(June 17, 2003) -- Close your eyes and let me take you back in time. Back to when students at Clark were allowed to wear jeans and t-shirts of all colors, patterns and designs. Back to when black, tall, wrought-iron gates weren’t blocking your vision to freedom. And back to when flat-screen computers and LCD projectors were technological dreams of the future.

Welcome. It’s 1961 and you are standing within the campus of Anderson W. Clark Junior High.

The former junior high was named in honor of the Reverend Anderson Clark, a resident of La Crescenta, whose work with children was greatly admired. However, due to declining enrollment, the school was forced to shut down in 1983. From then on, the building was used as a teacher resource center as well as a branch of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Although, after several years of non-academic use, the Glendale Unified School District decided to transform the drab, worn-out building into a new, fully-functional school.

The school reopened in 1998 as a magnet high school and the name, Anderson W. Clark, was kept in order to preserve the memory of the great humanitarian. In addition to keeping the name, Clark kept the panther as the mascot and green and white as the school colors.

Admission to the new school was voluntary but limited to approximately 500 students in the freshmen and sophomore classes. Therefore, in September of 1998, roughly 500 students from all over the Glendale and Crescenta Valley district eagerly stepped off the busses to find a school still under construction.

Former Clark senior Noor Hashem recalls the daily lectures at Clark being interrupted constantly by the drilling and hammering of nearby construction workers. “It was great. Half the time you couldn’t even hear the teacher. Sometimes she gave up mid-sentence.”

As the year went on, slowly and scrupulously, the construction workers completed their work. By the time second semester rolled around, most of the construction was done.

During the summer of 2000, the final phase of the construction was put into action. The last phase consisted of the completion of the 5000 building and the application of the new security systems, otherwise known as the infamous black gates surrounding the school and monitored cameras precisely situated around the campus.

However, as the 2001 school year approached, a new problem arose: accommodating the increase of student drivers. So, on September 24, 2001, expansion of the student parking lot commenced. The resurfacing and renovation took place in under a month and the construction was completed October 18 and the newly finished lot now offered 130 spots for student parking.

As of now, with bathrooms other high schools would die for and a rumored ratio of three computers per one student, Anderson W. Clark Magnet High School stands as one of the most technologically advanced, not to mention cleanest, schools in the Glendale district.