LOS ANGELES—Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine — in their second public school venture — announced Monday that they are partnering with the Inglewood Unified School District to open a new high school, a project the district hopes will attract students and inject a dose of vitality into a district that has been forced to close schools due to declining enrollments over the past decade.

The announcement at Morningside High School featured the Inglewood High School marching band and cheerleaders, who welcomed Iovine, a co-founder of Interscope Records, to an auditorium packed with district employees and community members.

The Iovine and Young Center will open in the summer of 2025 for ninth grade students and expand each year until it reaches 12th grade in 2028. The center will focus on creative skill development and social impact, culminating in a senior year project that gives students an opportunity to solve real problems.

“(Dr. Dre and Iovine) will invest in state-of-the-art technology, professional development for staff and any necessary campus improvements necessary to create the new academy,” district spokeswoman Jessica Ochoa said.

The school will be on the campus of Crozier Middle School, which is slated to close in June 2025, Ochoa said.

“We wanted to start in the inner city, because Dre and especially me, I owe a lot to the inner city of Los Angeles and we intend to pay it back,” Iovine said.

The Inglewood school’s announcement comes two years after the music moguls established a Los Angeles Unified high school in the Leimert Park neighborhood focused on interdisciplinary learning and entrepreneurial talent. The school is housed at Audubon Middle School, which also faced steep enrollment declines in 2021.

In the Inglewood district, middle-class families have increasingly sent their children to charter schools or Los Angeles district schools, while low-income families are being priced out by rising rent costs. Low birth rates and gentrification have also led to sharp declines in enrollment.

“We’ll have the NBA All-Star Weekend, the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics, but the most important thing is what our kids, the next generation, get out of all of this,” Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. said. . “We want parents to want to place their children in the Inglewood Unified School District, because that is the only future for this district.”

The long-troubled Inglewood district operates under bankruptcy court after fiscal mismanagement forced the district to take out a $29 million emergency loan from the state in 2012. The Los Angeles County Office of Education has since taken over the district, giving the county-appointed administrator sole authority over the district’s financial decisions until a path to stability and solvency is achieved.

County Administrator James Morris said the new high school is an example of the rapid progress the district is making to emerge from bankruptcy court.

“Inglewood is on the way,” he said.

Student applications will open this winter or spring, Ochoa said. Academic criteria will not be used in the selection process, she added. Rather, students’ interest in innovation and creative pursuits will be valued.

Still, feelings among some attendees were mixed because the district faces five school closings by June 2025 — around the same time the new high school will open — and the district’s financial decisions remain outside of local control.

Inglewood Unified School District Board President Carliss McGhee told the auditorium filled with parents and staff, “We’ve been in administration far too long. The Iovine and Young Center will give our students real-world applications.”

Some teachers praised the new high school but said the district should also expand its resources to pay teachers a higher livable wage, which would directly increase the quality of education for students.

“What about us?” said Toni Butler, teacher at La Tijera K-8 Charter School Academy of Excellence.