Passing periods at Belmont High School used to mean pushing your way through a hall teeming with students. Now, it is a leisurely stroll.
The storied campus perched on top of a hill on the fringe of downtown was once the largest high school in the state and one of the biggest in the country. It was also the most crowded. Built to hold 2,500 at most, it peaked at 5,500 students.
But today, it could use a few more.
Over the last decade, enrollment has plummeted with the construction of nearby schools by the Los Angeles Unified School District. Pair that with the emergence of charter schools and enrollment has dwindled to less than 1,000 students.
"It's a calm campus now," said Principal Kristen McGregor. "Everybody can walk to class without feeling like they're swimming upstream."
But while the drop in population has led to academic gains and a more manageable campus, it has also cost the school some of its long-held traditions and character. Teachers and administrators hope more students could help the campus regain some of what it has lost.
The new Belmont is split into three academies with different areas of focus: medical and public service; multimedia; science, art and green engineering. Teachers know all of their students by name and everyone gets a chair. There's enough space on campus to house a middle school, charter school and another high school.
To students from years past, it's an unrecognizable Belmont.
When the school opened in 1923, it had about 500 students. By the 1950s, enrollment began to dwindle and the Los Angeles school board considered closing the campus. But four decades later, enrollment had ballooned to about 5,500.
Students poured into Belmont's hallways and stairways — becoming a traveling mass of momentum between classes, said Teresa Salguero, who attended the school in the 1980s and has taught Spanish there since 1992.
"It was scary," she said. "It was like you were caught in a wave — you just had to go with it."
To address the overpopulation, the school operated on a year-round schedule, with about a third of students on vacation at any one time. In addition, Los Angeles Unified School District bused thousands of would-be students to less-crowded campuses in the San Fernando Valley.
Immigrant families have long landed in Westlake, the neighborhood surrounding Belmont, and that diversity still shows today. English is a second language for about a third of the students at Belmont, where 18 languages are spoken. The school's entire student body meets poverty standards and therefore qualifies for free or reduced-priced lunch.
"I tell the kids, this place is like the Statue of Liberty," Salguero said.
Vicky Castro, a former school board member whose district included Belmont, said the crowding had hindered the campus from establishing itself as a community hub for all residents because so many students were bused elsewhere.
"It was a community in crisis for schools," she said. "There were many students who never attended their home school."
The year-round schedule also drew criticism, as it called for a shorter school year, but longer days. Students received the same amount of instruction, but it was squeezed into 163 days rather than the standard 180.
Board member Monica Garcia, whose district includes Belmont, said this method cheated the students who needed the most help by providing them little personal attention and fewer days in the classroom.
"It was the epitome of educational malpractice," she said, adding that the community eventually pressured the school district to act more effectively.
In 2001, the district responded by embarking on an ambitious, $20-billion school construction program. Three facilities were built to relieve Belmont: Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts; Miguel Contreras Learning Complex; and the infamous Belmont Learning Complex, now named the Roybal Learning Center, which opened in 2008 as one of the most expensive high schools ever built because of environmental issues, construction delays and other problems.
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