Originally students attended Burbank schools until the high school level, when they moved on to Glendale Union High School District. The Burbank school district established its first high school, Burbank High School, in 1908, and therefore withdrew from the Glendale High School district. The district passed a general obligation bond in the 1950s. In March 1993 the district board voted 5-0 to approve random metal detector searches of middle and high school students. In April 1994 the district failed to pass a $100-million bond. Superintendent Arthur Pierce resigned in May of that year. The district successfully passed a $112 million bond in 1997, the first-such bond passed since the 1950s. In August 2015 Matt Hill, previously a chief strategy officer at the Los Angeles Unified School District, became the district superintendent of BUSD. In November 2015 the district approved board starting the following school year during the third week of August.
Governing Board
Burbank Unified School District's Governing Board is composed of five members, elected to a four-year term. Elections were held at the same time as the Burbank City Council elections with the primary in late February and the runoff in mid-April of odd-numbered years. The school board voted to eliminate the primary/runoff format and replace with a plurality election and moved its Governing Board elections to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November effective with the 2020 election to coincide with the California general election. Board members whose terms expire in April 2019, will extend to December 2020 and members whose terms expire in April 2021 will extend to December 2022.
In 1992 the Brighton Community School, a school for students with disciplinary programs, moved to a site adjacent to the BUSD headquarters, on a property. In 1998 BUSD sold the property to the city government for $8 million. The city planned to build a park and a library branch on this land. The district planned to move the Burbank school on the same site as Monterey High School, a school for students with academic problems, but by August 1998 the district withdrew these plans due to a negative response from area residents.
