Los Gatos High School (LGHS) is a high school in Los Gatos, California, a suburb of San Jose in Silicon Valley. Los Gatos High School was founded in 1888 and is part of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District.

Notable alumni include actress Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind; her sister Joan Fontaine; screenwriter Scott Frank , who wrote the screenplays to Get Shorty and Minority Report; and 9/11 victims Mark Bingham and Todd Beamer. Olivia de Havilland spoke at the school's centennial commencement in 1988.

The school enrolls approximately 1600 students and employs about 70 teachers. The current principal is Trudy McCullough. In 2004, 94% of graduating seniors went on to attend college, including 64% to four-year colleges. Los Gatos High School is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and has regularly received six-year accreditations, the highest possible. The school has been recognized twice as a National School for Excellence .

The school is notable for its spacious extensive front lawn and neoclassical main building, which was designed by W. H. Weeks, a famous architect of schools of California. His Greek Revival style was famous in the 1920s and 1930s. Other buildings and various additions to the main building were built in the period between the dedication of the main building in 1925 and 1970. The school underwent no major construction from 1970 until 1998, when the school successfully passed a $79 million bond measure in the town of Los Gatos to renovate the aging buildings. Since then, several new buildings have been constructed, and most of the old buildings have been renovated.

Due to the unusual joint cooperative nature of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District, Saratoga High School shares Los Gatos High School's Prentiss Brown Auditorium for performing arts and Helm Field for football games. Both are located on the grounds of Los Gatos High School but are available for equal use by both schools. Consequently, when the Los Gatos High School football team plays Saratoga, both are actually the home teams since they share the field, but Saratoga is given the home team status for all games played at the field.

The Los Gatos High School mascot is the wildcat. Although the wildcat is a very common school mascot, it is perhaps uniquely suited to Los Gatos High School, as los gatos is Spanish for the cats.

In the media

The front exterior of the school was used on the The Amanda Show starring Amanda Bynes. It was used in the show's soap opera spoof segment called "Moody's Point". The school was also used as a filming location for several scenes in the 1996 made-for-TV movie Lying Eyes.

External links

• Los Gatos High School official web site
• Los Gatos Weekly-Times article about the history of the school, including the front lawn
• SmartVoter page on 1998 Measure B