School campus and serve up to 124 students when it opens in fall 2022. School capacity will expand over time to accommodate 250 students. Students can apply to attend from across the Los Angeles Unified School District with transportation provided for those outside of the local area.
“This new partnership with Jimmy, Dr. Dre and the USC Iovine and Young Academy will help open the doors of opportunity for students, in particular black and Latino children, from communities which have been historically underserved,” Beutner shares. “Much like the work of the Academy, this effort will help develop the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators.”
The new high school will mirror the Academy’s unique educational model which is nationally recognized for its exceptional student outcomes. Its curriculum focuses on multidisciplinary, hands-on learning, with a strong emphasis on real-world projects with top companies and non-profits. The level of talent at the Academy continues to attract attention from the most innovative companies in the world. Its graduates are on the rosters of leading companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, DreamWorks, and Sony, as well as launching successful startups that have garnered over $120 million in seed funding to date.
“We want to give the next generation of students access to a proven, revolutionary learning experience that will not only prepare them for the jobs of today, but equip them to reimagine and shape the jobs, technologies and creative enterprises of the future,” Iovine says. “We’ve already succeeded in higher ed, now we’re bringing it to high school.”
Students will be exposed to new career paths and opportunities as well as increased access to top college programs through a first-class college preparatory curriculum, and enhanced learning programs that focus on critical thinking and analysis.
“The USC Iovine and Young Academy was founded on a mission to develop educational programs that are adaptive to the ways in which technology is influencing our culture, and responsive to the individual needs and creative passions of our students,” Dean Erica Muhl adds. “From grade school through college, our students are not just part of the dramatic changes we’re experiencing in how we live and work, they’re driving those changes through an innate understanding that the world today, their world, no longer fits neatly into the traditional disciplinary silos we’ve built for them.”
The Los Angeles County Board of Education approved the vision for the school last week. A press conference was held earlier today (Mon, June 14th) to discuss the ideologies of the new concept high school.
