| Ketchikan High School (Kayhi) |
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|---|---|
| Type | Public secondary |
| Principal | Sam Nelson |
| Students | about 500 |
| Grades | 9–12 |
| Location | Ketchikan, Alaska, USA |
| Campus | Open |
| Mascot | King Salmon |
| Website | http://khs.kgbsd.org/ |
Ketchikan High School, often referred to as Kayhi, is the principal high school for the Southeast Alaska community of Ketchikan and the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District.
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Kayhi offers a variety of vocational and Advanced Placement classes. It has an automotive program, a welding class, a large maritime program and offers AP opportunities in English, science, mathematics, and history.
Kayhi has a Student Body Association,[1] headed by a President who works alongside a Vice President, Secretary and Parliamentarian. They meet twice a month and discuss current events at the school and plan for future activities such as dances, sport tournaments, and the annual talent show. The other committees involved are the recycling committee, which works to decrease the amount of paper thrown away, the dance committee, which helps decorate for dances, and others such as student life, which aims to welcome new students to Kayhi.
Kayhi often does fundraisers, whether it be to fund a formal dance like Homecoming, Winter Ball, or Senior Prom, or to help support a school activity like basketball, volleyball, Academic Decathlon, etc. Raffle tickets are a big seller. Prizes for the raffle include anything from a truck full of firewood to vacation tickets. The annual event called "Woodhogs" is when a group of seniors are gathered to chop firewood as a raffle prize. Seniors will go out of their way to ask for donations that can be used for prizes. The school's annual Senior Carnival is a popular attraction and fundraising opportunity for the students to take part in. Seniors run specialty booths like bingo, a bungee run, a game room and a cake walk as well as booths like the a chicken toss, face painting, darting balloons, golf, football, and roulette.
Ketchikan High School's primary sports rivals are Juneau-Douglas High School and Thunder Mountain High School. Ketchikan's mascot is the King Salmon or the Kings, in reference to a king salmon and in connection to the Schoenbar Middle School mascot, the Knights. Kayhi girls' teams are known as the Lady Kings. The mascot is portrayed as a jumping salmon wearing a crown.
Kayhi is known for its focus on wrestling in autumn, basketball in the winter, and baseball in the spring. Swimming is also important, however, as is soccer, which has gained a great amount of visibility in the community.
Other activities include:
Kayhi has roughly 500 students, many of whom know one another at least by appearance, if not by name, given the small size of the school. There is a low student-teacher ratio and many teachers enthusiastically organize events to boost student morale. Every Friday (or at the end of a school week) there is a "Friday Special" which entertains students during lunch time. Music is played during the beginning of lunch, a teacher or student introduces the activities of the day's special, and then there is the actual special activity. Some of the specials are knock offs of game shows such as Fear Factor. There have also been other ideas such as a "dance off" where students, and teachers performed dances for the student body, juggling exhibitions, "most outrageous dress" competitions and a contest to see who could fold a paper airplane and fly it the farthest. And, like many high schools, a "Pep Assembly" is normally held in order to raise school spirit in preparation for an upcoming sporting event, such as the Clark Cochrane Christmas Classic, which is a basketball tournament held every year at Kayhi in honor of Clark Cochrane. The tournament brings in students and basketball teams from around the U.S., Canada, and even Australia.
The school's woodworking department made an appearance in the "Alaska Special 2" episode of MythBusters, where Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman used the shop as the build site for their pykrete boat.
To graduate from Ketchikan High School, one must acquire the following credits:
Other requirements: