Doug Dall plans to retire after 18 years as Clark Magnet High School’s principal
Clark Magnet High School’s first and only principal announced to his staff on Monday that he will retire at the end of the school year after working as an educator in Glendale for 36 years.
Doug Dall has overseen the science and technology magnet school for 18 years after he was tapped by district administrators in the late 1990s to transition the then-vacant campus that once served as a junior high campus into a new magnet school.
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Now, nearly two decades after Clark opened its doors in 1998, the school has gone on to earn regional, state and national recognition and has been named one of the 30 Most Successful High Schools in America by the Council of Chief State Schools Officers, and one of Los Angeles’ Best High Schools by Los Angeles Magazine.
All the while, nearly 60% of the school’s students have come from low-income households and, for 85% of them, English was not their first language.
But year after year, Clark Magnet students have ranked the highest among all of Glendale’s high school students on state standardized exams.
Dall humbly declined to take credit for the school’s success.
“I don’t think I’m responsible for that,” he said when reached by phone on Tuesday. “We had a great staff and great students, and kind of the perfect storm. There was funding in the state and there was strong support of the board of education. The stars aligned. I’m very proud of what we’ve all been able to accomplish here.”
Before taking the helm at Clark Magnet, Dall taught wood shop, computer-aided design and other technical-education classes at Woodrow Wilson Middle School, using first-generation Macintosh computers for his printing and drafting classes.
By 1986, he was working as dean of students at Herbert Hoover High School, where he oversaw student activities and discipline. He landed at Glendale High School in 1994 when he worked as assistant principal of curriculum and instruction and hired a quarter of the school’s staff to catch up with increasing enrollment.
The growing number of students at Glendale, Hoover and Crescenta Valley high schools in the mid-1990s led district administrators to the empty campus that served as Anderson W. Clark Junior High School from the early 1960s through the early 1980s.
The need for more classrooms became the catalyst for a new school.
A February 1997 record that Dall recently unearthed detailed the magnet school’s vision for ensuring a positive school setting that would send students off to become responsible citizens in meaningful careers after their personalized, high level of instruction at Clark.
“It’s just interesting to see that we’re still on it,” he said.
Over the years, evolving technology pushed the campus to respond to the latest innovations, and today, the school features state-of-the-art laser cutting, computer numerical and 3-D printing machines in labs where students have produced cutting-edge items such as amphibious bicycles and radio-controlled quadcopters.
School officials and students are also proud of Clark’s robotics team, Team 696, which was established in 2001, and is now overseen by David Black, a 2004 Clark graduate turned teacher.
After he resigns from Clark, Dall said he will pursue consulting opportunities working with other schools.
The Glendale Unified School Board is expected to appoint Clark’s current associate principal, Lena Kortoshian, as principal during a meeting on April 19, said Glendale Unified Asst. Supt. Maria Gandera in an email.
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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com
Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
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