New Trier High School

New Trier High School
File:New Trier logo.gif
Location
385 Winnetka Avenue Winnetka , Illinois USA
Information
Type	Public secondary
Motto	To commit minds to inquiry, hearts to compassion, and lives to the service of humanity.
Established	1901
Principal	Debra Stacey (Winnetka) Jan Borja (Northfield)
Grades	9–12
Enrollment	4,201
Campus	Suburban
Color(s)	Blue and green
Mascot	Trevians
Website	www.newtrier.k12.il.us

New Trier High School (also known as New Trier Township High School or NTHS) is a public four-year high school with its major campus located in Winnetka, Illinois, U.S.A. and a second campus in Northfield, Illinois, with freshman classes and district administration. It is the best school in the country rated by Coley. Founded in 1901, the school is well known for its large spending per student, academic excellence, and its athletic, drama, and music programs. New Trier's primary campus in Winnetka is used by sophomores, juniors, and seniors, while the freshmen attend classes at the Northfield campus. The school serves Chicago's North Shore suburbs of Wilmette, Glencoe, Winnetka, and Kenilworth, most of Northfield, as well as small portions of Glenview, Northbrook, and Evanston.

The school is named after the city of Trier, Germany, and New Trier's logo depicts the Porta Nigra, symbol of that city. The Porta Nigra was built between 180-200 AD and is the largest Roman city gate north of the Alps.

History

Winnetka campus

The high school was founded in 1901 in Winnetka, Illinois, with seventy-six students and seven faculty members. In 1912, New Trier became the first high school in America to have an indoor swimming pool. During World War I, New Trier became a training ground for soldiers in 1918. A fundraising drive by students led to the purchase of an ambulance. During the mid-1920s, New Trier began the adviser system that is still in place today. Later, students sold tax warrants door to door to keep the school operating as the flow of property tax funds was disrupted by the Great Depression in the early 1930s. In the 1940s, students raised enough funds to finance the purchase of a B-17 bomber (The Spirit of New Trier) and a B-29.

By 1962, student enrollment had increased to over 4,000. To accommodate this larger student body, voters approved a referendum for New Trier to purchase forty-six acres in Northfield through a bond issue. New Trier West opened for freshmen and sophomores in 1965. Then in 1967, the New Trier West campus was dedicated as a separate four-year high school. Attending the dedication ceremony were then Education Secretary John Gardner, U.S. Senator Charles Percy ('37), and Congressman Donald Rumsfeld ('50).

Enrollment reached an all-time peak of 6,558 students in 1972. By 1981, enrollment had dropped significantly. As a result, the school board decided to combine the East and West schools back into one, and convert the Northfield (west) buildings into a freshmen-only campus for the combined school. The resulting arrangement (freshmen at the west campus and upperclassmen at the east campus) lasted from September 1981 until June 1985, when enrollment had declined enough for the board to close and convert the entire Northfield campus to a community recreation space. The campus later housed a senior center, corporate dormitories, a public swimming pool, and an alternative high school program known as West Center Academy. (affectionately referred to by students as "The Cage" )

In 2001, the Northfield campus was reopened as a freshmen-only campus due to increasing enrollment. The decision to make it a freshmen-only campus was a compromise from a stalemate between plans to either increase capacity at the Winnetka campus or reopen the Northfield campus as a separate school. The Northfield campus also houses the administrative offices of the New Trier Township High School District. Today New Trier is considered one of the most elite public high schools in the country in academics, athletics, and the arts.

Master Planning Process

New Trier High School is in the midst of an extensive campus expansion and modification plan for its two campuses, called the "Master Planning Process". It began in 2007 with an appraisal of current facilities and will continue as a two-phase project aimed at assessing New Trier's physical campus and determining what changes should be implemented to keep it in line with educational needs.

