that led to the riot. In his 2005 book on the history of Manual, Mike McDaniel wrote that November 11, 1976 was "quite probably the worst day in the history of Manual." The late 1960s and 1970s were a time of major change at Manual. A new wing featuring a gym with a seating capacity of 2,566 opened in 1971. The school had as many as 3,360 students in the 1971–72 school year, necessitating 17 portable classrooms in the front and rear courtyards. Manual still had grades seven through twelve at this time, and overcrowding gradually began to improve after Manual dropped the seventh and eight grades when Noe Middle School opened in 1974. Throughout the decade the administration gradually dropped the last vestiges of its manual training emphasis as the number of shop classes dwindled from 16 in 1971 to three in 1979. The Youth Performing Arts School, actually a magnet school within Manual, opened in 1978 and, along with the changing curriculum, presaged Manual's transition to an academically intensive magnet school in the 1980s. Magnet school Manual became a magnet school in 1984, creating specialty programs and allowing students from around the district to apply to attend. The change initially met with a mixed reaction, especially as most freshmen and sophomores were to be transferred to other schools. One critic in the black community called the plan "one-way busing". A few days after the proposal was announced, about 300 students walked out of class at Manual and marched to Central High School, where most of them were being transferred, in protest. The protest succeeded in persuading the school board to modify the proposal to exclude sophomores from being transferred. The magnet programs succeeded in attracting applicants and by the mid-1990s only about a third of students who applied were accepted. In the midst of the transition to magnet school, Manual underwent a $1.9 million building improvement plan which added computer and science labs. Also in 1991, the United States Department of Education recognized Manual as a Blue Ribbon School, the highest honor the department can bestow on a school. The school earned a Blue Ribbon award again in 2020. Many interior shots of the 1999 film The Insider were filmed at Manual. Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, the subject of the film, taught science and Japanese at Manual after he was fired by tobacco company Brown & Williamson in 1993.