Lowell High School (San Francisco)

Lowell High School (LHS) is a co-educational, magnet public high school in San Francisco, California, first established in 1856. It is a part of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). Situated on the West Side of the city, the school is south of Parkmerced and the Parkside district, west of Stonestown Galleria, north of San Francisco State University, northeast of Lake Merced, and east of Lakeshore Elementary School.

LHS uses merit-based admissions, unlike other schools in the district, which use a lottery system or receive students from a specified attendance area. The admissions process requires submitting scores from standardized testing from the previous school year and a writing supplement. Previously an entrance exam was required, but after reports of racism in the admissions department and the COVID-19 pandemic, the exam was waived in 2021. However, because academic performance of the school declined, it reinstated use of standardized test scores.

In 1853, Colonel Thomas J. Nevins, San Francisco's first superintendent of schools, raised the idea of a free high school for boys and a seminary for girls. It took three years for Nevins to persuade the Board of Education, and a resolution was passed on July 10, 1856, to establish a San Francisco High School and Ladies' Seminary. Six days later, however, the resolution was rescinded on the grounds that a high school could not legally be part of the San Francisco Common Schools. A name change from the proposed San Francisco High School and Ladies' Seminary to the Union Grammar School appeased those who had opposed the creation of a high school.^{[citation needed]}

The Union Grammar School first opened on August 25, 1856, in rented quarters at the Wesleyan Methodist Church on Powell Street, between Clay and Sacramento. In 1860, the church was purchased and reconstructed as a school at the same location. The new two-story school building had four classrooms, an assembly room, and two rooms for gymnastics exercises and calisthenics. Dedication ceremonies for the new structure took place on September 19, 1860. The school in the new building was already referred to as San Francisco High School because it was generally recognized that the course of study was on the secondary level.

In May 1864, the Board of Education decided to form separate schools for boys and girls. Boys remained at the same campus at the Boys' High School, while girls were moved to their own school at Bush and Stockton streets (Girls' High School), where they would remain until the return of coeducation (in practice) in the 1880s.

In 1894, because the name Boys' High School was not in accord with the growing number of girls taking its college-preparatory classes, the school was renamed to honor the distinguished poet James Russell Lowell, chiefly through the efforts of Pelham W. Ames, a member of the school board.

The school relocated in January 1913 to an entire block on Hayes Street between Ashbury and Masonic. Lowell remained there for 50 years as the city's college preparatory high school. In 1952, the school sought a new location near Lake Merced and moved there (its present address) in 1962.

Until 1988, the Lowell mascot was the Indian. In 1988, School Superintendent Ramon Cortines ordered that the name be changed to something less offensive. Lowell was selected as one of the 44 San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) schools considered for renaming in 2020. The school's selection, by a committee formed by the San Francisco Board of Education, was due to James Russell Lowell's documented racist views. Opponents have said that evidence for Lowell's anti-war beliefs and abolitionist views far outweigh the negatives, citing his lasting influence on Martin Luther King Jr. and within the NAACP.