The planning process will occur in two phases, each involving closed committee meetings and subsequent community meetings: ·The first phase will be an investigation and Initial Analysis-Identification of Issues will involve process planning, due diligence, utilization studies, educational envisioning, and a summarized report. ·The second phase should start in February 2008 and will include a series of workshops that define the facility expansion and to build community consensus. The latter part of the phase will include community presentations and feedback sessions.

The first phase will cost $38,290, and the second phase of work is predicted to cost approximately $122,000.

Among the many likely recommendations, a new eight lane 50 yard pool may be suggested for the New Trier West Campus.

Academics

Profile

File:Gaffney.jpg

Gaffney Auditorium at the Winnetka campus

New Trier graduated 98.5% of its senior class in 2007. The average class size is 22.4. New Trier spends over $15,000 yearly per student, well above the state and national average of $8,200. It has been included in the "Top Hundred" and "Most Successful" lists of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Parade magazine. The school was also identified as "quite possibly the best public school in America" by Town & Country. Life also recognized New Trier as one of the best high schools in America with cover stories in 1950 and 1998.

Approximately 97% of the class of 2006 enrolled in college. Of these 999 students, 13 were National Merit Scholarship winners, 27 were National Merit Semifinalists, 25 were National Merit Finalists, and 75 received letters of commendation. For the class of 2006, the mean SAT verbal score was 620 and the mean SAT math score was 650. The mean ACT composite score was 26.8. According to an article by the University of Michigan Department of Psychology, "New Trier students outperform their Illinois classmates on every conceivable measure."

The instrumental music department has received 27 Downbeat awards in that magazine's annual student musician awards program. This is the most awards received by any public high school. More than 1,100 students participate in the music department by presenting 24 concerts a year with almost all concerts webcast live on the internet at ntjazz.com, live on local cable television, and in stereo on WNTH radio.

New Trier was named a Grammy Signature School Gold recipient by the Grammy Foundation in 2000 for its commitment to music education, as well as being named the National Signature School in 2007 as the nation's top high school music program. In April 2006, the school's Concert Choir and Symphony Orchestra performed in New York City at Carnegie Hall. In the summer of 2000, the school's Jazz Ensemble, Chamber Orchestra and Bluegrass Band enjoyed a successful two-week concert tour of China.

File:Northfield2.jpg

Northfield campus

Subject levels

New Trier has practiced subject-level grouping for over forty years. In this system, up to four different levels of difficulty are offered for each academic subject. Level 1 is considered a general level. Levels 2, 3 and 4 are college preparatory, accelerated, and honors levels, respectively. Level 5 was reserved for Advanced Placement classes and other college-level classes, such as multivariable calculus and linear algebra, but Level 5 will no longer exist beginning with the class of 2011. Students may work at different levels in different subjects.

New Trier offers both unweighted and weighted grade point averages (GPA), and plus and minus grades are reported on transcripts. However, transcripts only report decile rank instead of exact class rank. Decile rank gives the 10% range in which each student ranks. For example, "fourth decile" means the student's GPA places him or her somewhere between the top 31% and 40% in the class. In calculating a weighted GPA, grades in a student's coursework are given different values depending on the level in which the grade is earned. For example, an A in a 2-level course is weighted at 4.00, while in levels 3 and 4 the values are 4.67 and 5.33, respectively (an "A" in a 5-level class is worth 5.67). Note: a 5-level class is an AP class.

Since the late 1990s, the Board of Education has been examining how to encourage students to pursue a strong academic career without having them focus too much on their class rank. The first step taken by the administration was to eliminate the process of reporting class rank and switch to decile ranking. Around the same time, the scale for weighted GPA calculations was modified, and plus and minus grades were implemented. Most recently in September of 2007, the Board voted to get rid of Level 5.

