| Heritage High/REACH! Partnership @ Lake Clifton Campus | |
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We learn from yesterday, we experience today, we hope for tomorrow!
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| Address | |
| 2801 Saint Lo Drive Baltimore, Maryland 21213 |
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| Information | |
| School type | Public, Defunct |
| Founded | 1970 |
| Superintendent | Dr. Andrés Alonso, CEO |
| School number | 40 |
| Grades | 9-12 |
| Enrollment | 2,400 (2003) |
| Language | English |
| Area | Urban |
| Team name | Lakers |
Lake Clifton Eastern High School, now referred to as Lake Clifton Campus, was 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.
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Lake Clifton Eastern High School was built in the early 1970s on top of Lake Clifton Reservoir, a fact which has raised fears that the school may be sinking. It was originally known as simply Lake Clifton High School. The school has an area of 441.11 acres (178.51 ha), in the Lake Clifton 2002 yearbook on page 2 which talks about the history of Lake Clifton Eastern High School, it states "was [in the early 1970s], and perhaps remains, the largest physical plant high school in the nation." The cost of constructing and equipping Lake Clifton Eastern was approximately $17 million (1970) which would be approximately $99,258,764.27 if adjusted for inflation in 2010. 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. In 1995, the school became a pilot high school for the Sylvan Learning Center and reconfigured its curriculum as a result. From 1995-2003, Lake Clifton Eastern had six smaller learning communities which were The Academy of Finance and the Law, the School of Business and Commerce, the School of Human Services, the School of Communications and Technology, the School of Humanities and Fine and Cultural Arts, and the Ninth Grade Achievement School. The goal of Lake Clifton was "to provide an educational program that relevant to the needs of all students to prepare them for college/post secondary education, or the world of work."
The school was equipped to hold 4,800 students. The exact student population for the 2002-2003 school year was 2,400. Dropout rates, violence, low test scores and low attendance plagued the school for years.[1]
In January 1995 an electrical fire destroyed the school's library, cafeteria, and administrative offices.[2][3][4] In 1998, a state-of-the-art media center was built at the cost of $4 million (1998), which would be $5,344,512.24 if adjusted for inflation in 2010.[2][3][4]Lake Clifton's library is the newest in the whole city school system.
A decision was made in early 2003 by the city school board to close and split Lake Clifton into a smaller school after the graduation of the Class of 2003 (a previous attempt to split up Lake Clifton Eastern caused mass confusion among not only the students but the staff as well since it was attempted in the middle of the 2001-2002 school year and the school system was forced to merge the schools again and a successful attempt was made the following school year by effecting the closing and split at the end of the 2002-2003 school year), a trend that is occurring throughout the city school system with large high schools.[5] [6] 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. Since, Doris M. Johnson High School was one of the five schools recommend for closure by the BCPSS at the end of the 2009-2010 school year the Lake Clifton Campus currently contains two small schools, Heritage High School #425 and The REACH! Partnership School #341.[7][8] There are ongoing rumors about closing the building and moving the students to save money. The community vigorously opposed such action due to the disruption to the students. There are also ongoing rumors that Johns Hopkins plans to purchase the building from the city schools for an unknown purpose.
Lake Clifton's athletic 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.
The layout of Lake Clifton is unique in that it has a central core containing the main office, a 1,000-seat auditorium, two cafeterias, two gymnasiums, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, main entrance, media center, and other administrative offices. That central core is connected by bridges and passageways to two buildings that each contain a common area which then radiates to four distinct small units with entrances of their own that house the classrooms on a lower basement level, 1st floor and 2nd floor. The units are referred to as A unit, B unit, C unit, and D unit; A and B units are connected on the left side of the central core and C and D units on the right side. The units are identical in their layout and the classroom numbers actually corresponded to what floor the classroom was on. For example, B208 would be a classroom located in B unit on the second floor, B108 would be a classroom in the same unit however on the 1st floor, and B08 would be a classroom located on the basement level. A101, B101, C101 and D101 housed unit school offices with their own unit administrators in addition to a principal and assistant principal.