Berkeley High School (California)

Berkeley High School is a public high school in the Berkeley Unified School District, and the only public high school in the city of Berkeley, California, United States. It is located one long block west of Shattuck Avenue and three short blocks south of University Avenue in Downtown Berkeley. The school mascot is the Yellowjacket. Some of the campus buildings are recognized as a Berkeley Landmark by the city; and since January 7, 2008 eight of the campus buildings were designated a historic district by the National Register of Historic Places under the name, the Berkeley High School Campus Historic District.

A policy exists surrounding students who wish to be placed in IB or AC (the most rigorous of the small schools) that guarantees them a spot in one of those small schools if they don't list any other choices. "The majority of white students and Asian students who come into school don't choose the small learning communities, they only choose IB or AC" and this policy hasn't been removed because parents have fought against students having to be placed in a small learning community if they did not want them to.

In 2015, administrators began discussions about reorganizing the high school. The Berkeley Redesign Project involved teachers, staff, students and parents. The first major change was to switch to a "universal 9th grade," in which freshmen will be placed in core groups of 120 students, with the choice of learning community beginning in tenth grade. This is intended to counter the occurrence of freshmen choosing their learning community based on stereotypes within the school and give them the opportunity to learn what the communities are like first hand before they decide which one to join by creating a "randomized and intentionally heterogenous collection of students who would share a core group of teachers" that monitor the students and make sure none slip through the cracks. These core groups, called hives, are composed of about 120 students who share 4 teachers in their core subject areas: Math 1 (or Advanced Math 1), Physics 1, English, and Ethnic Studies/Social Living. Students also get to choose two electives. "At the end of ninth grade, students then have the opportunity to rank one of the five learning communities at Berkeley High School for their 10th 12th grade education." After the BHS lottery process and upon being placed into a learning community, students are required to fulfill each learning community's unique academic requirements and are able to choose additional courses from individual departments, like African American Studies, Math, Performing and Visual Arts, Physical Education, Science and World Language. If students prefer a more flexible and individualized education, they have the option of Berkeley Independent Study (BIS) as an alternative to the traditional classroom environment.

More ideas addressing the achievement gap include implementing an additional period strictly for advising so as to provide not just academic support and guidance with course selection, but social and emotional support as well—especially with regards post graduation plans. One worry, however, is the fact that because academic disparities among racial and socioeconomic groups are established in elementary and middle school, these programs aimed at closing the achievement gap at BHS won't make that much of a difference. A 5 year reform by the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) stresses the importance of adequate professional development for teachers to ensure they are fully prepared to implement school wide programs for positive change, including teachers being treated as active learners through trainings and workshops and being empowered as professionals by each other and teacher educators.

Berkeley High School has been rated by several independent organizations. It currently receives a rating of 8/10 by GreatSchools, which utilizes test score, college readiness, course offering, equity, and discipline data to evaluate schools. It receives a grade of A+ by Niche, which utilizes public data and user reviews.

The Berkeley High School campus covers four city blocks between Milvia Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and Allston and Channing Ways. The first cornerstone was laid in 1901, and the complex has been under almost continuous construction ever since, except for a decade around World War II. In the late 1930s, Berkeley High was remodeled and old buildings were replaced with newer ones. The Florence Schwimley Little Theater, the Berkeley Community Theatre, and the G and H buildings are prime examples of the Streamline Moderne style designed by architects Henry H. Gutterson and William G. Corlett. The rebuilding was financed largely through Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program the WPA. They are embellished with sculptural reliefs by Robert Boardman Howard, Jacques Schnier and Lulu Hawkins Braghetta.

Berkeley was the subject of "School Colors", an episode of PBS's Frontline about racial politics at Berkeley High School. The documentary was filmed throughout the 1993–1994 school year and aired on October 18, 1994. In the 2011 Isabel Allende novel El Cuaderno de Maya, the title character Maya Vidal attended Berkeley High. Nancy Rubin, who taught the class "Social Living" at Berkeley High for several decades, published a 1994 book titled Ask Me If I Care: Voices from an American High School which addresses teen social issues and is compiled from journal entries by anonymous Berkeley High School students written during their Social Living classes. She and her class were the subject of episode 2 season 1 of the documentary series "Hi I'm " released December 2021. Berkeley High School students in 2001 compiled and published a dictionary of youth slang. The 2020 episode of Reply All titled "Candidate One" was about the school body president elections for the 2019 school year.