Student life

Athletics

File:Trevian.gif

Official logo of the New Trier Trevians

New Trier's mascot is the Trevian, named after soldiers from the city of Trier, Germany during the Roman Empire. The Trevian mascot was chosen in recognition that the Grosse Pointe area of Wilmette was largely settled by immigrants from Trier, Germany. From 1901 to 1965, the school's sports teams were known as the "Terriers" and "Green Wave" During the 1948-49 school year they were renamed "Indians", reflecting the school's location in the Indian Hill section of Winnetka. When the new campus in the western part of the district opened in 1965, the new school's sports team was known as the "Cowboys". The year before the two schools merged in 1981, a number of student forums were held on both the East and West campuses, giving students the opportunity to provide feedback on potential school colors and nicknames. After a series of votes of the student body, the school adopted "Trevians" as a team name and green, blue, and gray as the school colors (East having previously been green and gray, while West was blue, gray, and white). During the 2004–2005 school year the mascot was named "Trevius Maximus" after conducting a poll among the students.

New Trier's biggest conference rival is Evanston Township High School. The rivalry between their football teams is one of the oldest uninterrupted sports rivalries in the history of high school sports, dating back to before 1920. Both schools compete in the Central Suburban League conference. The two annual basketball games New Trier plays against Evanston draw so many people that since 2001 they have been held at Northwestern University's larger Welsh-Ryan Arena. New Trier's biggest non-conference rival is Loyola Academy, which is located in Wilmette, just down the road from the Northfield campus.

With more than 120 state championships, New Trier High School currently has more than any other high school in Illinois. New Trier also leads the state in both boys' and girls' state titles. The sports in which New Trier has the most titles are boys' swimming and diving (19), boys' tennis (18), boys' fencing (15 midwest titles, as no Illinois-only title exists), girls' swimming and diving (10), boys' golf (9), and girls' tennis (8). However, New Trier has yet to win a state title in football or basketball (men's or women's). In May 2005, New Trier was ranked #12 in Sports Illustrated's list of the "Top 25 High School Sports Programs in America," and first in Illinois. New Trier has also won three straight boys lacrosse state championships for 2005-2007, defeating Loyola in the championship the last two years. New trier boys swimming also won the 2007 national championship.

Besides the numerous state champions, the New Trier Rowing Club recently won 3 national titles for the freshman girls, boys, and varsity girls. They made history in the spring of 2007 in New Jersey by becoming the first New Trier crew to win gold at the SRAA National Regatta. The crews upset the traditionally dominant east coast schools, and proved themselves to everyone. The team also qualified 6 boats for the regatta, 5 of which took first place and the Midwest Scholastic Championships in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The New Trier swimming & diving team was recognized as the top team in the United States by Swimming World in the September 2007 issue. Despite not winning any individual events at the national level, the New Trier boys relays won twice and provided enough points to beat out Mission Veijo out of La Jolla, California. It is the first time New Trier has been recognized with this honor.

The athletic facilities include the Leslie Gates Gymnasium for basketball; two natatoriums for swimming, diving, and water polo; the Doug Chase Track; the Robert Naughton Field at New Trier Stadium for football, soccer, and lacrosse; the Duke Childs Fields for baseball and softball; gyms for volleyball; courts for tennis; and an indoor field house.

Activities

There are over 100 different co-curricular organizations at New Trier. Although some date back decades and have strong traditions, others, such as The Zombie Survival Club or the Simpsons club, are groups consisting of only a few members. Some notable organizations include:

• Chess Club: The chess club is one of the oldest clubs at New Trier. It sponsors a chess team that competes with other schools in the Central Suburban League. In 1998, the team placed 3rd overall at the IHSA (state) tournament. In 2005, the team placed 2nd overall in the state tournament, while it placed 13th in 2006 and 10th in 2007.

• Climbing Club: New Trier has two climbing walls at the Winnetka campus, one in a gymnasium and the other in a retired racquetball court.

• New Trier Swim Guard: A swim school staffed by volunteer students to teach members of the New Trier Township Community how to swim. It was created in 1936 and it is the model which most aquatic programs teach.

