THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 52 AUGUST 14, 2019
Illustrations by Guy ShieldEducationStyle
Where ‘Varsity Blues’
Is Just a Movie:
L.A.’s Top Public
Schools for Hollywood
As the FBI exposes corrupt college admissions cheaters
among wealthy showbiz families, THR spotlights 15 suddenly hot
feeders for top universities looking for students
‘not being spoon-fed like in a private school’ By Degen PenerF
or entertainment industry
folks of means, private
schooling to the tune of
$40,000 a year can seem like a de
rigueur choice. “My wife works in
the film business and she’s often
in a room where no one except her
sends their kids to public school,”
a Los Angeles teacher tells THR.
Even in the wake of the
Operation Varsity Blues scandal,
a number of education consul-
tants say it’s business as usual as
Holly wood families keep kids on
the private-school track, in hopes
of procuring an elite college
education (especially in the Ivy
League, where acceptance rates
run from 4.5 percent at Harvard
to 10.6 percent at Cornell).
But there may be a shift going
on. Since March, when the federal
college-bribery investigation
broke, “parents have awakened
to the legal and moral violations
of manipulating their children’s
acceptance into college — and
to the message to their kids thatthey’re unable to get in on their
own,” says education consultant
Betsy Brown Braun.
“The scandal has impacted the
landscape,” says public school
consultant Tanya Anton. “People
wonder, ‘Will we look better com-
ing from a public high school?’ ”
Adds Nathalie Kunin, education
consultant and founder of tutor-
ing service Team Tutors: “Lots of
parents meeting with me now are
exploring for the first time mov-
ing from private to public.”
And colleges are ready to
embrace them. “There’s an
opportunity to see what’s special
about the student who is not being
spoon-fed like in a private school,”
says Kunin. “They see these kids
as self-advocates, leaders and
able to navigate for themselves.”
Producer Doug Segal puts it suc-
cinctly (his daughter graduated
this year from Palisades High):
“In a public school, you don’t have
your hand held.” And as an inter-
viewer from an Iv y League schoolrecently told Kirsten Hanson-
Press, a Collegewise counselor:
“ ‘Where we’re doing all of our
recruitment is in South Central.’ ”
Not that public-school students
from the Westside aren’t welcome.
But looking for a showbiz-adjacent
school any where in Los Angeles
Unified School District (LAUSD)
can be daunting. The second-larg-
est district in the country, LAUSD
includes more than 1,000 schools,
with nearly 300 charter schools
and 292 magnet programs, in
which slots are won via a priority-
points system. And there are 79
other school districts dotting
Los Angeles County, such as the
sought-after Beverly Hills, Culver
City and Santa Monica districts.
Other downsides: the lack of
college counseling (according to
two national counseling associa-
tions, the student-to-counselor
ratio is 482:1) and class sizes that
can reach the mid-40s. California
spends only $11,500 per pupil,
putting it 22nd out of 50 states.
“It’s absurd that our state and
local property taxes don’t provide
adequate resources for the kids,”
says ICM agent Brad Schenck,
who has a son at Laurel Canyon’sWonderland Elementary.
For THR’s list of the best L.A.
public high schools for Hollywood
families, education consultants
and dozens of industry parents
— many of whom can afford to
send their kids to private schools
— provided input. Schools were
selected according to track records
of getting kids into elite colleges
and also by proximity to most
entertainment companies.BEVERLY HILLS HIGH SCHOOL
241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills
Famed alumni include Betty
White, Max Mutchnick, Angelina
Jolie, Nicolas Cage and Barry
Diller, but this public school has
been grappling with declining
enrollment, from 2,400 kids
in 1974 to 1,262 today. “Because
of the proliferation of private
schools, Beverly Hills is in the
unfamiliar position of compet-
ing,” says Four Wed dings and
a Funeral executive producer
Jonathan Prince, a public-school
proponent who attended, as did
his son. Still, the school (which
boasts recent acceptances at
Harvard, Princeton, Brown
Beverly Hills High School is in the middle of a multiyear, $150 million modernization. and Cornell) offers a rigorous