Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles

Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles, commonly known as YULA, is a college-preparatory, Modern Orthodox Jewish high school founded in 1979. It has no affiliation with Yeshiva University in New York City.

Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles YULA
Address
Boys: 9760 W. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90035 Girls: 1619 S. Robertson Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90035 Los Angeles , California United States
Information
Type	Independent, Yeshiva
Motto	Primacy and Relevancy of Torah, Uncompromising General Studies, and Character Development (Boys) and Torah Umada Lchatchila (Girls).
Established	1979
Founder	Rabbi Marvin Hier
Religion	Modern Orthodox Judaism
NCES School ID	01899004[1], A9101504
General Studies Principals	Richard St.-Laurent (Boys) and Yehudis Benhamou (Girls)
Judaic Studies Principals	Rabbi Schreiber (Boys) and Racheli W. Luftglass (Girls)
Heads of School	Rabbi Arye Sufrin (Boys) & Rabbi Pinchos Hecht (Girls)
Faculty	65 (Girls)[1][2] and 58 (Boys)
Grades	9–12
Gender	Two single-sex schools
Enrollment	332 (Girls)[1][2] and 309 (Boys)
Student to teacher ratio	5.1:1 (Girls) and 5.3:1 (Boys)
Color(s)	Yellow and Black
Mascot	Black Panther
Nickname	YULA
Accreditation	WASC
Newspaper	The Panther Post
Average class size	20
Website	yula.org

The school is financially independent of and separately incorporated from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, despite their juxtaposition.[3]

History

Shortly before Rabbi Marvin Hier and his family arrived in Los Angeles in July 1977, he proposed establishing a school and a center to honor Simon Wiesenthal. YULA was intended to be an affiliate of Yeshiva University offering secondary and tertiary education, but ultimately, it became solely a high school. As time passed, the Los Angeles Orthodox Jewish community perceived that Hier had placed more attention on developing the Wiesenthal Center, as opposed to the educational center.[4] The school was ultimately founded in 1979.[5]

Yeshiva University of Los Angeles purchased a $2.25-million facility for high school classes, located on Robertson Boulevard, in late May 1990. Rabbi Hier had outbid Sephardic Jewish and Sikh organizations for the site. Prior to the purchase, Hier had asked for $5 million in additional federal funding for the Wiesenthal Center. In response, there were serious considerations for establishing a new Orthodox Jewish high school in Los Angeles, and some parents at YULA had threatened to remove their children.[4]

In mid-March 2020, YULA chose to follow the LAUSD into closing school campuses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While reopenings were planned for various dates throughout the year, when the LAUSD officially announced they would not be reopening for the remainder of the school year, YULA followed suit.[6] The school remained closed to in-person learning, with the exception of morning prayer for the Boys' School and afterschool programs, both of which are still in-person. On 10 November 2020, as flu season approached and as COVID-19 cases were on the rise in California, YULA announced that they would be opening the school to in-person, outdoor learning, staggering the grades to attend on different days.[7]

Campuses

YULA has separate campuses for boys and girls within the Pico-Robertson area of Los Angeles. The campus of the boys' school has 15 classrooms as well as a Beit Midrash and a Sephardic Beit Midrash which served as locations for davening and assemblies before the COVID-19 pandemic.[8] The campus of the girls' school also has 15 classrooms, as well as two science labs.

YULA Boys School Campus

Academics

The YULA curriculum is split into general (secular) studies and judaic studies components, providing both separate and cumulative GPAs for coursework completed.[9] Coursework that is placed as AP or Honors is given a one point boost on a GPA scale, assigning a score out of 5 instead of 4. This enables students to acquire cumulative or split GPAs greater than or equal to 4.0 without achieving straight "A's." In 2018, YULA offered 13 Advanced Placement classes.

Composition

Each school has a student body of approximately two hundred students from different areas of Los Angeles. Many students live in the Pico-Robertson and Beverlywood neighborhoods, and in the San Fernando Valley. The Boys' School has 29 full-time equivalent faculty,[1][10] while the Girls' School has 36 full-time equivalent faculty.[2][11]

Student life

Sports

The school assigns teams to compete in basketball (varsity & junior varsity), baseball, fencing, swimming, tennis, volleyball, cross country, flag football, golf, and soccer.

In 1997, the school asked the California Interscholastic Federation to move the November cross-country championships to a day other than Saturday; Orthodox Jews would not participate if the competition was held on a Saturday.[12]

Notable alumni

• Ben Shapiro, American political commentator, columnist, author, radio talk show host, and attorney[13][14]
• Noam T. Wasserman, American dean, professor, and academic[15]

See also

• History of the Jews in Los Angeles

References

1. "Search for Private Schools – School Detail for Yeshiva University Boys High School of Los Angeles". National Center for Education Statistics. Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
2. "nces search results-YULA GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL". Retrieved March 21, 2020.
3. May, Meyer H. (Rabbi and Executive director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center). "Rabbi Hier." Los Angeles Times. September 2, 1990. Retrieved on January 11, 2016.
4. Teitelbaum, Sheldon and Tom Waldman. "The Unorthodox Rabbi : By Invoking the Holocaust and Bullying the Establishment, Marvin Hier Has Made The Simon Wiesenthal Center the Most Visible Jewish Organization in the World." Los Angeles Times. July 15, 1990. p. 6. Retrieved on January 17, 2016. "Their fears were well-grounded--the school never evolved into a full-scale affiliate of Yeshiva University in New York. Today, YULA is, in essence, a high school."
5. "About YULA." YULA Boys High School. Retrieved on January 17, 2016.
6. Kohanteb, Arshia (June 2020). "Online Learning: Why Zoom?". The Panther Post (2019–04). YULA High Schools. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
7. Gootin, Israel; Chriqui, Noah (November 2020). "YULA's Return To Campus: What You Need To Know". The Panther Post (2020–01). YULA High Schools. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
8. "YULA Kollel".
9. "Academics Home".
10. "Fast Facts – About YULA – Yeshiva University of Los Angeles Boys High School".
11. "School Snapshot – About YULA – YULA Girls High School". Archived from the original on March 4, 2016.
12. "Jewish Athletes to Appeal Scheduling of Track Meet." Los Angeles Times. October 21, 1997. Retrieved on January 17, 2016.
13. Pope, Justin (June 10, 2004). "School liberalism blasted". Deseret News. Associated Press. Retrieved June 27, 2011.
14. "Ben Shapiro: Proud Torah- Observant Jew and Rising Star in America's Conservative Movement" (PDF). Zman Magazine. March 2012. p. 57. In his early years in public school, he skipped from second grade into fourth...[Shapiro] skipped ninth grade...
15. Frishman, Eli; Lavian, Eitan. "An Interview With Dean Wasserman". YU Commentator. Retrieved 10 December 2020.

External links

• YULA.org
• Articles about "Yeshiva University High School" at Los Angeles Times