Alain Leroy Locke Senior High School was opened in 1967 in response to the Watts riots. It was created to provide families in South Los Angeles a safe and secure school. Forty years later, on September 11, 2007, the
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) made history when they voted to give operational control of Locke High School to
Green Dot Public Schools. LAUSD made this decision in response to a conversion charter petition submitted by the teachers of Locke High School in support of the transition. On September 8, 2008, Locke High School reopened as seven small college-prep schools, now known as the Locke Family of High Schools: Locke 1, Locke 2, Locke 3, Locke 4, Locke Tech, Animo Watts, and Ace Academy. The first class graduated in 2011. In 2013, Locke consolidated the family of schools, which were independently chartered, into one college-prep school under a single charter that contains a 9th grade academy and two upper-class academies, referred to as Gold Academy and Blue Academy.
Crimes On April 5, 1973, two people were shot in a targeted gang attack. On January 22, 1974, an 18-year-old male student who was an innocent bystander was killed on the school jogging track in a gang-related shooting. On September 19, 1994, a 16-year-old female student was shot in the back during lunch and two male students were shot in a drive-by shooting just outside of the schools campus later in the day. The shooting was believed to be gang related. On March 17, 2005, another gang related shooting happened in which a 15-year-old female student was shot outside of campus who died of her injuries. On May 10, 2008, a fight "between rival groups of black and Latino students at Locke High School quickly escalated into a campus-wide melee" involving up to 600 people. The disturbance, which occurred under the backdrop of tensions between
black and
Hispanic students, was quelled after dozens of officers from the Los Angeles Unified School District Police and
Los Angeles Police Department responded. Three students and one non-student were arrested; four students were treated for minor injuries. ==Student demographics==