• Freshman Focus/Sophomore Journal/View From the Garden Window: Freshmen and sophomores run their own newspapers, respectively titled The Freshman Focus and The Sophomore Journal, the former of which has been a Silver Medalist in each of the past two years in the Columbia University contest for high school newspapers. There is a third paper, View from the Garden Window, formerly called News and Views, run by a cross-section of students in all grades. It publishes poems and cartoons in addition to articles.

• Girls Club: Girls Club's objective is to raise money for girls' scholarships. Every girl at New Trier is automatically a member of the club and annually a board of members is selected to meet daily. Girls Club usually raises approximately $20,000 each year , which is distributed to worthy New Trier girls in need of college funding. Annual fund raisers for Girls Club include running the concessions at football games, a magazine drive, and cookie dough and candy sales. In 2006, Girls Club also participated in the Glass Slipper Project.

• Intramural Sports: Intramural Sports provides opportunities for student groups to play athletic games against each other.

• Kinesis Dance Company: Kinesis Dance Company prepares for and performs dances at their yearly concert in January and dance festivals in the spring.

• Lagniappe/Potpourri: Lagniappe/Potpourri is the student-produced musical comedy revue, presenting skits and songs on a variety of themes. Recent titles have included "Out of the Frying Pan" and "The Big Picture". Prior to 1984, the production was often not a revue, but a complete original book musical, including everything from an entire score for full orchestra to scenery and costumes all conceived, created, produced and directed by students. Despite the change in format, Lagniappe/Potpourri is still an entirely student-run production; the only adult involvement is through the sponsor position, which involves providing expertise and oversight, although the show has been revised at their behest on multiple occasions. The double name derives from two similar productions that merged in 1981 when the two campuses reunited, Lagniappe having been New Trier East's production, and Potpourri having been New Trier West's. As of 2005, this former club is now included in the Performing Arts division. It is a custom for students to have dinner with their advisory at school before the show and then attend in the nearby Gaffney Auditorium.

• Math Team: Under the leadership of Richard Rhoad, New Trier won the first eight ICTM State math competitions. Several students have also participated in the Mathematical Olympiad Program.

• New Trier Debate: 100 students compete in 5 different forms of debate and as many as 13 Individual Events. New Trier is especially known for its policy debate team, which consistently wins national tournaments and has a history of excellence stretching back into the 1920s.

• New Trier Examiner: The Examiner comes out twice a quarter. Every edition focuses on an issue that affects New Trier students, such as food and student health.

• New Trier News: New Trier's weekly student newspaper is the New Trier News and has been published since 1904. It has won the All-American citation from the Scholastic Press Association as well as Quill and Scroll's George Gallup Award. In 2006, the New Trier News staff won the first ever IHSA journalism championship.

• New Trier Rugby Team: New Trier Fields one Varsity, Tier 1 Rugby team in the "Chicago Area Rugby Football Union", which is in the Mid West Rugby Union.

• New Trier Scholastic Bowl: The Scholastic Bowl team has attended the IHSA State Finals nine times starting in 1990 (including 2001), and won its first State title in 2007.

• New Trier Theater: New Trier students and faculty produce ten shows a year. These include Lagniappe/Potpourri, five plays (the fall play, the winter play, the freshman play, the freshman/sophomore play, and the Shakespeare Workshop), and two musicals (the freshman/sophomore musical and the junior/senior choir-opera class musical). Finally, New Trier seniors in the advanced acting class produce the Spring Plays Festival, a week of one-act plays. New Trier's theaters include the McGee Theater and Gaffney Auditorium at the Winnetka campus and the Cornog Auditorium at the Northfield campus.

• Out of the box club : Popular club that encourages students to form their own opinions and to not follow the status quo without reason. Has various speakers that students would not normally be able to see including an eye doctor who thinks he can change your personality by changing your glasses, and a member of the Constitutionalist pary. Also does lighter outings such as a haunted house.

