Gompers Preparatory Academy

Gompers Preparatory Academy
Location
1005 47th St., San Diego CA 92102 United States
Information
Type	Charter School
Director	Vincent Riveroll
Grades	6–12
Enrollment	1100
Color(s)	green and blue
Mascot	Sammy the Eagle
Website	http://www.gompersprep.org/

Gompers Preparatory Academy is a public charter secondary school in San Diego, California. It is operated under the San Diego Unified School District in cooperation with the University of California, San Diego. It is located at 1005 47th Street in the Chollas View area of Southeast San Diego, one of the lowest-income neighborhoods of the city. It serves grades 6–12 and has a student body of approximately 950. It was founded in 2005 as Gompers Charter Middle School; the high school was added in 2009 as Gompers Preparatory Academy, and the school graduated its first class of seniors in 2012.

Gompers opened in 1955 as a junior high school, named after labor union leader Samuel Gompers.

During the early 1980s Gompers was designated a math-science magnet school, as part of the school district's effort to integrate its schools in response to a 1977 court order, by attracting white students to predominantly minority schools. There were two separate educational programs at the school: a standard middle school program for students from the local neighborhood in grades 7 and 8 who then went to high schools elsewhere, and a grade 7-12 magnet school which attracted students from all over the district for its special emphasis on math and science. The magnet program recruited top teachers and became known for its high test scores and placement of students in prestigious colleges. It won dozens of national academic awards in science and social studies competitions. But neighborhood residents complained that the magnet program was not integrated into the school, that magnet students and neighborhood students had little contact, and that there was a strong racial disparity between students in the magnet and students in the "regular" program. Principal Marie Thornton set out in 1986 to change that culture by insisting on more integration of the programs and requiring magnet teachers to also teach classes to the non-magnet students. These changes were controversial and were supported by neighborhood parents but strongly resisted by parents of magnet students, as well as by teachers, many of whom had no training or experience teaching middle school students. By 1990 there was a 53% drop in voluntary white enrollment in the program, about half of the original magnet teachers had left for other schools, and the district identified "severe problems" at the school, including racial tension and gang violence.

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