Princeton High School (New Jersey)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Princeton High School | |
| 'Live to Learn and Learn to Live' | |
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| School type | Public |
|---|---|
| Established | 1898 |
| Principal | Gary Snyder |
| Faculty | 110 |
| Students | 1,240 (2003–2004) |
| Colors | Blue and white |
| Location | 151 Moore Street Princeton, NJ 08540 |
| Information | (609) 806-4280 |
| Website | http://phs.prs.k12.nj.us |
Princeton High School (PHS) is a four-year comprehensive American public high school in the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, United States.
PHS is a part of the Princeton Regional Schools district, which serves all students in the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township. Students from Cranbury Township also attend PHS as part of a sending/receiving relationship with the Cranbury Township School District.
PHS is notable for its high academic standards and strong arts programs, and it consistently ranks within the top three secondary schools in the state concerning SAT scores. PHS is unusual among high schools in that it permits qualified students to take free courses at Princeton University.
Contents |
[edit] Overview
PHS is located in the Borough of Princeton, across the street from John Witherspoon Middle School (which is in Princeton Township).
PHS offers courses in many subjects and levels, including most of the courses in the Advanced Placement Program, and it also provides the opportunity for students to take free courses at Princeton University provided that they have exhausted all the courses at the school pertaining to that particular subject and have done well enough in those courses.
As of 2006, the school's principal is Gary Snyder, and its assistant principals are Harvey Highland and Julianne Inverso. The school's student activities director (also known as the dean of students) is Angela Siso.
The school is currently undergoing construction. Many students have classes in trailers rather than in the main building, and the construction often disrupts classes and sets off fire alarms. The renovation is necessary to produce classroom accommodations for the expanding student body, although students may still have to share lockers even after the construction is completed.
[edit] Awards and recognition
The school was listed in 133rd place, the third-highest ranked school in New Jersey, in Newsweek's May 8, 2006, issue listing the Top 1200 High Schools in The United States.[1]. Princeton High School was ranked as number 212 in Newsweek's 2005 survey[2].
Princeton High School was the 13th-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 316 schools statewide, in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2006 cover story on the state's Top Public High Schools[3].
[edit] School policy
[edit] Schedule
School is held from Monday through Friday, for a total of 180 days per year. The usual daily schedule consists of eight periods of 44 minutes each, with a homeroom period (12 minutes) between the second and third periods, and a break (25 minutes) between the sixth and seventh periods. There are four minutes between each class period for the students to get to their next class.
On some Wednesdays, (termed "short Wednesdays" or "one-thirty-nine Wednesdays") and on some other days when special events are planned, the school day is shortened. As of the 2006-07 school-year, every Wednesday is a short day. On short Wednesdays, school ends at 1:39 pm. Short Wednesdays exist to permit the operation of the Peer Group program (which is mandatory for freshmen) between 1:39 and 3:00. This period of time is also used for community service group meetings for sophomores, other optional extracurricular activities, and school-wide events, such as pep rallies, the Oktoberfest (now usually held in November), and Spring Fling bake sales.
[edit] Lab days
The school days are assigned letter labels, cycling from A through G. This is done to accommodate double periods for science classes, which are scheduled such that there is a gym class the preceding or following period. For two out of these seven days (either A and E, B and F or C and G depending on the class, so that D day is normal for everyone) the science class meets two periods in a row to give the class opportunity for a lab experiment. The gym class does not meet on these days. As a result, when a student has no science class on his or her designated lab day, he or she has a free period for that day. Some science classes such as Genetics only have one lab day per cycle, leaving the other as a free period.
One unanticipated result of this scheduling is that students take gym only with those in their science class (and others who have a science class during the same period that they do), contributing to the stratification of the school along academic lines.
[edit] Graduation requirements
Each year-long class counts for 5 credits; each semester class counts for 2.5. Science classes that have two lab periods, however, count for 6.4 credits (because of the lab cycle), and gym class counts for 1. A student must complete 120 credits to graduate (about 24 courses). Additionally, each student must have completed 50 hours of community service to graduate. These community service requirements are usually completed during students' sophomore years. Students must also pass the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA 11).
Required courses include English I and English II (which must respectively be taken in the first two years) and two more years of English. Other requirements include: three years of science, including biology and chemistry; one year of a foreign language; three years of mathematics; four years of gym; two years of United States History; one year of World History; one year of Visual/Performing Arts; and one year of Practical Arts.
