Fairfax High School will be offering two magnet programs in the fall 2018: Fairfax Magnet Center for Visual Arts and a brand new magnet school, Fairfax Police Academy Magnet.
The Fairfax Magnet Center for Visual Arts opened in September 1981 and is located on the campus of Fairfax High School, which is at the corner of Melrose and Fairfax avenues. It is the only visual arts magnet high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Enrollment is limited to 395 students in grades 9-12. Any student eligible to enroll in LAUSD may apply to attend the magnet.
While the focus of its program is visual art, students take all the classes required for high school graduation and admission to universities. The magnet offers honors academic classes in English, World History, U.S. History, Government and Economics, and qualified students may take advanced placement classes at Fairfax High School.
The magnet is for students who are passionate about creating are, and those students are required to take a magnet art class every semester. During the first two years, they take a foundation classes each semester: as ninth graders, they study drawing and digital imaging/design; as tenth graders, they study sculpture and photography. During their junior and senior years, they take an advanced class each semester. Fairfax magnet also offers advanced placement studio art.
Art is not limited to studio art classes. Teachers also assign art projects as part of their curricula. The center has field trips to museums and the theater and visits from prominent artists and encourage submissions to contests and exhibitions.
The magnet is on the traditional school calendar. According to recent school board policy, school will begin in late August and end in the beginning of June, with a three-week winter vacation and weeklong spring break.
Fairfax Police Academy Magnet
Fairfax Police Academy Magnet, the high school’s new magnet program, will begin in Fall 2018 with 61 ninth graders in the fall. Each year it will add a new grade will 60 more students.
The Police Academy Magnet (PAM) will be one of five PAM high schools and two PAM middle schools in the LAUSD. Fairfax High’s Police Academy Magnet career pathway program is a partnership between the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and LAUSD designed to educate students about law enforcement through a rigid course of study involving intense physical training and compulsory community service. An LAPD officer is assigned at the site to teach, counsel and mentor the students through their police academy experience.
The PAM program curriculum goes beyond the basic high school course requirements, providing students with specialized coursework, training and mentoring in the following
— Communication skills, with emphasis on listening, reading, speaking, writing and thinking as it relates to law enforcement,
— Basic concepts of criminal law, principals of law enforcement, constitutional law, the criminal justice system and other law related topics.
— Health training, including mental and physical health,
— The role of science and technology in solving crimes, and
— Computer science, particularly programs that relate to law enforcement
L.A. Unified’s magnet programs were created in the early 1980s under a court-ordered desegregation plan designed to alleviate the harms of racial isolation. The voluntary busing programs provide themed magnets to draw minority students and those from underserved communities.
The academic innovation and success of the programs have made them attractive to students and parents seeking a nontraditional education. The district now offers 225 magnets.
Registration for the 2018 magnet programs is going on now. Parents must apply by Nov. 9 on Echoices.lausd.net.
If a parent misses the Nov. 9 registration deadline, he or she may submit a late applications beginning Feb. 1, 2018. If space becomes available the school’s magnet coordinator will contact the parent. The late application does not guarantee placement at the school site.
Students are selected based on the magnet program goal and are randomly accepted into magnet programs based on the number of priority points they accrue. The number of students selected is based on the number of available spaces at a particular school. Any student who sent in an on-time application, but was not selected, is placed on a waiting list at the school.
