Lowell High School (LHS) is a co-educational, magnet public high school in San Francisco, California, first established in 1856. It is a part of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). Situated on the West Side of the city, the school is south of Parkside, west of Stonestown Galleria, north of San Francisco State University and Parkmerced, northeast of Lake Merced, and east of Lakeshore Elementary School.

LHS uses merit-based admissions, unlike other schools in the district, which use a lottery system or receive students from a specified attendance area. The admissions process requires submitting scores from standardized testing from the previous school year and a writing supplement. Previously an entrance exam was required, but after reports of racism in the admissions department and the COVID-19 pandemic, the exam was waived in 2021. However, because academic performance of the school declined, it reinstated use of standardized test scores.

History

1853–1893 In 1853, Colonel Thomas J. Nevins, San Francisco's first superintendent of schools, raised the idea of a free high school for boys and a seminary for girls. It took three years for Nevins to persuade the Board of Education, and a resolution was passed on July 10, 1856, to establish a San Francisco High School and Ladies' Seminary. Six days later, however, the resolution was rescinded on the grounds that a high school could not legally be part of the San Francisco Common Schools. A name change from the proposed San Francisco High School and Ladies' Seminary to the Union Grammar School appeased those who had opposed the creation of a high school.

The Union Grammar School first opened on August 25, 1856, in rented quarters at the Wesleyan Methodist Church on Powell Street, between Clay and Sacramento. In 1860, the church was purchased and reconstructed as a school at the same location. The new two-story school building had four classrooms, an assembly room, and two rooms for gymnastics exercises and calisthenics. Dedication ceremonies for the new structure took place on September 19, 1860. The school in the new building was already referred to as San Francisco High School because it was generally recognized that the course of study was on the secondary level.

In May 1864, the Board of Education decided to form separate schools for boys and girls. The boys' school remained at the same campus as Boys' High School, while girls were moved to their own school at Bush and Stockton streets (Girls' High School), where they would remain until the return of coeducation (in practice) in the 1880s.

1894–1962

In 1894, because the name Boys' High School was not in accord with the growing number of girls taking its college-preparatory classes, the school was renamed to honor the distinguished poet James Russell Lowell, chiefly through the efforts of Pelham W. Ames, a member of the school board., which quotes

The school relocated in January 1913 to an entire block on Hayes Street between Ashbury and Masonic. Lowell remained there for 50 years as the city's college preparatory high school. In 1952, the school sought a new location near Lake Merced and moved there (its present address) in 1962.

1963 and after Until 1988, the Lowell mascot was the Indian. In 1988, School Superintendent Ramon Cortines ordered that the name be changed to something less offensive. Lowell was selected as one of the 44 San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) schools considered for renaming in 2020. The school's selection, by a committee formed by the San Francisco Board of Education, was due to James Russell Lowell's documented racist views. Opponents have said that evidence for Lowell's anti-war beliefs and abolitionist views far outweigh the negatives, citing his lasting influence on Martin Luther King Jr. and within the NAACP.

Lowell was the first SFUSD school to be temporarily closed during the COVID-19 pandemic in San Francisco due to a report of respiratory illness by a student's family member in March 2020.

The 2021 documentary film Try Harder! profiled Lowell students as they went through the college admission process.

In April 2022, Principal Joe Ryan Dominguez submitted his letter of resignation, which would go into effect at the end of the school year.

Campus Situated on the West Side of the city, the school spans several blocks bounded by Eucalyptus Drive to the north, 25th Avenue to the east, Winston Drive to the south, and Lake Merced Boulevard and Meadowbrook Drive to the west. Lowell is located south of Parkmerced and the Parkside district, west of Stonestown Galleria, north of San Francisco State University, northeast of Lake Merced, and east of Lakeshore Elementary School, a public school, and St. Stephen School, a private K–8 school. Lowell is accessible via the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) K, M, 18, 23, 28, 28R, 29, 57, and 58 lines.

The campus of what was called the New Lowell High School was opened in the early 1960s and replaced the old brick campus building on Masonic Street that is still used by the district for offices and an adult school. The "new" Lowell campus itself consists of a main three-story academic building with two extensions, the easternmost extension being a single-story science building, which was rebuilt and reopened on September 21, 2003, after the original building from the early 1960s was demolished because the labs were antiquated. The second extension consists of a single-story free-standing building that replaced temporary classrooms.

The original single-story visual and performing arts building is the westernmost extension of the main campus and remains with the 1,000-seat Carol Channing auditorium, named for the famous actress who was an alumna. The main entrance to the theater and the school is below street level on Eucalyptus Drive.

