Hoover High School Gets $344,000 From Bequest : Education: Two former teachers leave funds to the school. Money will be used for a portable student center and a trust fund to aid student activities.

After struggling for months over severe budget cuts, the Glendale Board of Education this week found itself in the happy position of receiving unsolicited money--a gift of nearly $344,000.

The money, which the board accepted by a unanimous vote Tuesday, came from former district employees Ian and Edna McLennan, who bequeathed their estate to Hoover High School, along with three other beneficiaries, upon their deaths two years ago--four months apart.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gift like this,” said Supt. Robert A. Sanchis, who for months had grudgingly pushed a plan to slash the district’s budget by $6.3 million next year. “I don’t know how else to put it.”

Nearly $50,000 of the gift to Hoover will be set aside to buy a portable classroom-type campus student center. The rest will be placed in a trust account from which interest will be drawn for student programs and activities such as the campus newspaper, athletics, and the pep squad and drill teams.

“This fund is really for the students,” said Mary Rough, a former friend of Edna’s and co-executor of the McLennan estate. “It goes directly to the student body. It’s not to be used as a general fund for the district.”

In their will, the McLennans divided their estate, worth almost $1.4 million, equally among Hoover, the Kiwanis Club, the Business and Professional Women’s Club, and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The McLennans were active in all those organizations and, together, worked 79 years in Glendale schools.

Ian, who died of heart failure at 86, began his career as a sixth-grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary School in 1935. He became principal of Dunsmore Elementary School in 1949 and retired 20 years later.

Edna, who died of respiratory failure at 77--four months after her husband’s death in January, 1990--taught drama, typing and business education at Hoover for 45 years. She founded the Mannequin club at the school for aspiring models and in 1983 she chaired the Glendale chapter of the Business and Professional Women’s Club.

For years, the McLennans worked as Amway distributors, selling vitamins and home-cleaning products. Despite their hard-won success, their lives, friends say, were far from ostentatious.

“They weren’t extravagant,” Rough said. “And you can’t make that much money as a teacher. They worked hard and invested it well.”

“Both were devoted to education,” school district spokesman Vic Pallos said. “They didn’t have children. But she often said that every one of her students was part of her extended family.”