Watchung Hills Regional High School is a regional comprehensive public high school and school district serving students in portions of Somerset and Morris Counties in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Students from Warren Township and from the neighboring communities of Watchung, and Green Brook in Somerset County and Long Hill Township in Morris County attend the school. The high school is located in Warren Township, on Stirling Road.
In 2022, U.S. News & World Report ranked the school 107th of the 445 high schools in New Jersey and 2643rd in the country, with 54% of students participating in Advanced Placement exams.
History
Constructed using $1,650,000 in bond funding (equivalent to $ million in ), the school included 38 classrooms designed to handle an enrollment of 750 students on a site in Warren Township covering . The school opened in September 1957 with 615 students in attendance. Prior to the opening of the regional school, students from Warren Township and Watchung had attended an increasingly overcrowded North Plainfield High School, while students from Long Hill Township attended Bernards High School on an interim basis, after a previous relationship with Morristown High School had been ended.
In 2021, the school announced that it would retain its Warriors team name, but updated its logo and branding to remove any images of Native American symbols and to help represent unity in the district. The retired logo had featured a Native American headdress.
Demographics
As of the 2021–22 school year, the school had an enrollment of 1,823 students and 156.6 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 11.6:1. There were 22 students (1.2% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 9 (0.5% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.
The district is classified by the New Jersey Department of Education as being in District Factor Group "I", the second-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.
Awards, recognition and rankings
Watchung Hills Regional High School received the National Blue Ribbon Award of Excellence from the United States Department of Education in 1994-95, the highest honor that an American school can achieve.
In 2021 Watchung Hills Regional High School was awarded the New Jersey Lighthouse award for its work towards Equity - specifically efforts toward recruiting and retaining a diverse staff.
In its listing of "America's Best High Schools 2016", the school was ranked 131st out of 500 best high schools in the country; it was ranked 24th among all high schools in New Jersey and 11th among the state's non-magnet schools.
In its 2013 report on "America's Best High Schools", The Daily Beast ranked the school 514th in the nation among participating public high schools and 42nd among schools in New Jersey.
In the 2011 "Ranking America's High Schools" issue by The Washington Post, the school was ranked 34th in New Jersey and 1,160th nationwide. In 2008, Newsweek ranked the school as 919th in the nation. In Newsweek's May 22, 2007 issue, ranking the country's top high schools, Watchung Hills High School was listed in 999th place, the 31st-highest ranked school in New Jersey. In the magazine's 2006 survey, the school was ranked as 745th nationwide. In their 2004 survey, Newsweek ranked WHRHS as the 583rd best high school in the nation.
The school was the 50th-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 44th in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 48th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 49th in 2008 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 38th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which included 316 schools across the state. Schooldigger.com ranked the school 96th out of 381 public high schools statewide in its 2011 rankings (a decrease of 276 positions from the 2010 ranking) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the mathematics (86.0%) and language arts literacy (97.6%) components of the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).