Coming Fall 2022: the 'Coolest High School in America'

Rap icon Dr. Dre joins record executive Jimmy Iovine to form magnet high school in Los Angeles
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 15, 2021 7:30 AM CDT
Dr. Dre Teams Up to Launch School for a 'Younger Me'
Dr. Dre attends a ceremony honoring Quincy Jones on Nov. 27, 2018, in Los Angeles.   (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

A high school in Los Angeles is set to open in the fall of 2022, and it's got two very big names behind it. Last week, the Board of Education for the Los Angeles Unified School District gave the green light to what's known for now as Regional High School No. 1, set to be situated in South LA with a goal to appeal to "the inner-city kid, the younger me," per rap icon Dr. Dre, who's launching the magnet school along with music industry mogul Jimmy Iovine, per the Los Angeles Times. Dre wants the school, located at Audubon Middle School, to be "a place that you can go where there's something that you can learn that you're really interested in," in an area where the majority of students are Black or Latino, as well as from low-income families. Iovine adds: "This is for kids who want to go out and start their own company or go work at a place ... like Marvel or Apple or companies like that."

The Times notes the project—modeled after USC's Iovine and Young Academy to merge "design, business, and technology with hands-on, real-world learning," per City News Service—is "a rare investment by the entertainment elite in the nation's second-largest school system." LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner thinks it could become "the coolest high school in America," per the Times. Kids will be welcome to apply from anywhere within the district, with transportation offered for anyone not near the school. Both Dre and Iovine talk about their own disappointing school experiences, with neither able to recall a teacher who impacted them personally. That's why "we want to do it in the public system," Iovine notes. "We wanted to go to where it's most needed—and it's most difficult." KABC reports the school will start off with about 125 students and gradually work its way up to 250 or so. "The doors of opportunity open for children in South LA," Beutner tweeted Monday. (More Dr. Dre stories.)

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