Long Beach

The Long Beach Unified School District has received a $75,000 grant from the state Department of Education to develop curriculum for a proposed six-year “classical” high school for high-achieving students.

“It will be a very rigorous all-academic curriculum with no electives,” district spokesman Richard Van der Laan said. Designed for above-average students who wish to go on to major colleges and universities, he said, the magnate school--comprising grades 7 through 12--will offer advanced courses in world history, art, music, literature, foreign languages including Latin, philosophy, world geography and computer science.

“It won’t be for everybody,” said Van der Laan, adding that admission to the school will be by application only. Although similar schools exist in other districts, he said he knows of none that are six-year schools. “We’ve had a number of students . . . who have been interested in taking more than the required courses for graduation,” Van der Laan said. “This will provide them with a very literate, well-rounded liberal arts background.”

Planning of the curriculum, he said, should take the better part of the 1985-86 school year. The district, he said, hopes to have the school, to be located at an as-yet undetermined existing school campus, in operation by the fall of 1987.