Emmaus High School

Emmaus High School
Location
500 Macungie Avenue Emmaus, Pennsylvania
Information
Type	Public
Established	1955
Principal	Dr. Herman Corradetti
Enrollment	2,782
Mascot	Green Hornet
Colors	Green and Gold
Website	http://www.eastpenn.k12.pa.us/ehs/

Emmaus High School is a public high school located in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The school serves grades 9 through 12 in Pennsylvania's East Penn School District.

The school is located off of Cedar Crest Boulevard, at 500 Macungie Avenue in Emmaus.

The Emmaus High School mascot is the "Green Hornet", and the school's colors are green and gold.

Student population

As of the 2006-2007 academic year, the high school is attended by 2,783 students. Emmaus High School serves students from Alburtis, west-side Allentown, Ancient Oaks, Emmaus, Lower Macungie Township, Macungie and Upper Milford Township.

Emmaus High School ranks among the top Lehigh Valley high schools in its percentage of graduating students who pursue post-secondary education. The school also maintains a program for academically gifted students. This program includes several advanced classes, and a mentorship program

Two middle schools, Eyer Middle School and Lower Macungie Middle School, both located in Macungie, serve grades six through eight and feed into Emmaus High School.

History

1880s to 1955

The Emaus School District (see Emmaus, Pennsylvania for an explanation of the 1950s change in the town's spelling from Emaus to Emmaus) began offering high school classes in the 1880s, providing education up to tenth grade in one of the rooms of a 4-room school building on East Main Street, in Emmaus. The first graduating class on record was the Emaus High School class of 1890, with two graduates. In 1891 the high school grades moved to the Central Building on Ridge Street, sharing the building with some of the lower grades.

Emaus High School obtained a home of its own when, in 1915, the high school moved into a brand new building on North Street between Fifth and Sixth Streets. While the building was designated the Jefferson Building, yearbooks of the era identify the school as Emaus High School. By this time, the high school was made up of tenth grade (juniors) eleventh grade (middlers) and twelfth grade (seniors). The yearbook of the class of 1916 pictures 18 graduates, evenly divided between boys and girls.

The Jefferson Building was enlarged several times, and by 1934 was considered a state of the art high school, with 16 classrooms, a library, auditorium, gymnasium, woodshop, and home economics room. By the 1930s, EHS had developed many of the activities that continue to this day, with the 1931 yearbook listing a band, chorus, orchestra (55 players), 16 different clubs, and teams for football, basketball (boys and girls) and debating. EHS's main football rival at this time was East Greenville High, which met the Hornets every year on "Turkey Day" (Thanksgiving). Today, East Greenville students go to Upper Perkiomen High School. The football field was about a mile away at the site of the current Fourth Street Field. The Emaus High School class of 1931 had 45 graduates, who took either the general or the commercial course. One of the bygone features of EHS life on North Street was "open lunch" where students could walk home for lunch, or go across the street for a hot dog.

The Emaus School District had been operating since at least 1861. By the 1930s and 40s, the boroughs of Macungie and Alburtis contracted with the Emaus district to send their high school students to EHS. There were no school buses running, and out-of-borough students took the Reading Railroad passenger service to the Emaus train station. If the train was late, the riders were still considered tardy.

By the 1950s the borough corrected the spelling of its name to Emmaus, as traditionally spelled in the Bible, and the school district and high school followed suit. With the school's growing population, it was obvious that the Jefferson Building could no longer meet the needs of a modern high school, and extensive resources would be needed to build a state of the art facility. Accordingly, the boroughs of Emmaus, Macungie, and Alburtis, along with the townships of Lower Macungie and Upper Milford, merged their school districts into the East Penn Union School District (now known as the East Penn School District). This unified district was able to meet the financial challenge of building a greatly expanded, up to date high school.

1955 to current

In 1955, the first sections of the current Emmaus High School building opened at its existing location on Macungie Avenue, in the borough. This building included an auditorium and gym which far surpassed those of the old building, plus science labs, language labs, and a natatorium (swimming pool). After the high school moved out of the Jefferson Building, that building was used as the junior high school, until a seventh and eight grade wing was added to the new high school building circa 1960, making EHS a six-year high school with a single principal, but separate assistant principals for the senior high and junior high grades. The Emmaus Junior High School building, with its own faculty and administration was opened on the north side of the high school building in 1965, ten years after the opening of the neighboring Emmaus High School, serving seventh and eighth grades. At that point, the Jefferson Building was repurposed as an elementary school.

By the early 1960s, the number of sports at Emmaus High School had expanded to include basketball, field hockey and softball for girls, and football, basketball, wrestling, track and field, cross country, baseball, swimming and golf for boys. A class play was presented annually, and in 1969, EHS produced its first musical, Bye Bye Birdie.

In 2000, as its population continued to grow with a significant influx of residents from New Jersey, New York City and Philadelphia, Emmaus High School expanded again, taking over the junior high building, adding additional space, and using the whole complex to house grades nine through twelve. The school's rapid population growth continued, particularly with a fast growing population in Lower Macungie Township, and another major expansion was conducted in 2004.

The Jefferson Building, the first dedicated home of EHS, was decommissioned as a school. In 2004, the Jefferson Building was demolished, and replaced by a multi-level office building.

EHS today is larger and more vibrant than ever, growing frown from a small town high school in the late 1800s and early 1900s, with a handful of students, to one of the leading and largest high schools in the Lehigh Valley, the third largest metropolitan region in Pennsylvania. As Emmaus High School has grown, it has distinguished itself considerably in academics, the arts and athletics.

