Lenape Valley Regional High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school and school district in serving students in ninth through twelfth grades from two municipalities in Sussex County and one in Morris County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The communities served by the high school are Byram Township and Stanhope Borough in Sussex County and Netcong Borough in Morris County. The school is located in Stanhope.
As of the 2021–22 school year, the school had an enrollment of 657 students and 54.1 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 12.1:1. There were 45 students (6.8% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 13 (2.0% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.
The district is classified by the New Jersey Department of Education as being in District Factor Group "GH", the third-highest of eight groupings. District Factor Groups organize districts statewide to allow comparison by common socioeconomic characteristics of the local districts. From lowest socioeconomic status to highest, the categories are A, B, CD, DE, FG, GH, I and J.
Lenape Valley had been the only high school in Sussex County with a planetarium. In February 2016, the board of education voted to eliminate the planetarium and use the space for science labs.
History
Netcong High School closed in 1974 and Lenape Valley began serving students from Netcong and those from Byram Township and Stanhope. Byram Township had sent their students to Sparta High School, but was told they had to leave due to increasing enrollment at Sparta.
The school opened in September 1974 with an enrollment of 737 students.
On May 28, 2019, the school suffered minor damage from an EF-1 tornado that touched down in trees behind the school.
Awards, recognition and rankings
The school was the 180th-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 120th in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 108th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 105th out of 316 schools statewide in its September 2008 cover story. The school was ranked 139th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which surveyed 316 schools across the state.
Schooldigger.com ranked the school tied for 145th out of 381 public high schools statewide in its 2011 rankings (an increase of 2 positions from the 2010 ranking) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the mathematics (82.9%) and language arts literacy (95.1%) components of the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).
In the 2013-14 school year, Lenape Valley Regional High School ranked seventh in SAT scores in Sussex County out of nine other public high schools.
Extracurricular activities
Lenape Valley Regional High School offers a selection of sports, including football, soccer, cross country, tennis, wrestling, field hockey, swimming, basketball, and cheerleading. It also has a weight room available. The school also offers business activities, creative writing-based courses and music courses, including choirs and bands.
Athletics
The Lenape Valley Regional High School Patriots participate in the Northwest Jersey Athletic Conference, which is comprised of public and private high schools from Morris, Sussex and Warren counties and was established following a reorganization of sports leagues in Northern New Jersey by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA). Until the NJSIAA's 2009 realignment, the school had participated in the Sussex County Interscholastic League, which included public and private high schools located in Sussex County and northern Morris County. With 534 students in grades 10-12, the school was classified by the NJSIAA for the 2019–20 school year as Group II for most athletic competition purposes, which included schools with an enrollment of 486 to 758 students in that grade range. The football team competes in the American White division of the North Jersey Super Football Conference, which includes 112 schools competing in 20 divisions, making it the nation's biggest football-only high school sports league. The school was classified by the NJSIAA as Group II North for football for 2022–2024, which included schools with 478 to 672 students.