Herbert Hoover High School is a comprehensive, public secondary school located in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States. It is part of the San Diego Unified School District.It is one of the oldest schools in San Diego.HistoryThe school was established in 1930 and named in honor of then U.S. President Herbert Hoover. The first principal was Floyd Johnson. It originally opened as a beige stucco building with a red-tile roof and unreinforced concrete, giving it a Spanish-style appearance. As part of a tradition related to signing their yearbooks, 12th grade (senior) students climbed a tower that became a signature defining aspect of the campus.The school underwent renovations in the early 1970s. The tower and other architectural features were erased by the renovation.As of 2004, Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Douglas Williams, the authors of Five Years Later, stated that before 1998, Hoover had been known as the "ghetto school" of San Diego USD, and that schools with higher academic performances poached the best students from Hoover. Adam Berman, who previously taught at Hoover, wrote that in 1988 Hoover had low teacher morale, acts of violence, and a high dropout rate in addition to poor academic performance.The school joined the City Heights Educational Initiative, along with two other high schools and San Diego State University, in 1998 as part of an effort to improve. In 2000 the school met its California state accountability target. This was the first time it had done so in 15 years. Circa 2000 Berman, by then a California Department of Education employee, wrote an independent review of the changes made at Hoover. The review, titled "A focus on literacy: Hoover High School in San Diego," was published in the California High School Newsletter.
