, c. 1910 Many Long Beach schools were damaged in the
1933 earthquake. This contributed to the passage of the
Field Act, strengthening the building standards of schools across the state. As of 1993, several parents in the LBUSD boundaries enrolled their children in the
Los Alamitos Unified School District day care program so that they could then use LBUSD district transfer rules, stating that parents may enroll their children at a school closest to their daycare provider even if the school is in another school district, to obtain an inter-district transfer from the Los Alamitos district and send their children to Los Alamitos schools. As a result, LBUSD was losing money, because state education funds were paid based on attendance. Horn said "It was never anyone's intention to make the (child-care) program a drawing card from other school districts. It did turn out that way." LBUSD began investigating the idea of establishing before and after school programs at its schools so that parents could no longer use the loophole. On January 18, 1994, the LBUSD Board of Education voted to require
school uniforms in all elementary and middle schools, with the wearing of school uniforms to start in September 1994. The district was the first large urban school district in the United States to require school uniforms. On August 23, 1994, SB 1269 the School Uniform Law was approved by the Governor of California to support schools that adopt a school-wide uniform policy, which also allowed parents to opt out of the policy. At LBUSD, roughly 2% of the students opt out of the uniform policy. LBUSD now has two high schools,
Woodrow Wilson Classical High School, and
Millikan High School, that require school uniforms as well. In 1999,
Jefferson Leadership Academies became the first public middle school in the United States to convert entirely to single gender classes. Only a few dozen more schools have followed this trend, mostly because of
Title IX of the 1972 Education Act, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded programs. The school has plans to discontinue the program after scheduling conflicts and disappointing test scores. In 2001, there was a movement to form a Lakewood Unified School District. Because students in the city of
Lakewood are currently divided between four different school districts (
ABC Unified School District,
Bellflower Unified School District,
Paramount Unified School District and LBUSD), a petition was started. After gathering the required number of petition signatures and an LA County review, the issue went before the
California State Board of Education. The board rejected the petition on February 8, 2001 because the board said the proposed district failed to meet four of the state's nine criteria for new district formation. With that setback, the most current plans () are to try to merge those areas of Lakewood served by Paramount into either the Bellflower or Long Beach Unified School Districts. ==District awards==