School accomplishments

Academics

Emmaus High School's academic team has made several appearances at the national level, appearing the last three years (2003, 2004 and 2005) in the Panasonic Academic Challenge at Disney World and placing 5th nationally in 2003.

Emmaus High School also holds the record for the most wins of any high school in Pennsylvania's Scholastic Scrimmage contest, an academic quiz game televised on Pennsylvania PBS affiliates. Emmaus has won the contest seven times (1981, 1983, 1993, 1995, 2000, 2003 and 2004) and placed second three times (1986, 1992 and 2002).

Athletics

Emmaus High School competes athletically in the Lehigh Valley Conference in the District XI division of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association. The school fields teams in all of the association's sports. Its primary Lehigh Valley Conference athletic rivalries are Parkland High School in South Whitehall Township and Whitehall High School in Whitehall Township.

Emmaus High School's highly successful girls field hockey team has won eight Pennsylvania state championships over the past 15 years (1991, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2001, 2004 and 2005), more than any other Pennsylvania high school. The team is regularly ranked among the best high school-level girls field hockey teams in the nation. Emmaus High School's girls swimming and diving team also has established itself recently as the best in the state, winning the Pennsylvania state championship in five of the last seven years (2000, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007).

Emmaus High School has also won AAA-level Pennsylvania state championships in boys swimming and diving (2006 and 2007), girls swimming and diving 2007 won in 2007, girls soccer (1997) and girls softball (2000).

In 2006, Emmaus High School's girls cross country team placed 2nd in the Pennsylvania state competition. Also in 2006, Emmaus High School's boys and girls U.S. Marine Corps physical fitness team, which is based on the United States Marine Corps physical fitness regimen, placed 2nd in the Pennsylvania state competition. As with Emmaus High School's girls field hockey team, its Marine Corps physical fitness team has often ranked among the nation's best.

Since 1955, Emmaus High School has won Lehigh Valley Conference championships at least once in every Lehigh Valley Conference sport.

Arts

Twenty-two Emmaus High School choral students were selected to participate in the 2007 Pennsylvania Music Educators Association (PMEA) District 10 Chorus Festival, more than any other high school in the seven District 10 counties. Sixteen students advanced to the Regional Chorus Festival held at Boyertown High School, also outnumbering other districts (including double of rival Boyertown High School). Out of the sixteen, four Emmaus High School students (more than any other high school participating in the festival), went on to participate in the PMEA All-State Conference, held in April 2007 in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Emmaus High School's spring 2007 production of Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida has earned them fourteen Freddy Award nominations receiving the most along with Freedom High School's production of Anything Goes. The Freddy Awards, held at the State Theatre of Easton, began in 2002 "to recognize and reward exceptional accomplishments in the production and performance of musical theatre in local high schools." The ceremony was held on May 24th, with Aida receiving five Freddy awards including "Outstanding Performance By An Orchestra", "Outstanding Light Design", "Outstanding Chorus", "Outstanding Performance by an Actress In A Supporting Role", and "Oustanding Scenic Design." They fell one short of having the most awards to Whitehall High School's production of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

School Paper

The Stinger

Emmaus High School's school sponsored, student run newspaper is called The Stinger, its name in keeping with the hornet being the schools mascot. The newspaper's content is provided by a staff of students who perform journalistic duties reporting, photographing and writing all the content in the newspaper.

Typically the newspaper has a variety of sections relating to sports, interviews, editorials, popular culture, inside jokes relating to news about the school and in most issues the final page is dedicated to student drawn comics.

The Stinger's content does not have to be approved by the school's administration, simply over viewed and likewise The Stinger sometimes tackles controversial topics such as drug use among the student population and truancy.

News from the West Wing

From 1999 to 2001 an independent humor newspaper called News from the West Wing was distributed throughout Emmaus High School halls and online. Similar in style to The Onion, the newspaper was founded in 1999 by a small group of Emmaus High School students and was entirely student-run.

The newspaper featured a satirical look at Emmaus High School student life, while poking fun at the school administration. The newspaper was popular and widely-read among Emmaus High School students. The principal was always invited to preview each edition. In 2000, a special issue was selected to be placed into the high school's corner stone, upon the inauguration of the renovated high school. It also was the subject of a 1999 article in the Allentown newspaper, The Morning Call [1].

Satirical news stories in News from the West Wing included a gang war between the school's East Wing and West Wing (which inspired the publication's name), the East Penn School District Superintendent's decision to purchase a "matter transporter", and a scientific analysis of an Emmaus High School cafeteria food item dubbed the "Taco Boat."

Notable alumni

• Roy C. Afflerbach, former Mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania
• Charles Bierbauer, former television journalist, CNN
• Keith Dorney, former professional football player, Detroit Lions
• Aaron Gray, college basketball player, University of Pittsburgh, and 2007 NBA Draft prospect
• John Perdoch, Boeing Co-op, college student, University of Pittsburgh, Boeing
• Michael Johns, health care executive and former White House speechwriter
• Marty Nothstein, 2000 Summer Olympics gold-medal winner, track cycling
• Nicole Reinhart, former professional cyclist and two-time Pan American Games gold-medal winner
• Cindy Werley, 1996 Summer Olympics women's field hockey player

External links

• Emmaus High School Official Home Page.
• Emmaus High School athletics schedule and scores at HighSchoolSports.net.
• Emmaus High School Page at Lehigh Valley Conference Official Web Site.
• Emmaus High School at PublicSchoolReview.com.
• News from the West Wing (an unofficial Emmaus High School student publication).
• "Memorial Service for Emmaus High School Graduate Killed in Iraq", WFMZ-TV, March 11, 2007.