PHS has a policy of revoking credit for a student's course if he attends class less than 90 percent of the days that class meets. 18 absences from a year-long course will lead to credit revocation. Starting in 2005, tardiness has been counted as one-third of an absence for the purposes of revoking credit. In practice credit revocation is easily and frequently appealed.
[edit] Extracurricular activities
Princeton High School offers many extracurricular activities, including clubs, publications, competitive teams, and other organizations. Chartered organizations include the Anime Club, Badminton Club A.R.T.E: Artistically Reviving the Earth, the Chess Club, the Cricket Club, the Indian Club, the Ivy (a literary magazine), the Math Team, the Mock Trial Team, the Numina Gallery group, the Prince (the yearbook), the Republican Club, the Robotics and Computer Club, the Science Bowl Team, the Science Olympiad Team, and the Tower.
[edit] The Mock Trial Team
The PHS Mock Trial team has been one of the best in the region. Their regular practices is what makes them such a successful team when they compete in the County Mock trial Competition. Following the County Competition is the Regional Competition, and following that is the State Competition. Mr. Baxter, the Mock Trial coach who first founded the team and continues with the position, prepares the students to become first-rate attorneys and witnesses. These brilliant young minds have yet to advance to the State Competition, however it is never out of their reach.
[edit] Sports
The Princeton High School Little Tigers participate in the eleven-member Colonial Valley Conference, which includes high schools from Mercer, Middlesex and Monmouth Counties.
The Little Tigers have successful seasons in cross country, tennis, track, lacrosse, soccer, and golf almost every year.
[edit] The Tower
The Tower is a newspaper which was founded in 1911 as the Observer. In 1925 it was renamed the Blue & White. It was renamed to its present title four years later at the suggestion of Stryker Warren (a 1930 graduate of PHS) to commemorate the construction of what was then the new building and what is now the oldest building, with the famous tower. The Tower has throughout its life varied enormously in its content and style. As of 2006, the Tower funds itself through the selling of subscriptions and advertisements to local organizations & businesses, and through subsidies from the Princeton Regional Schools.
In its very first incarnation it was published fortnightly in a format somewhat smaller than 8.5 by 11 inches and was advised by a teacher of the era, Mrs. M. A. Dick. The Tower has published continuously since that time, assisted by different local publishers, most recently for the last few decades, the Princeton Packet. At one time, typesetting was done separately from publishing for the Tower by another local paper, Town Topics.
The Tower's masthead has varied tremendously—when the present name first was bestowed upon it, the logotype was a pencil drawing of a sun rising above a tower with the school's motto and The New York Times-style lettering, but since then the image of the architectural feature has been removed and reinserted multiple times by zealous editors throughout the decades. Throughout the forties and fifties, the Tower's logotype was very plain, consisting only of serifed capital block letters, with no additional style or imagery. The current masthead dates to the eighties.
A well-known feature of the Tower is the propensity of the editors to publish joke issues: in recent years, it is generally done at the boundary between years, around the same time when the entire editorial staff is replaced wholesale. The first example of this was in the late 1920s, when one issue was published on blue paper and carried the title "Black & Blue." The humor in that printing consisted largely of printing some of the text backwards or upside down. More recent joke issues have somewhat more vivid humor, such as a mid-2000s issue alleging that a giant condom had been placed on top of the school, or an early-eighties issue stating that the Tower had been converted into a pornographic racket (with pictures to support the point).
Of course, like many of the running aspects of the Tower, such as the monthly quotes section, exemplars decades ago may be seen not so much as "first instances" as much as spiritual precursors-- there has been constant flux at the Tower over the decades. Features such as the Vanguard (a two-page topical opinions/forum spread) frequently are born, killed, resurrected, and killed again in a cycle that takes place over twenty or so years, as new enterprising editors-in-chief try to imprint their own mark upon the publication as soon as they can before their very brief tenure expires and that mark again fades into history. Ironically, the Tower is one of the few clubs at PHS (if not the only one) which has much of a history to speak of. This follows from having an inherent running month-by-month record of its activities going back to its founding: the newspapers themselves.
Now, however, The Tower has become a source of much aggravation and amusement among Princeton High School students. It has, unfortunately, become known for its spelling and grammar mistakes, as well as its inability to produce a newspaper with much quality writing.
