Lake Clifton Eastern High School
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| Lake Clifton Eastern High School | |
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| Location | |
| Baltimore, Maryland, United States | |
| Information | |
| Enrollment | 2400 (2002-2003) |
Lake Clifton Eastern High School is a public high school located in Northeast Baltimore City, Maryland in an area known as Clifton Park, the result of a merger of Lake Clifton High School and Eastern High School.
[edit] Size
As of 2003, Lake Clifton school is the largest (in terms of area) and newest school within the city. It has also been said that Lake Clifton Eastern High School is the largest high school in terms of physical size (400,000 square ft) on the East Coast, but at 425,000 sq. ft., the new Dr. Henry A. Wise, Jr. High School in Prince George's County, Maryland will surely supersede this. When it first opened Lake Clifton Eastern was said to be the largest high school in the whole of the United States.
[edit] History
Lake Clifton Eastern High School was built sometime in the 1970s on top of Lake Clifton, a fact which has raised fears that the school may be sinking. It was originally known as simply Lake Clifton High School. In 1985, Eastern High School merged with Lake Clifton, and the Baltimore City School Board (part of the Baltimore City Public School System) changed the school's name to reflect this.
The school was equipped to hold 4800 students. The exact student population for the 2002-2003 school year was 2400. Drop out rates, violence, low test scores and low attendance plagued this school for years.
In 1997 an electrical fire destroyed the school's library. Shortly afterwards, a state-of-the-art media center was built. Lake Clifton's library is the newest in the whole city. Lake Clifton's sports teams (as of the 2002-2003 school year) included wrestling, swimming, track and field, basketball, football, and tennis. Lake Clifton also has an independent theater group, Unchained Talent.
A decision was made in 2003 by the city school board to split up Lake Clifton into a smaller school, a trend that is occurring throughout the city school system with large high schools. With support from the Small Schools Workshop, school faculty members and administrators met and planned new, small, learning communities to open within Lake Clifton. But before the school could complete its restructuring, the board changed plans and decided on new uses for this valuable campus property and scattered the school population to other schools. As of 2005, Lake Clifton contains two small schools, Doris M. Johnson High School #426 and Heritage High School #425. There are ongoing rumors about closing the school and moving the students to save money, but the community vigorously opposes such action due to the disruption to the students. As of January 2006, it looks like it will be recommended that the school campus remain open and possibly add one more school body to the building to max out its capacity.
