Gretchen A. Whitney High School, called Whitney High School or WHS, is a public school in Cerritos, California serving grades 7–12. It is in the ABC Unified School District.
 
History
Whitney High School was founded on September 25, 1976 (under the name Gretchen A. Whitney Learning Center) as a community academic learning center. It was created by ABC superintendent Charles Hutchison, who envisioned Whitney to be a vocational school. The school refocused as an academic prep school. As a tribute to Hutchison, the current cafeteria is named the Hutch.
In 1997, half of Whitney’s parking lot was purchased by a housing contractor to build a gated community adjacent to Whitney. In exchange, Whitney received funds to construct the long-awaited gymnasium.
 
School of Dreams
Whitney High is the subject of School of Dreams, a book written by the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Edward Humes[21] and published in September 2003. Humes spent the 2001–2002 school year at Whitney teaching a writing workshop, and used his case study of Whitney High to bring national attention to the pressures endured by the students of America's magnet schools.
 
College Admissions
Of the 165 students in the class of 2011, 46 percent went to the University of California, 1 percent went to military academies, 30 percent went to private or out-of-state colleges, 16 percent went to California State Universities, and 7 percent went to community colleges.