Suffern High School

Suffern Senior High School
Location
49 Viola Road Suffern, NY, United States
Information
Type	Public school
Principal	Patrick Breen
Number of students	1545
Campus	Suburban
Color(s)	Navy Blue, Silver and White
Mascot	Mountain Lion
Website	Website

Suffern High School is located in the Ramapo Central School District in Suffern, New York. Students participate in classes from 7:30 – 14:05 EST. The school's mascot is a Mountain Lion (Mountie) and its newspaper is the Mountain Echo. Its news program is SHS News. Suffern High School also publishes a poetry magazine called Picking the Endangered Wildflowers as well as an art & literature magazine known as the Chameleon. Suffern High is ranked in the top 1600 high schools in the United States at number 705.

Layout

Tennis Courts At Suffern High School

Suffern High School Front entrance

Suffern High School has two main wings; one to the right of the main entrance with two floors, each separated into two sections, and one to the left of the entrance with three floors. Each floor of the right wing is separated into two square shaped sections joined by a narrow strip. Each square, despite holding classes in many if not all subjects, is home primarily to certain departments, namely:

• Bottom left: History
• Bottom right: English
• Top Left: Science
• Top Right: Math and Foreign Language

The left wing of the school is home to the music and art programs. The bottom floor contains choral and orchestral rooms, while the top two floors include rooms for art, photography, computers, wood & metal shop, home economics, as well as extra athletic rooms.

The main office, nurse's office, cafeteria, gymnasium and 1,000+ seat auditorium occupy some of the rooms which connect the two main wings to the school. Connecting the two sides of the right wing of the school on the bottom floor is the library.

School features

Unit Lunch

Suffern High is known for its unique feature, unit lunch, when every student in the school has lunch at the same time, as opposed to a period based schedule. With 1500+ students having lunch simultaneously, students must eat in the halls as well as the cafeteria. This enables students to attend club meetings or extra help sessions for their classes, or simply spend time with friends.

Specialized Facilities and Equipment

There are also special facilities designed for physical education. Next to the gym is a fitness center that contains several FIT LINNx exercise machines which track users' workout activity over time using a local area network and a computerized database, along with an spinning room. Other special features include an all season track, a pool, an amphitheater in front of the school, a planetarium, and a wrestling room. Suffern also has a very advanced network of computers, with iMacs running Boot Camp with Windows XP and Mac OS X Leopard. There are also PCs running only Windows XP.

Extracurricular Activities

Suffern High also offers many sports throughout the year that take place both on and off campus; the school sports team is the Mounties. Some sports games are played at Suffern Middle School, located close to the high school. There are over 60 extracurricular activities, many of which take place during unit lunch. Some of these activities include a newly introduced videogame club Suffern High School Gamers Club, a Jewish Culture club, several honor societies, an Audio-visual Crew, two play productions per year, and a united student organization.

Courses

Suffern High School students have the option to take classes in a large variety of subjects, assuming they have the appropriate grades, and parental consent, if applicable. Many honors level classes, AP classes, and classes affiliated with the Syracuse University Project Advance program and SUNY Albany are offered as well. There are also two unique courses available to students. One is the Peer Leadership class for seniors, which aspiring juniors must be screened for. In this course, attendees promise to set an example for younger students and are trained to help advise incoming freshman at several meetings. They also practice skits together to present to the freshman class that review issues that are common in high schools such as drug use, alcohol, and peer pressure. Suffern also has a 3 year scientific and engineering research program known as S.T.I.R., which stands for Scientific and Technological Investigative Research. In this program, students, from their sophomore to senior years, study a topic by reviewing scientific journals in that topic, with the goal of eventually going out to find an Subject Matter Expert (SME) in that topic when they understand it well enough. STIR staff then encourage the student to work in a lab on a related scientific project, whose front matter is encouraged to be presented in multiple science competitions. Notable contest winners from the past few years include Oren Brecher, a finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search in the 2006–2007 school year, as well Sheela Krishnan, a finalist in Intel STS as well in the 2005–2006 school year.

Rotating Schedule

Suffern High School utilizes rotating scheduling system consisting of 5 different types of days; 8, A, B, C, and D. Students have 8 different periods on their schedule numbered 1–8, and on 8 days, they attend first period for 45 minutes, and periods 2–8 for 40 minutes, with a lunch break between periods 4 and 5. On all other days, students go to six of their classes for 55 minutes with a lunch break between their 3rd and 4th periods. The breakdown of these days is listed below. Also, students may have periods that switch every other day that they have that period, such as science lab switching with gym. Students have 5 minutes to travel between classes.

• 8 – days

1 2 3 4 Lunch 5 6 7 8

• A – day

1 2 3 Lunch 5 6 7

• B – day

4 1 2 Lunch 8 5 6

• C – days

3 4 1 Lunch 7 8 5

• D – days

2 3 4 Lunch 6 7 8

Notable History

The Death of Patrick Faherty

On August 2, 2009 Suffern High School Principal Patrick Faherty died of leukemia. Faherty had worked at Suffern for over 25 years, and much of Suffern was in shock over his untimely death. Patrick Breen has since worked as the principal for the school.

2010 Baseball Tragedy

On March 30, 2010, two players (Vincent Crotty and Christopher Konkowski) of the Suffern High School Varsity baseball team were killed in an automobile accident when their car collided with a dump truck. Crotty was driving to baseball practice with Konkowski as a passenger in the front seat when his 2008 Ford Focus crossed the double yellow line and the fatal accident took place. It occurred up the street from Crotty's home, at the intersection of Rt. 202 and Lake Rd. The accident left Suffern in mourning, and led to the annual wooden bat game against North Rockland HS being renamed the "Vincent Crotty and Chris Konkowski Wood Bat Classic." A Sports Charity foundation has also been founded in memoriam of Crotty and an athletic scholarship fund in memoriam of Konkowski. Professional baseball player Bernie Williams hosted a concert on Oct. 23, 2010 at the historic Lafayette Theater in Suffern that served as a benefit to both of the boys' fundraisers. Williams was also in attendance of Suffern's first baseball game of the season, in which a ceremony honoring both Crotty and Konkowski took place before the game.

In Film

Suffern High School was used for as a setting for certain scenes in the films "The Manhattan Project" and "Off the Black."

Notable alumni

• Hendrick Hertzberg – Chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter.
• Sidney Hertzberg – New York Knicks basketball player
• Joe Lockhart – Press Secretary for President Bill Clinton
• Thomas Meehan – Tony award winner book writer of Annie and The Producers
• Walt Weiss – Former Major League Baseball player.
• Jake Bowen- Guitarist for metal band Periphery

External links

• Suffern High School
• Ramapo Central School District