Thomas Starr King Middle School

Saturday, July 5, 2008

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4201 Fountain Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90029
Tel: (323) 644-6700
Fax: (323) 913-3594

School History

Thomas Starr King Middle School has been educating students from our neighborhood since 1926. Thirteen elementary schools, in communities as economically and culturally diverse as Franklin Hills, Los Feliz, Silverlake, Echo Park, and Hollywood, send students to our school. Our student body is as diverse as the communities from which it comes. An analysis of our school's ethnic make-up done in 1998-1999 shows that our student body of over 2200 is 68.6% Hispanic, 16.3% White, 7.6% Asian, 4.4& Filipino, 2.4% African-American, 0.4% Native American and 0.2% Pacific Islander. They speak over thirty languages and come from more than forty different countries; some are newly arrived in this country, others are native born. Groups with strong cultural representation include Mexican, Central American, Armenian, Chinese, and more. Our students almost all qualify for the Federal Meal Program.

In 1995, Thomas Starr King Junior High School reconfigured to a 6th through 8th middle school. This brought about many changes, among them grade level houses, common planning periods, interdisciplinary instruction teams, and COREs. Our instructional programs are designed to both meet the required standards and provide supplemental or enriched education to students so identified. We have a schoolwide Title I School Program which not only addresses the reading and mathematics needs of identified Title I students, but allows the whole school to benefit from the programs. We also have a Master Plan Program which implements Proposition 227 to help meet the needs of the English Language Learners who make up almost half of our student body. Our Gifted and Talented Program provides to identified students a more challenging and enriched program above and beyond the core curriculum. We also provide a variety of Special Education program options to meet the needs of students with IEPs, in accordance with the Chanda Smith Consent Decree.

Thomas Starr King Middle School has just completed the Coordinated Compliance Review for the 1999-2000 school year. The findings of this self-review indicate that the school is aligning its instructional program with a standards-based assessment and accountability system, per the LAUSD's Focus on Achievement program. Effective practices in instruction are incorporating standards-based, interdisciplinary alignment of the curriculum in reading, language arts and mathematics.