Glendale Unified School District

The Glendale Unified School District is a school district based in Glendale, California, United States in Greater Los Angeles.

The school district serves the city of Glendale, portions of the city of La Cañada and the unincorporated communities of Montrose and La Crescenta. It consists of 20 Elementary Schools, 4 Middle Schools, 5 High Schools and 2 Facilities for homeschoolers and special-needs students.

In the 2008-9 school year the District served 26,809 students and expects enrollment to decline 1-2% in each of the next three years. As of 2002, was the third-largest district in Los Angeles County and among the thirty-largest in the State of California. It is the 157th largest in the nation.

In 2009 the GUSD had 2,620 employees of which about half are classroom teachers.

Beginning in the 2016-17 school year GUSD will officially commemorate the Armenian Genocide, having April 24 off as a holiday. They are the first school district in the nation to do so.

In 2013 the district hired the company Geo Listening to monitor social media accounts of students enrolled in the district. Richard Sheehan, the superintendent of Glendale Unified, said "The whole purpose is student safety."

In the GUSD, by 1988 Armenians along with students from the Middle East had become the largest ethnic group in the public schools, now having a larger number than the Latinos. Alice Petrossian, the GUSD director of intercultural education, stated that Burbank lies within the middle of other Armenian communities, so it attracted Armenians. In 1987 the district had eight Armenian-speaking teachers and teaching aides, and that year had hired five additional Armenian-speaking teachers and teacher aides. As of 1990, the largest immigrant group speaking an ethnic home language in the GUSD was the Armenians. By 2004 over 33% of the Glendale district students were Armenian. That year, due to high levels of student absence around the Armenian Christmas the Glendale district considered making Armenian holidays school holidays.

The District is governed by a Board of Education consisting of five trustees who are elected to four year terms. The Board of Education also appoints a Superintendent to oversee day-to-day operations of the district, as well as a non-voting student representative who serves during the school year.

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