Odyssey High’s Search for Campus Ends

Odyssey High School has been looking for a home for so long, officials can’t remember exactly when the search began.

After a wait that some say dated at least to 1978, the continuation school finally broke ground last week on a $2.7-million facility that will be a prototype for similar programs throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school should be ready for students in July, 1995.

The new facility will give the district a chance to “serve students with dignity,” said Willene Cooper, the school board community representative for the Southeast area who found the site for the school district. “It will be its own school, have its own identity, own integrity. It won’t be parked on the dark side of the (high) school.”

The two-story structure at 6893 Dearborn St. will have six classrooms, twice as many as the current school. Students will enter classes through a courtyard set below a two-story atrium. “With facilities for laboratories and a library, we can approach a mainstream environment for continuation students that will ease the transition coming into and leaving a continuation school,” said Bob Engel, teachers union representative at Odyssey.

By most accounts, Odyssey moved from South Gate High in the late ‘70s when more room was needed on campus for the burgeoning population. A proposal to build an addition for Odyssey on the front lawn of South Gate High was rejected when critics complained that the patchwork approach would destroy the school’s stately appearance. Instead, Cooper, a critic of the addition, found empty classrooms at a nearby church and Odyssey moved, temporarily, off campus.

Odyssey blueprints were ready in 1990 but state funding wasn’t available until a bond issue was passed in 1992.