Alverno High School
Encyclopedia
Alverno High School is an independent, Catholic, college-prep high school for girls located in the Sierra Madre/Pasadena area of Southern California.

History

Alverno High School was originally the home of prominent Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

 Walter Jarvis Barlow. Barlow hired noted Pasadena architect Wallace Neff to design and construct his home, basing the design on a particular house in Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....

, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, which is attributed to Michelangelo. The Sierra Madre house was completed in 1924 and was called the Villa del Sol d'Oro. After Barlow's death, his wife Marion Patterson Barlow sold the villa and the property to the Sisters of St. Francis in 1942. For the next 18 years, the building was used as a novitiate until 1960 when the school officially opened under the name Alverno Heights Academy. Since then, many buildings have been built on the grounds. In the 1970s, the name was changed to Alverno High School and administration was turned over to the Immaculate Heart Community.

Accreditation

Alverno is accredited by the National Catholic Education Association, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the California Association of Independent Schools

Academics

Alverno offers an exclusively college-prep curriculum, and in order to graduate all students must qualify to apply to four-year colleges and universities. Any grade below a C must be made up before receiving a diploma since colleges do not accept a D as a passing grade.

Graduation requirements include:

- 4 years of English
- 4 years of Theology
- 3 years of Mathematics
- 2 years same Foreign Language
- 3 years of Social Studies
- 2 years of Laboratory Science
- 1 year of a Fine Art

Lives Rooted in Service

Alverno students gave more than 17,000 hours of service to others during the 2009-2010 academic year. Students are required to complete service hours every year, beginning with 20 hours in freshman year, 30 in sophomore year, 40 in junior year, and 50 in senior year. In the Class of 2010, 21 graduates performed more than 420 hours of service during their four years at Alverno.

Alverno students have been involved in many, many service projects including Sierra Service Project (working on Native American reservations); Sunrise Alzheimer’s Home; AIDS walk Los Angeles; Los Angeles Regional Food Bank; Christmas bell-ringing for the Salvation Army; Rose Parade float decorating; Villa Esperanza; Student Ambassadors for Tournament of Roses; March for Hunger; City of Hope pediatrics; Natural History Museum; Pueblo Ingles (teaching English in Spain); Huntington Hospital; Waterfest water conservation festival; local church tutors; confirmation teams; church carnival volunteers.

Film and television

Throughout the years, many movies and television shows have been filmed on Alverno's 13 acres (52,609.2 m²) campus including Legally Blonde
Legally Blonde
Legally Blonde is a 2001 American comedy film directed by Robert Luketic, written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, and produced by Marc E. Platt...

, The Princess Diaries
The Princess Diaries
The Princess Diaries is a series of epistolary novels by Meg Cabot in the chick-lit and young-adult fiction genre, and the title of the first volume, published in 2000....

, and A Walk in the Clouds
A Walk in the Clouds
A Walk in the Clouds is a 1995 American romantic drama film directed by Alfonso Arau. The screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen, Mark Miller, and Harvey Weitzman is based on the 1942 Italian film Four Steps in the Clouds by Piero Tellini, Cesare Zavattini, and Vittorio de Benedetti.-Plot:Shortly after...

. The school also served as "Visitor Security Headquarters" in the 1984 mini-series V: The Final Battle.

The Villa del Sol d'Oro, has been the primary location on campus for photo shoots, music videos, film production. The Villa can be prominently seen in the music video, 'November Rain' by Guns and Roses.
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