Malibu High School is a public secondary school in Malibu, California for middle school and high school . As one of three high schools in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, MHS serves the Malibu and Santa Monica communities and by inter-district permit, the greater Los Angeles area and Ventura County.HistoryThe campus is located on land originally part of Juan Cabrillo Elementary School, which was partitioned in 1963 to create Malibu Park Junior High School, named after its surrounding region in Malibu. With no public secondary school existing in Malibu, upon promotion from middle school the high school-age students commuted 2 hours roundtrip to Santa Monica to attend Santa Monica High School.In 1992, the district converted the Malibu Park Junior High School campus to its present combined middle school/high school, and allowed MHS's first freshman class to walk onto campus. The State of California erroneously shows the high school established in 1993. Classes were added every succeeding year, culminating in the first 1992 freshman class graduating in 1996. The school mascot, a grinning mako shark, was designed by an art student in the first graduating class of 1996.The high school's first principal was Michael Matthews. Under Matthews's tenure in 2003, the school earned its designation as a California Distinguished School and first achieved a national ranking as #177 in Newsweek|Newsweek's Top 1200 Schools in America, a ranking system based on what percentage of a school's student body takes Advanced Placement exams in any given year.
