Piedmont High School is a public high school located in Piedmont, California, United States, and is one of two high schools in the Piedmont Unified School District.
Piedmont High School has officially been awarded the Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence by the United States Department of Education.
Background
Piedmont High School offers school for children aged ninth through twelfth grade and is particularly popular for families with school-aged children looking to move somewhere to improve their schooling prospects.
Piedmont's colors are purple and white (representing the Scottish thistle), and its mascot, the Highlander, reflects the school's Scottish heritage.
History
Funded by a bond passed by voters in 1920, the Piedmont Unified School District opened the city's first high school in September of 1922.
Piedmont High was the last school in California to resist pressure from the state to stop enforcing a provision in their dress code which required students wear a uniform.
The social scene was once dominated by social clubs, which resembled college sororities and fraternities, reminiscent of Lindsay Lohan's Mean Girls. While the social clubs raised money for the organizations with which they were affiliated, their charitable exterior was just a front for what they really were, mainly drinking clubs. The male clubs died out in the mid-1990s when they grew irrelevant, but the female social clubs didn't end until 2004 when the incoming senior class exhibited overwhelming indifference and distaste for retaining the tradition. "The school was covered in the New York Times when, in the mid-1990s, it began breathalyzing all students before dances.
In 2012, the school was covered by many major news outlets for a scandal in which members of the football team created a points system for engaging in sexual activity with female students at the school, unbeknownst to most of the women.
Campus
Piedmont High School has an open campus, and students can leave during brunch, lunch, and unscheduled periods. The campus is between Piedmont Park on the right of the school and Piedmont Middle School and Witter Field on the left.
The center of campus is a grassy area referred to as "the quad." The quad is the center of campus, connecting the former site of the Alan Harvey Theatre, the library, the cafeteria and student center, and the amphitheater. Classes are scattered around campus, with the music and science buildings the furthest apart.
The campus was originally built on a portion of Piedmont Park, and dog-walking trails behind the school connect to the park.
Architecture
The school was built in 1921 in a neoclassical design, part of the same plan that built the Piedmont city's Exedra. Since its designed by architect W.H. Weeks, the school has undergone several reconstructions, for reasons such as expansion, earthquake retrofitting, and combatting dry rot.
In 1974, the school was declared unsafe, under state earthquake laws. It was demolished, and three new classroom buildings and a gymnasium were built. The original library, quad, and administration buildings were rehabilitated.
Reconstruction in the 1970s reflected the "back-to-nature" look popular at the time, using wood instead of shingles. The school's "breezeway," an open, wide corridor running between the school's main buildings, exemplifies this.
The last construction was an expansion of the gymnasium, during the 2003–2004 school year, to include an entrance room that also displays trophies. The school has undergone further construction following Measure E, which issued $56 million in bonds for the reconstruction of school facilities to meet earthquake safety guidelines.
Academics
Piedmont High School is an academically strong school, scoring a 10 out of 10 for test scores at the website GreatSchools.net. In 2008, it was ranked in the top 100 schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. The school newspaper reported that the average of GPA of 2006's graduating class was 3.47.
Courses
Advanced Placement
As of 2009–2010, the school offers the following AP courses. AP Biology AP Calculus AB AP Calculus BC AP Computer Science (both AP Computer Science A and AP Computer Science Principles) AP English Literature AP Environmental Science AP French Language AP Music Theory (offered bi-yearly) AP Spanish Language AP Studio Art 2D AP Studio Art 3D AP United States History AP Chinese Language and Culture
In addition, honors courses in physics, chemistry, and statistics are offered.