The campus includes a library, arts and music classrooms, six computer labs, a foreign language lab, an indoor gymnasium, men's and women's locker rooms, a dance studio, a weight room, an American football field, a soccer/multipurpose field and baseball batting cage, ten tennis courts, eight basketball courts, four volleyball courts, and a all-weather running track. The campus has two parking lots, one for students and the other for faculty. There is also a central courtyard inside the school.

There is an ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corp) facility built into the hill and located below the theater, accessed by a stairway down from the arts wing. The ROTC facility at one time included a rifle range where cadets practiced marksmanship with live ammunition.

Academics and class structure

Academics Lowell High School historically has test scores ranking among the Top 10 Public Schools in California, including Whitney High School and Oxford Academy. Lowell has been named a California Distinguished School seven times and a National Blue Ribbon School four times. Lowell was named a California Distinguished School in 1986, 1990, 1992, 1994, 2001, 2009, and 2015 (as a California Gold Ribbon School), as well as a National Blue Ribbon School in 1983, 1994, 2001, 2012, and 2019.Lowell High School wins third Blue Ribbon. From the Lowell Alumni Association. As of 2024, Lowell is ranked 74th by U.S. News & World Report in its "Best High Schools in America" and 7th best in California. Lowell was also ranked 49th by Newsweek America's Best High Schools 2012 list and 66th by Newsweek 2013 list.

Students have the opportunity to choose from a large number of Advanced Placement courses. Lowell has a graduation rate of nearly 100%, and it is the largest feeder school to the University of California system, particularly to the Berkeley and Davis campuses.

Arena scheduling system Lowell used an "arena" class scheduling system, up until 2020, in which students were given a time slot and directed to a website to choose their classes.

While scheduling classes for the 2006 spring semester, one of the students who had volunteered to assist the running of arena was caught abusing the scheduling system to use early scheduling privileges, granted to volunteers by the administration, to let friends schedule before others.Honor society causes scheduling inequity. From The Lowell.Shield and Scroll must maintain high moral standards. From The Lowell. Five of six department chairs and dozens of teachers at Lowell called to eliminate arena scheduling and to replace it with computerized scheduling used in all other SFUSD schools. Critics characterized arena scheduling as an antiquated and inefficient system, and creates weeks of unnecessary work for teachers and counselors.Class scheduling methods put Lowell High in a tizzy. From the San Francisco Chronicle.Self-scheduling is fundamental to Lowell. From The Lowell.

Proponents of the arena argued that the system can prepare students for a similar selecting of courses in college.

After a student forum, committee meetings, several student petitions, and final deliberation by then-principal Paul Cheng and the administration, it was decided that arena would remain in place, with the modifications of the abolishment of early scheduling for Shield and Scroll and "mini arena," which allowed people with incomplete schedules another chance to complete them by opening up all the classes again with a few slots.

Under pressure from faculty and students, in 2013, the Lowell administration decided on an "online arena".Shift to online self-scheduling a success. From The Lowell. In 2012, the Lowell administration began preliminary testing by requiring students to submit their proposed classes for the next school year through an online form, designed and maintained by a few students from the computer programming classes.

During the pandemic, Lowell's arena system was finally terminated and has remained that way since.

Admissions Lowell is the only high school in the San Francisco Unified School District that was permitted to admit only students who met special admission requirements. The Lowell admission process was competitive and based on a combination of standardized test scores, GPA, a writing sample, and extracurricular activities.

San Francisco NAACP v. San Francisco Unified School District (1980s) In 1983, the SFUSD attempted to ensure racial desegregation at Lowell and other schools by implementing a race-based admissions policy as a result of San Francisco NAACP v. San Francisco Unified School District and the 1983 Consent Decree settlement.

The demographics began to disproportionately impact Chinese Americans in the 80s and 90s. As a result of this policy, effective in 1985, Chinese-American freshman applicants needed to score 62 out of a possible total of 69 eligibility points; Caucasian and other East Asian candidates needed only 58 points, and others needed fewer points.

Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District (1990s)

In 1994, a group of Chinese-American community activists organized a lawsuit to challenge the 1983 Consent Decree race-based admissions policies used by SFUSD for its public schools. The lawsuit was led by Lowell alum Lee Cheng. In 1999, both parties agreed to a settlement that modified the 1983 Consent Decree to create a new "diversity index" system which substituted race as a factor for admissions with a variety of factors such as socioeconomic background, mother's educational level, academic achievement, language spoken at home, and English Learner Status.

Critics of the diversity index created by Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District point out that many schools, including Lowell, have become even less racially diverse since it was enacted.