Silver Lake Regional High School

Silver Lake Regional High School
Address
260 Pembroke Street
Kingston, MA, 02364
USA
Information
Type Public
Established 1955
Status Open
CEEB Code 221105
Principal James Mulcahy
Faculty 100 (approx.)
Grades 9–12
Gender coeducational
Number of students 1,118 (approx.)
Campus size 300 acres (1.2 km2)
Color(s) Red, White & Silver             
Nickname Lakers
Average SAT scores 514 verbal
542 math
508 writing
1564 total (2014)[1]
Newspaper The Laker Legend
Yearbook The Torch
Communities served Kingston, Plympton and Halifax
Feeder schools Silver Lake Regional Middle School
Website Silver Lake Regional High School

Silver Lake Regional High School is a public, regional high school in Massachusetts' South Shore region. It serves as the secondary school for the Silver Lake Regional School District, comprising the towns of Kingston, Plympton and Halifax, Massachusetts. From 1955 to 2004, the Silver Lake Regional School District included the town of Pembroke, Massachusetts.

History

Named for Silver Lake, which borders the four towns which belonged to the district for most of its history – Plympton, Halifax, Pembroke and Kingston - and which is situated near the campus, Silver Lake Regional High School opened on September 19, 1955, attended by students from the towns of Pembroke, Kingston, Plympton, Halifax and Carver in southeastern Massachusetts. The school was constructed for $1.7 million, and originally housed grades 7–12. Over ten thousand spectators attended the dedication, which was keynoted by Senator Leverett Saltonstall.[2] The original graduating class was 81 students.

Beginning with the 1959 school year, Carver left the district, and its students began attending Middleboro High School, before joining the Plymouth-Carver regional school district in 1963. In 1958, the seventh and eighth grades were split off into the former Kingston High School building (which stood behind the current Kingston Police Department headquarters), which became the first Silver Lake Junior High. In 1968, the region built a new junior high school building on Route 27 in Pembroke.

After the completion of Route 3 in 1962, the Silver Lake towns – as did the South Shore generally - experienced explosive population growth, well into the 1980s. The Silver Lake campus eventually grew too small for the growing populations of the towns – their combined population nearly trebled between the founding of the district and 1970 – and by 1970, the high school was on split sessions, becoming double sessions by 1974.

In 1974 Silver lake began construction on the Silver Lake-Pembroke Campus on Learning Lane in Pembroke. Construction would take two years at a cost of $3.7 million (which was funded by Pembroke residents). At the same time the original Silver Lake-Kingston campus underwent a major addition which would add a second gymnasium, new class rooms and a completely new vocational wing. Silver Lake–Pembroke was scheduled to open in September 1976, but was delayed until November 1976 due to vandalism and a fire during the summer of 1976. The fire caused the new sprinkler system to flood the lower level of a nearly complete school. Carpeting and sheetrock had to be replaced and repainted. The school eventually housed grades 9–12 of Pembroke residents, while Kingston, Halifax and Plympton residents continued to attend at the original building.

Silver Lake graduated its largest class, of 510 students, in 1981. Attendance peaked in 1980, when enrollment in the high school was 2100 students with just over 1000 students at the junior high. Subsequently, and throughout the 1980s, enrollment declined. In 1991, the region closed the junior high building, and converted the Pembroke campus to the junior high and the Kingston campus, once again became the sole high school campus housing students from Kingston, Pembroke, Halifax and Plympton as it had prior to 1976. Attendance dropped from 2100 in 1980 to 1260 in 1993.

Continued overcrowding in the school led Pembroke (with a population by 2000 half again what it was in 1970) to withdraw from the district and form its own independent school district in 2002; its students were still enrolled in Silver Lake until 2004.

Because of overcrowding and an outdated school a new high school was constructed on the site of the original building, which opened in 2004. The school is one of the most expensive standing in Massachusetts and is right next to the new Silver Lake Middle School.

The 1955 high school building stood until 2005 when it was torn down; however, the original football field, Sirrico Field, remains.

The school was cited in Boston magazine as being one of the 2008 fifty top schools in eastern Massachusetts.[3]

Athletics

The name for the Silver Lake teams is the Lakers and their mascot is a pirate.

Tony Sirrico, who had taught and coached at Pembroke High School in the 1950s became the first Athletic Director at Silver Lake. He also coached football and baseball at Silver Lake. In 1955 Silver Lake was a Division III school in the South Shore Conference. In 1966 it moved up to Division II and joined the Old Colony League. In 1986 it moved to Division I. The school boasts a largely successful football program (1980 Division III Super Bowl Champions) and was regionally known for excelling in basketball (in which it won a state title in 1960), hockey (in which it reached the Division II Eastern Mass Finals in 1977) and soccer (in which it won a state title in 1988).

In 2005, after the withdrawal of the town of Pembroke, Silver Lake began competing in Division II. The Lakers now compete in the Patriot League of southeastern Massachusetts.

For most of its existence, Silver Lake's chief rival was Plymouth-Carver Regional High School, until the breakup of Plymouth-Carver into three separate high schools in 1988; thereafter, until the district's demerger, its chief rival was Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School. The most notable current school rivalries are with Pembroke High School and Duxbury High School.

Notable alumni

References

  1. ↑ http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/sat_perf.aspx
  2. ↑ The Torch (SLHRS yearbook), 1956, p. 77.
  3. ↑ Silver Lake a 'Smartest Public High School' - Kingston, MA - Wicked Local Kingston
  4. ↑ Public officers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 2005-2006.

Coordinates: 42°0′55.1″N 70°47′8.5″W / 42.015306°N 70.785694°W