Pinelands Regional High School (PRHS) is a four-year regional public high school that serves students in ninth through twelfth grades from Eagleswood Township, Little Egg Harbor Township and Tuckerton Borough in Ocean County and from Bass River Township, in Burlington County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as part of the Pinelands Regional School District. The school is overseen by the New Jersey Department of Education and has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1986.
As of the 2021–22 school year, the school had an enrollment of 1,070 students and 90.0 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 11.9:1. There were 328 students (30.7% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 106 (9.9% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.
History
Prior to the opening of the school, students from those towns had attended Southern Regional School District in Manahawkin. Constructed on a site covering at a cost of $9.7 million (equivalent to $ million in ), Pinelands Regional High School officially opened on September 5, 1979, as a Junior-Senior High School, originally housing grades 7-11 from Tuckerton, Little Egg Harbor, Bass River, and Eagleswood, while seniors finished their education at Southern Regional.
The building originally housed grades 7–8 on the third floor, 9–10 on the second, and 11–12 on the first. During the first school year (1979-1980) there was no senior class, as those students were allowed finish the year at Southern Regional High School. The building featured an experimental "open classroom" design, where a large group of students of varying skill levels would be in a single, large classroom with several teachers overseeing them; and contained no interior walls. However, this format didn't last long, and in the 1980s, the rooms were walled off, and separated by floor-to-ceiling folding partitions.
In 1991, Pinelands Middle School opened across the street for students in grades 7–8. Also in the 90s, a new building was completed next to the high school, which houses a daycare center called "Rainbow Express". Students taking Child Care classes go to class in this building to help with the daycare kids. In 2002, the Middle School was expanded and the 9th grade was moved there. When the expansion was completed at the Middle School, it was renamed "Pinelands Regional Junior High School" while the High School was renamed the "Senior High School", although this name is rarely used.
After rejecting all three referendum questions the previous November, voters approved all three bond questions in January 2017 to cover the costs of a $53.6 million renovation and upgrade job to address structural issues in the high school and junior high school. By October, the school was closed indefinitely due to complications in the construction process, with classes temporarily moved to available locations at the junior high school. In September 2019, the high school re-opened, housing grades 9-12 for the first time since 2002.
Awards, recognition and rankings
The school was the 185th-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 339 schools statewide in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2014 cover story on the state's "Top Public High Schools", using a new ranking methodology. The school had been ranked 173rd in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 262nd in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 241st in 2008 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 254th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which surveyed 316 schools across the state.
Schooldigger.com ranked the school 254th out of 376 public high schools statewide in its 2010 rankings (a decrease of 2 positions from the 2009 rank) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the language arts literacy and mathematics components of the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).