Mendota Township High School is a secondary school located at 2300 W. Main Street, Mendota, Illinois. It currently educates, as of August 2010, 619 students. The school lies within School District No. 280, and MTHS is the only school that the district operates. The district superintendent is Jeff Prusator who has been serving in that position since 2004. Denise Aughenbaugh is the principal, with Joe Masini serving as vice-principal.[1]
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MTHS includes many extra-curricular activities. Among these are EnviroClub, Scholastic Bowl, Academic Challenge, FFA, Math Team, Interact Club, Student Council, Spanish Club, Yearbook Club, Spanish National Honor Society, National Honor Society, and several others.
The school is also known for its fine arts department. The band program is currently headed by Matt Holzner, who is an alumnus of MHS. The band has four annual concerts a year: the Fall Concert, Winter Concert, Symphony Concert, and Graduation Concert.
The Mendota drama department puts on dramatic productions, a play every fall, one every summer, and a musical every other spring. For 2010, the drama program underwent production of the opera, Les Miserables. It was directed and produced by Lori Schrock and Amy Wilson.
The fine arts department also has a group of regionally-renowned madrigal singers. At contests, they almost always get top scores, and their annual madrigal dinners are constantly sold out.
The school's teams are known at the Mendota Trojans, and compete in the North Central Illinois Conference (NCIC). Like most public American high schools, there are many sports available to students at Mendota. Fall sports include football, cross country, boys' soccer, girls' tennis, golf, & volleyball. Winter sports include basketball, bowling, & wrestling. Spring sports include girls' soccer, boys' tennis, baseball, softball, & track.
The football team has been successful in recent years. In both 2009 and 2010, the Trojans made it to the state quarter-finals, losing to the Geneseo Maple Leafs in 2009[2] and being defeated by the Sandwich Indians in the 2010 quarter-finals.[3]
Before Mendota High School existed, there were two high schools in the city of Mendota, East Mendota High School and Blackstone High School. Both were founded in the 1870s. The two united in 1911 and held classes in Blackstone. East Mendota then became Lincoln School.[4] In 1917, a new brick high school was constructed in the northern section of town to accommodate a growing student enrollment, and it went through several additions in later years. That building served the community until 2002,[5] when a new high school was constructed on the northwest side of the city. The new building was constructed because a restroom on the second floor of the 1917 building collapsed onto the floor below it. The current high school is located along U.S. Route 52 near the corner of it and N. 44th Road.
The school district has area in three different counties, nine townships, and over 150 square miles (390 km2).
The eight townships fully or partially within the school district are Mendota Township, LaSalle County, Troy Grove Township, LaSalle County, Meriden Township, LaSalle County, Ophir Township, LaSalle County, Waltham Township, LaSalle County, Westfield Township, Bureau County, Clarion Township, Bureau County, Brooklyn Township, Lee County, Sublette Township, Lee County, and Wyoming Township, Lee County. Though the town of Mendota remains at a stable population, the high school population continues to grow. This is possibly due to the amount of small towns encompassed within the boundaries of the district. Among these are Troy Grove, Triumph, Meriden, Compton, and West Brooklyn.