• Pep Band: Pep Band plays at the football and basketball games. It is composed of volunteers from the school's curricular music ensembles.

• Pep Club: Pep Club promotes school spirit for athletic and other school events.

• Püp Clüb: A club promoting ridiculousness; it was founded in 2003. Annual events include Pirate Awareness Day, The Scrounge Chili Cook-Off, Bouncy Ball Day, The Popcorn Party, and a day spreading the culture of The Moon. In May 2007 the clüb turned the main building of the New Trier East campus into a face. [1]

• Science Olympiad: Each year, the Science Olympiad team works to prepare for events by studying general material, taking practice tests, and building various contraptions for the events at the tournament. New Trier's 2004-2005 school year team ranked 6th nationally. Both campuses now have their own teams, with the Northfield team being one of the only teams in the country to advance to the state competition with an all-freshman team, an accomplishment achieved three times over, most recently in 2007.

• Social Service: Social Service, the largest club at New Trier, is a very popular community service organization.

• Soundtracks: Soundtracks is a student-run, 48-track digital audio recording studio, and an 8-camera video production facility that records student music ensemble concerts and presents all school concerts live on http://www.ntjazz.com/, local cable television, and WNTH radio.

• Student Alliance: Student Alliance is the student government body at New Trier High School. Student Alliance, sometimes referred to as "SA," meets every day during 9th period to work on projects that New Trier students care about. Student Alliance consists of sophomores, juniors, and seniors. SA is also in charge of the club system.

• Trevia: Trevia is New Trier's print yearbook.

• TriShip: TriShip is a school and community service organization for boys. It organizes a wide variety of activities every year. Its name stems from the values of sportsmanship, citizenship, and fellowship. TriShip raises money for senior scholarships usually grossing above $31,000 per year. Among many other long-running traditions, they sell Christmas trees every year.

• WNTH Radio: WNTH is the school's radio station that broadcasts throughout the New Trier community. WNTH also has had famous guests on show, including Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, White Sox Assistant General Manager Rick Hahn, makeup artist Bobbi Brown, gubernatorial Green party candidate Richard Whitney, New Trier alumnus and actor Rainn Wilson, artist MIMS, and the creator of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales.

Traditions

Philanthropy

Each of the four official class governments (Sophomore and Junior Steering Committees and the Freshman and Senior Senates) makes significant annual donations to various philanthropic causes throughout the community, state, country, and world. Every year since 2001, the Senior Senate has fully funded the construction of a house in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity of Lake County, Illinois, a non-profit organization that fights homelessness and substandard housing. Members of the senior class also have the opportunity to help build the house. Many fund raisers contribute to this and various other causes over the course of the academic year. The New Trier Tsunami Relief Committee donated more than $18,000 to relief organizations which helped victims of the Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004.

Homecoming

Homecoming consists of a semi-formal dance, a football game, and various contests occurring in October. Like the other formal dance of the year, Turnabout, the upperclassmen choose to go in groups with "themes" instead of the formal dress. The means by which students invite one another to these dances trends towards the extravagant. Freshmen have their own homecoming dance and are only able to attend the upperclassmen's dance if they are invited.

Frank Mantooth Jazz Festival

The jazz festival began in 1983 and takes place on the first Saturday of February. Each year, the event brings in around fifty high school and junior high jazz ensembles from all over the Great Lakes region and Canada to perform during the day. The high school groups attend clinics with respected jazz educators and composers from around the country. Seminars are also held throughout the day on improvisation, transcription, and becoming a professional musician. Smaller professional groups perform during the afternoon, while the evening concert features a professional jazz ensemble. Past groups have included the Buddy Rich Big Band, the Woody Herman Big Band, the Count Basie Orchestra, the Artie Shaw Orchestra, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra, the Bob Mintzer Big Band, Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band, Maynard Ferguson, and Dizzy Gillespie. The festival was renamed after jazz musician, educator, and composer Frank Mantooth in 2003 when he died just days before that year's festival.

