Fresno High School
Encyclopedia
Fresno High School is a four-year secondary school
Secondary school
Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...

 located in Fresno, California
Fresno, California
Fresno is a city in central California, United States, the county seat of Fresno County. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 510,365, making it the fifth largest city in California, the largest inland city in California, and the 34th largest in the nation...

. Fresno High is the oldest high school in the Fresno metropolitan area and one of the few International Baccalaureate schools; in addition it continues to be the most populous and most diverse campus in Fresno. Dr. Adrian E. Palazuelos is the current principal of Fresno High.

History

The growth of Fresno during the boom period of the 1880s brought about many changes, including the need to establish the city’s first high school in 1889. It was named Fresno High because it would serve all people in Fresno.

The initial student body was 50 students with three teachers and three grade levels, ninth, junior and middle. A year later, Fresno High became a four-year school when the senior class was formed by those who passed the third level.

The first classes were held on September 16, 1889, on the second floor of the K Street School, located at Santa Clara and K (now Van Ness Avenue) streets. T.L. Heaton was the principal. The curriculum was classical——four years of Latin, English, history, science, and math. In June 1891, the first commencement ceremony was held at the Heaton Opera House. Seven students graduated.

The new school quickly outgrew the available space and had to be moved to the White School, where the Memorial Auditorium is located today. Plans for a new high school building were developed. In September 1896, the school year began in the new building on 0 Street between Stanislaus and Tuolumne streets. The new back structure, with its clock tower, had the latest and most modern facilities, including a library, a chemistry laboratory, a gymnasium, and a theater-style lecture hall. Some people felt it was too far from town and that the land, which cost $7,500, was too expensive. In 1922, the school moved to its present site on Echo Avenue.

More than a hundred years after its founding, Fresno High continues to serve Fresno's students. The curriculum, though, has been broadened to meet the needs of the world's professions. However the opportunity to pursue a classical education, including the study of Latin, is still available to the students of Fresno High School.
Fresno High School has foundations dating back to the 1800s. Fresno's second high school was originally located in downtown near "M" Street. The school was relocated several times. Freshmen students were once sent one-fourth of a mile away from their school to the Hamilton K-8 magnet campus. Fresno High School's current location is at 1839 North Echo Avenue, near Palm and McKinley Avenues. Fresno High School is surrounded by large homes (originally in one of Fresno's affluent areas) and large Fresno ash and pine trees. The campus retains most of its history and is one of the few schools to hold on to its original architecture. During 2002 the historic Royce Hall building caught fire and suffered minimal damage.

Academics

Fresno High School is one of the few accredited schools in the Fresno Unified School District
Fresno Unified School District
Fresno Unified School District is a school district in Fresno, California, U.S.A.-Facts and Figures:*California's 4th largest school district*79,383 students *$869 million budget...

 to offer its students the full International Baccalaureate diplomas. The school has been offering its graduate students full IB diplomas since June 2007. The campus offers several advanced placement courses and requires the study of foreign language in order to receive a diploma, along with the completion of a 4,000 word essay and 150 hours of community service. The campus has received poor academic achievement scores in the past, but it has shown impressive improvement. The campus employs 133 full- and part-time instructors, in addition to several guidance counselors, classified staff, administrative employees, one full-time psychologist and one full-time family therapist. The campus offers Spanish, French, Latin, and German language courses.

Sports

Fresno High is an active athletic school, maintaining several teams for both sexes in addition to several co-ed teams. The Fresno High football team continues "the oldest high school rivalry West of the Mississippi" known as the Pig Game. The Pig Game is an annual game in which Fresno High plays against its rival Roosevelt High School for a pig statue to hold for that year. The pig was at one time stolen from Fresno High's attendance office and a replacement was made. The campus offers Prep and Cheer, football,cross country, soccer, baseball, golf, tennis, water polo, softball teams, track and field, swim, badminton, and a lacrosse team.

Structure

Fresno High's Campus has changed several times from its original construction downtown near "M" Street. The campus is currently one of the smallest in Fresno Unified School District. The campus is divided into several components. The two main components are "South Side" and "North Side", named so from their campus location. South Side campus houses Title I offices, the business, foreign language, science, and mathematics divisions. The North Side houses English, social sciences, art, and history divisions. Physical education, leadership and JROTC are housed on the western-most portion of the campus. The drama and music divisions, in addition to various miscellaneous classrooms, are attached to Fresno High's historic Royce Hall. Also there is a little known of fallout shelter entrance at the rear of the hand-ball courts, (in the middle where the metal grate is on the ground), that goes down stairs to a door that leads under "goat hill" and then under Royce Hall, this is all the information known at this time.

Notable alumni

  • Cher
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    Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...

    , singer and actress
  • Mike Connors
    Mike Connors
    Mike Connors is an American actor best known for playing detective Joe Mannix in the CBS television series, Mannix. Before that, he had played a crime-fighting investigator, wielding a .38 handgun hidden in his back, in another CBS series, Tightrope.-Early life:Connors was born Krekor Ohanian in...

    , actor
  • Dick Contino
    Dick Contino
    Dick Contino is an American accordionist and singer.Contino studied accordion primarily with San Francisco-based Angelo Cognazzo, and occasionally with Los Angeles-based Guido Deiro. Early on he exhibited great virtuosity on the instrument...

    , accordionist
  • Jon Hall
    Jon Hall
    Jon Hall was an American film actor.-Biography:Born Charles Felix Locher in Fresno, California, and raised in Tahiti by his father, the Swiss-born actor Felix Locher, he was a nephew of James Norman Hall, one of the authors of Mutiny on the Bounty...

    , actor
  • David Harris, anti-war activist and journalist
  • Bobby Jones, New York Mets
    New York Mets
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     and San Diego Padres
    San Diego Padres
    The San Diego Padres are a Major League Baseball team based in San Diego, California. They play in the National League Western Division. Founded in 1969, the Padres have won the National League Pennant twice, in 1984 and 1998, losing in the World Series both times...

     pitcher
    Pitcher
    In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throwsthe baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the...

  • Arthur Scott King
    Arthur Scott King
    Arthur Scott King was an American physicist and astrophysicist.He was born in Jerseyville, Illinois, the son of Robert Andrew and Miriam Munson King. In 1883 the family moved to Santa Rosa, California in an attempt to alleviate their son Arthur's chronic asthma...

    , physicist and astrophysicist
  • Les Richter
    Les Richter
    Leslie Alan Richter was a Los Angeles Rams National Football League football player, former head of operations for NASCAR and president of the Riverside International Raceway. He played in 8 Pro Bowls as a linebacker. Richter was born in Fresno, California...

    , Los Angeles Rams football player
  • William Saroyan
    William Saroyan
    William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.-Early years:...

    , writer
  • Tom Seaver
    Tom Seaver
    George Thomas "Tom" Seaver , nicknamed "Tom Terrific" and "The Franchise", is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. He pitched from 1967-1986 for four different teams in his career, but is noted primarily for his time with the New York Mets...

    , Major League Baseball
    Major League Baseball
    Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...

    pitcher
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