[edit] PHS Choir
One of the more selective extra-curricular activities at PHS, the PHS Choir was founded in 1944, and is nationally and internationally known as one of the top high school choirs in the world. The choir is composed of around sixty to eighty students. The Choir tours internationally once every two years. Students in grades 10-12 may audition at the end of each academic year. Students who are not accepted during their first audition may try again the following year.
The choir is directed by Dr. Charles "Chuck" Sundquist. He has directed the choir since 1993. The choir performs its annual winter concert in the Chapel of Princeton University. Since its humble beginnings, the Winter Concert has become one of the prides of the high school and an important community event; the Chapel is generally packed to capacity with over 1,200 attendees.
[edit] Studio Band
The Princeton High School Studio Band is the most rigorous and selective of the five jazz bands at Princeton High School.
The original director and creator of the studio band was Anthony Biancosino. Known as Dr B by his students, Biancosino was the director of the studio band for 26 years. During those years the studio band had many great successes, including playing at the inaugural balls of both Presidents Reagan and Bush Senior.
When Biancosino died in December of 2003 his brother, Joseph Downey, took over as director of the studio band. Under his direction the studio band continues to play and compete at the same high standard set by his brother. In 2007 the studio band took first place at the prestigious Berklee College of Music High School Jazz Festival. Prior to performing, Downey dedicated the set to Dr B. The set was the same as that the studio band had played when they won previously at Berklee under Biancosino's direction.
The Studio band is known to play a wide variety of big band arrangements. Throughout the school year, the studio band plays at dances known at Princeton High School as the Big Band Dances. The big band dances are very popular and attract people from many different age groups.
[edit] Student body
During the 2005-2006 school year, Princeton High School had 1253 students [1].
- 74% were White American
- 11% were Asian American
- 9% were African-American
- 6% were Hispanic
5% of students qualified for free or reduced lunch.
[edit] Achievement gap
PHS has been considered a case study of the achievement gap in elite high schools. The gap between different groups in academic progress received greater attention in 2005, after the school failed the No Child Left Behind Act. The New York Times ran an article entitled "The Achievement Gap in Elite Schools," by Samuel G. Freedman on September 28, 2005, [4] which essentially accused Princeton High School of neglecting its responsibility to educate minorities. While the cause may be due to socioeconomic status rather than racial segregation, many students in the overwhelmingly white-and-Asian-populated advanced classes can spend most of their high school career without sharing but a few classes with their Hispanic or African American "peers."
The issue has not received as much attention as some would wish it to prior to 2005. According to Freedman's article, "In the early 1990's, an interracial body calling itself the Robeson Group—in homage to Paul Robeson, the most famous product of black Princeton—mobilized to recruit more black teachers and help elect the first black member to the school board." This concern has faded since then.
[edit] Notable alumni
- Chris Barron, the lead singer of Spin Doctors
- The entire band of Blues Traveler
- Sim Cain, drummer Rollins Band
- Michelle Charlesworth news anchor WABC New York
- Rhys Coiro, Actor
- Michael Lemonick, senior science writer at Time magazine
- John Lithgow, actor[5]
- John McPhee, The New Yorker staff writer, author of twenty-seven books, and Pulitzer Prize-winner
- Bebe Neuwirth, actress[6]
- Tsutomu Shimomura, Japanese-American scientist and computer security expert
- Andy Potts, Olympic[7] athlete
- Quentin Smith, the lead singer in the alternative rock band Vaux
- Laurie Berkner, children's musical artist
- Ben Jelen, musician
- Eron Bucciarelli, drummer for Hawthorne Heights
[edit] References
- ^ The Complete List: 1,200 Top U.S. Schools, Newsweek May 8, 2006
- ^ America's Best High Schools, Newsweek, August 5, 2005
- ^ Top Public High Schools in New Jersey, New Jersey Monthly, September 2006
- ^ "The Achievement Gap in Elite Schools" by Samuel G. Freedman, in The New York Times September 28, 2005
- ^ Biography for John Lithgow from IMDB, accessed November 27, 2006
- ^ Guest Artists: Bebe Neuwirth, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, accessed November 27, 2006
- ^ 2004 Olympic Athlete Bio: Andy Potts, accessed January 8, 2006
