Horace Greeley High School

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Horace Greeley High School
Location
Chappaqua, New York, USA
Information
Principal Andrew Selesnick
Assistant Principals Mark Bayer, Michele Glenn, and Michael Taylor
Type Public
Mascot Quakers
Established 1928
Homepage Horace Greeley Home Page

Horace Greeley High School is a public, four-year secondary school located in Chappaqua, New York that serves the Chappaqua Central School District.

The school, which is housed in a 12-building campus, has about 1300 students and 100 faculty members. [1]

Contents

[edit] Administration

As of 2008, the school principal is Andrew Selesnick. The school has three assistant principals, with one assigned to each grade except for 9th which is divided up among the three. Michele Glenn is the assistant principal for grade 10, Mark Bayer is responsible for 11th grade and Michael Taylor works with the seniors.

[edit] Distinctives

Horace Greeley is nationally respected for its high academic standards. It currently offers 23 advanced placement courses. According to ratings by the [[Wall Street Journal]], Horace Greeley was ranked in a tie for first place among public high schools in the entire country.[citation needed] Recent years have seen approximately one-fifth of graduating seniors recognized by the National Merit Scholarship committee; the class of 2004 included 25 National Merit semifinalists; the class of 2005 had 16; the class of 2007, 22. The mean SAT score among graduating seniors in the Class of 2005 was 1269 (612 Verbal and 657 Math). 97% of the Class of 2005 went on to higher education, 96% to four-year colleges. [1] Many Horace Greeley graduates matriculate at top-ranked universities, including the schools of the Ivy League.[citation needed]

The high school is strong in several extracurricular programs. Its quiz bowl team won the National Academic Championship in 2003, finished third in 2007, and placed among the top six teams at the national tournament in five of the six years between 2000 and 2005.[citation needed]Chip Beall, the organizer of the tournament, noted in 2007 that Greeley's team had "the most airline miles logged at the National Academic Association's expense", a nod to their placement in the final rounds of the tournament more times than any other team in the tournament's history [1]. The Horace Greeley Debate Team has been successful at many regional tournaments as well as national tournaments, and has sent debaters to States every year since its inception in 2002. The Science Olympiad and Model United Nations teams have also won numerous accolades, as have the newspapers and yearbook.[citation needed] In addition, the high school's orchestra, chorus, and band are consistent winners of the Music in the Parks state competitions held annually at Six Flags in New Jersey.[citation needed]

Distinctive programs at Horace Greeley include the LIFE (Learning Independently From Experience) school, an alternative school for grades 11-12 located on campus; independent study and senior project options[citation needed]; a child study program linked to an on-site preschool[citation needed]; college-level classes offered through a partnership with Syracuse University[citation needed]; and a science research program to prepare students for prestigious competitions like the Intel Science Talent Search.[citation needed] Arts and athletic offerings are extensive, and classes are offered in five foreign languages: Spanish, French, Latin, and, at the LIFE school, Italian. Russian was previously offered, but is no longer taught. In the 2005-2006 school year, Ancient Greek was taught for the first time.

[edit] Namesake

The school is named for Horace Greeley, a U.S. presidential candidate and editor of The New York Tribune who made his home in Chappaqua late in life. One of the school's two main publications, The Greeley Tribune, is an additional tribute to the newsman. The school's yearbook is The Quaker, also the school mascot. In 2006, The Advocate, a former newspaper, was redesigned and changed its format to a modern, color, magazine layout, called Advo.

Other student organizations at Greeley include the Political Action Club, the umbrella community service group S.H.A.R.E., S.A.D.D.D. (Students Against Drinking and Drugging while Driving), Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), Alliance for Equality, Students for Social Justice, AIDS Awareness, FCCLA, the Horace Greeley Improvisational Acting Troupe, Silent Earth: Greening Greeley, and Amnesty International, among many others. On Wednesdays, classes are shortened to allow clubs to meet for forty-five minutes at the start of the day.

[edit] Athletics

Sports are also popular on campus and among the diverse offerings are varsity programs in baseball, basketball, bowling, cheerleading, field hockey, American football, golf, ice hockey, lacrosse, skiing, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, track and cross country, volleyball, and wrestling. The school's only state championship came in 2002 and was won by the cross country team.[citation needed] That same year the school's football team finished with a record of 11-2 and losing 22-15 to Rochester's Aquinas Institute in the New York State Class A State Championship game.[citation needed] In 2006, the school's girls' cross-country team won the League and Sectional titles, and finished 2nd in Class A States. In 2007 Both the girls and boys made it to the state soccer tournament.[citation needed] In 2007 the Horace Greeley Cross Country boy's won the league championship and the JV boys won the county championship.[citation needed] Swimming has also been one of the most successful sports at Greeley, with four straight Sectional Championships in the early nineties ('91, '92, '93, '94).[citation needed] In the 2007/2008 season the Quakers were undefeated League and Division Champions.[citation needed]

[edit] Campus

The Horace Greeley campus consists of a series of buildings in the school area of the campus and a large athletic field area. There are eleven buildings; A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, K,and L. There is an enclosed truss footbridge connecting the upper floors of L building and J building. There is also a concrete beam bridge connecting buildings E and F with J building.

Although the buildings (except A, the gymnasium, which is separate from the rest of the buildings) have recently been connected by indoor corridors, the buildings were previously connected only by an outdoor covered walkway that ran through the courtyards. There is also an astronomical observatory located near the competition field that is used mainly by the elective astronomy/geology class. In the rear of the campus is a maintenance area used by the Chappaqua Central School District. The athletic area consists of the main gymnasium, a wrestling gym, a small third gym, a fitness room, two softball fields, five tennis courts, two field hockey/soccer/lacrosse fields, two soccer/lacrosse fields, one varsity baseball field, two small baseball fields/practice football fields and a fenced-in competition field/track complete with bleachers, a press box and a concession stand that is used for football, lacrosse, and track and field.

[edit] Notable people

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Horace Greeley High School has a number of notable alumni, many of them now in the entertainment industry.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Profile

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Irmo High School		 National Academic Championship champion
2003		 Succeeded by
Saint Thomas Academy