East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy

By the late 2000s, the Eastside region of the City of Los Angeles and East Los Angeles, an unincorporated area of Los Angeles, had a problem with overcrowded high schools due minimal school choices for new students. However, it was the overcrowded conditions at James A. Garfield High School, the only high school in East Los Angeles, which led to the establishment of Esteban E. Torres High School and its five pilot schools. Garfield was founded in 1925 and was built to withhold 1,500 students; however, by the late 20th century, the student population at the school had increased to a point at which the school had to implement a multi-track/year-round calendar to relieve the overpopulation, though this did not last. The overcrowding problem continued into the 21st century, prompting demands for the construction of a second high school in the area.

In 2004, the Board of the Education of the City of Los Angeles approved the construction of a new high school, then called “East Los Angeles High School No. 2”. On June 22, the Board of Education approved the final location of the future Esteban E. Torres High School.

Prior to the construction of the Torres High School campus, the land on which the ELARA building is now located was an agricultural center administered by the Los Angeles Conservation Corps.

In 2009, seven James A. Garfield High School teachers, along with students, parents, and representatives from community-based organizations, such as Inner City Struggle, joined and submitted a proposal to the Los Angeles Unified School District Public School Choice motion in order to found the proposed East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy as a Pilot School at the yet unopened Esteban E. Torres High School campus. The main Design Team was composed of Martin Buchman, Michael Leavy, Zoe Souliotis-Foley, Michael Rocha, Rachel Varty, Norm Chen, and Adrianne Harwood.^[1]

After being approved by the motion, the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy opened, alongside its four other sister schools—East Los Angeles Performing Arts Academy (now Magnet), Engineering and Technology Academy, Humanitas Academy of Art and Technology, and Social Justice Leadership Academy—on September 13, 2010, at Torres campus.

On June 21, 2012, ELARA held its first class graduation. On June 5, 2014, the last of the founding student body graduated from the school.

On September 24, 2018, former biology teacher, Gina Murry, was accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old student during the months of May and June. She faces six counts of unlawful sexual intercourse and four counts each of committing a lewd act on a child, oral copulation of a person under 16, and sexual penetration by a foreign object.^[2] On November 5, 2019, Murry pleaded no contest to the accusations.^[3] On January 14, 2020, she was sentenced to 2 years in state prison.^[4]

ELARA was designed to prepare students in the field of urban planning and public policy. The mission of the school is for students to see themselves as architects of their own future and of their community.

ELARA offers to its students a full range of college preparatory classes, independent study opportunities, project-based electives in Journalism and Urban Planning, and community-based internships—all with an emphasis in urban planning and public policy.

ELARA college-ready graduates obtain broad-based knowledge, learn collaborative skills, and gain the self-confidence necessary to become innovators and leaders in their communities and professions.

Renaissance is "one of only three high schools in the United States with an Urban Planning/Public Policy focus".^[5]

During its first two years, ELARA functioned under a 2x8 block schedule system that allowed for the flexibility to accommodate students who needed to remediate their academic stance, accelerate in their studies, and acquire special needs during the regular school day. Under this schedule, students were granted an advantage in gaining more course credits than they would have gotten on a traditional schedule where a student would go to all their classes in a single day.

During the 2012–2013 school year, ELARA switched from the 8-course block schedule system to a 6-course rotating schedule system.^[6] Under this system, students meet for five of their six classes on any one day. Each day, one class of the six is “dropped” in the first rotation and another is “dropped” in the second rotation, adding the previously missing class to the beginning of the rotation. The rotation takes six days to complete and the process repeats beginning on the 7th school day.

Under this schedule system, ELARA class periods, or "tracks", are not listed in numerical hierarchy (1, 2, 3...) but in a letter-based hierarchy (A, B, C...).

ELARA is in partnership with:^[7]

• UCLA
• USC
• Huntington Library
• Los Angeles Education Partnership^[8]
• Public Matters LLC^[9]
• 826LA^[10]
• Inner City Struggle^[11]
• Tony Bennett's Exploring the Arts
• Los Angeles Service Academy