The prolific Los Angeles performing arts high school that helped launch the careers of Josh Groban, Zoey Deutch, Haim and Phoebe Bridgers, among many more, is celebrating 40 years of fostering the arts the way only a program of its stature could: a concert at the Greek, emcee’d by Anthony Anderson and headlined by the likes of Ozomatli and Fitz and the Tantrums. 

LACHSAPalooza, as the show is being called, is set for May 30, in honor of the eponymous Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. The event is part-anniversary, part-fundraiser, as LACHSA — a public, tuition-free school — looks not only to honor its past but secure its future, seeking an ambitious $2.5 million as public arts education continues to face mounting challenges across the country. 

“This school is special,” Anderson, part of the school’s inaugural class of 1985, tells THR. “LACHSA helped me in my transformation to becoming an artist in a way I’d always envisioned since I was young.” 

LACHSA is one of the most highly-regarded performing arts programs in the U.S. — up there with the likes of New York’s LaGuardia High or Michigan’s famed Interlochen Arts Camp — with a unique structure that puts focus on entertainment. Along with more traditional liberal arts courses, LACHSA students study in programs for dance, cinematic arts, music, theater and the visual arts among others. And thanks to its proximity to Hollywood, LACHSA has access to more upcoming talent than almost any other city on the planet. 

Former Saturday Night Live cast member Taran Killam, who graduated from LACHSA in 2000, recalls taking his first improv class at the school, as well as a stand-up comedy elective from his teacher Norman Cohen, who he calls his “favorite teacher I’ve ever had.”

“It was such a wild escalation of information at such a young, impressionable age,” Killam says. “That type of training and exposure demystifies the idea of doing this as a career. If I had to boil down any part of my process to as a comedian one mantra, it’s that. It all came from LACHSA.”

All the former students who spoke with THR hail the school’s staff, with Anderson mentioning Jerry Freedman, who was there when he was a student in the ‘80s and remains a teacher at LACHSA now. He will be honored during LACHSAPalooza later this month. 

Still, the number one factor that makes LACHSA so effective, the alumni emphasize, is that it brings artists together, which fosters the environment they need to hone their craft. 

“It wasn’t just a school, it was a space where being an artist is taken seriously,” Deutch, who didn’t graduate from the school but attended in the 2010s, says. “That kind of validation at that age can change someone’s life.”

Anderson says LACHSA “gave us a place to live, to be accepted, to thrive and cultivate our talent. 

“All of these alumni, if we just went the route of a traditional high school, we’d have been one of very few people there who were looking to be artists,”  he says. “This was a high school created for us to come together and become a tribe. And so we fed off each other, encouraged one another to pursue what we wanted.”

Beyond its arts-heavy curriculum, the school’s structure is unique too. LACHSA gets half its funding from the state of California, though it still relies on donations through its foundation for the other 50 percent of its operational costs.

“Public education in general in the state of California hasn’t been fully funded in 50 years,” says Trena Pitchford, executive director of the LACHSA Foundation. “It is incumbent on us now to take responsibility for LACHSA and to bring it to a place of abundance for the next 40 years.”

With its list of celebrity alumni, one might assume the school would have no level of difficulty finding the extra dollars needed for its fundraising efforts. But as Pitchford says, a challenging past few years between disasters like the pandemic and last year’s devastating wildfires have raised extra challenges, and the school is seeing some donor fatigue. 

“Public education today, the struggles are real,” she says. “You take all that’s happened the past few years, obviously philanthropy has shifted, understandably, to regions that were completely devastated in LA County. Donors are tired and more are getting stretched. The generosity of the public and some of our foundation partners is really important.” 

The school is more fortunate than many other arts programs, and it can expand its reach thanks to some more famous alumni who can get the word out. But LACHSA is one of many arts programs around the country feeling the squeeze as arts education continues to take a backseat in the country, and a track record of producing stars isn’t what should determine if those programs can continue, notes Pitchford.

“That is what we’re trying to break through in doing all of this,” Pitchford says. “This is the small education that’s impacting the culture of Los Angeles, and it’s also creating better people in the world.” 

As for what would happen if programs like these didn’t exist, Anderson says that notion would be “a huge setback for the arts.”

“Everyone I know in this world uses the arts to escape, be it through music, plays, movies, theater, poetry,” he says. “Schools like LACHSA are important not only to young artists, but to our society.”