New Brunswick High School (NBHS) is a four-year comprehensive public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades in New Brunswick, in Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as the main secondary school of the New Brunswick Public Schools.
As of the 2021–22 school year, the school had an enrollment of 2,409 students and 162.5 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 14.8:1. There were 1,781 students (73.9% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 210 (8.7% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.
History
The first dedicated high school facility in New Brunswick, known as Livingston Avenue High School, was built in 1875 on the Livingston Avenue property where Roosevelt Elementary School currently stands. Previously, the "high school department" took up the second and third floors of the Bayard Street School, and the New Brunswick's first graduating high school class was in July 1869.
The second high school facility was completed in 1916, and contained 30 classrooms and an 800-seat auditorium. A new gymnasium was built as part of an addition in 1941, and another addition was built in 1945. This facility was repurposed as A. Chester Redshaw Elementary School following the construction of the current high school facility. Redshaw Elementary was closed in 2005 and demolished in 2006, and a new elementary school is planned for the site.
The next facility was located on Livingston Avenue, near the North Brunswick Township border, and was completed in 1964. The facility contains 67 classrooms (including dedicated classrooms for music and industrial arts classes), a gymnasium, a cafeteria, an auditorium, a library, and office space. The school was originally built to hold 1,200 students, and overcrowding necessitated the use of modular classrooms.
The North Brunswick Township Public Schools had sent students to New Brunswick High School until North Brunswick Township High School was completed in 1973 at a cost of $10 million and had been opened to the district's students in grades seven through nine. The New Brunswick Public Schools sought to prevent the shift of 280 students who would have attended high school in New Brunswick from attending the new facility, arguing that the withdrawal of the almost entirely white students from North Brunswick and Milltown would leave the New Brunswick school with an overwhelmingly black student body.
The current high school building opened in January 2010. The facility, constructed at a cost of $185 million, is located on Route 27. The previous high school building was converted into a middle school for grades 6 through 8, to open in September 2010.
Awards, recognition and rankings
The school was the 287th-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 293rd in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 282nd in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 303rd in 2008 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 302nd in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which surveyed 316 schools across the state.
Student body
The Class of 2014 had a 63% graduation rate.
As of 2013–14 school year, the school's population was 82.6% Hispanic, 15.9% African-American, 0.7% were Asian / Pacific Islander, 0.7% were White. Among students, 51.5% speak English as their first language at home, while 48.1% speak Spanish; 17.0% of students had a disability, 86.2% were economically disadvantaged and 10.6% of students had limited English proficiency.
The school has a Student Exchange Program, with various nations. Some neighboring countries went through with the program and students from NBHS went to China, India, and Japan.