Controversies

File:Northfield1.jpg

Northfield campus

Newsweek ranking

The school was ranked #455 on Newsweek's 2007 list of the "Best High Schools in America." The school had been rated much higher in similar polls over the past 50 years. Many students and faculty raised objections to the 1995 list's technique of evaluating a school based exclusively on the school's ratio of AP tests taken to the number of students in the graduating class. New Trier limits AP courses only to students who exhibit academic excellence, and offer the courses at a relatively later time in the student's academic career, thereby reducing the number of AP tests taken.

Drug use

New Trier was featured in the December 9, 1996, issue of Time in an article entitled "High Times at New Trier High." Among other claims, the article stated that "New Trier kids who smoke pot" were "by all accounts more than three-fifths of the student body," compared with national averages at the time closer to 33%.

In the days and weeks that followed publication, there was intense discussion in the community of the true scope of the drug problem among high school students. James Graff, the Time magazine writer who penned the story, was interviewed in WNTH's studio for the weekly student-run Night Talk program. On the air, Graff acknowledged that the "three-fifths" claim had been inadvertently rewritten during the editing process in such a way that seemed to imply that more than 60% of New Trier students may be regular users of marijuana, whereas that figure should have been clearly labeled as the portion of students who had ever used marijuana, including many who had used it only once or twice.

After the article was published, the school administration enhanced efforts to reduce drug use, including posting student-survey results. One step that was taken was putting up a poster claiming that most New Trier students do not smoke cigarettes; the poster featured a picture of a girl with the caption, "I'm one of them." The campaign was criticized for many reasons, one being that the girl was not a student but rather a model.

Former school superintendent Henry Bangser was quoted in the Time article as saying, "How could a school eradicate it? Schools have a responsibility to address the problem, but students didn't learn to do drugs here, and mostly they don't do it here."

Finances

At the beginning of 2002, the school faced a cash crunch, and the community responded by supporting a referendum. Due to a slight miscalculation, the school found that it had asked for $6,500,000 more than it had actually needed. The excess money was returned to the community.

New Trier has a justifiably revered faculty including a large number of highly educated, highly effective teachers. The district also has administrative and support staffs that are extensive and dedicated. However, these assets come at a significant cost. According to official state of Illinois reports retrieved by the Family Taxpayers Network, 2005 salaries of more than $100,000 were received by 127 administrators, teachers and other staffers, all but 11 of whom were listed as working for 10 months of the year

Former superintendent Bangser drew fire for his raises over the last five years of his employment with the district; his salary in 2006 was $345,600. Because Illinois state pensions are set according to salaries in the final years of employment, this produces a lifetime pension payout of as much as $232,500 annually for Bangser.

Perceived inequalities

Jonathan Kozol wrote a book called Savage Inequalities in 1991 that discussed the harsh conditions in the poorest school districts in the United States and correlates much of the inequality with racial separation and segregation. In the book, Kozol contrasted New Trier's high spending per student and lavishness compared to the impoverished schools in Chicago.

Pertussis outbreak of 2006

In the late fall of the 2006–2007 school year, the school had an outbreak of pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough. There were approximately thirty confirmed cases among students and faculty members.

In December of that year, the Cook County Health Department offered a free vaccination clinic at the school. The school stated, "We are very pleased that 1,080 students and 416 staff members were immunized last week, and we are hopeful that this will prove to be a significant help in containing the outbreak of whooping cough."

Notable alumni

Main article: List of notable alumni from New Trier High School

• 
  Adam Baldwin
• 
  Charlton Heston
• 
  Hal Sparks
• 
  Donald Rumsfeld

A number of former New Trier students have become notable in their own right. Notable alumni include actress Ann-Margret, journalist Ann Compton, U.S. Congressman Rahm Emanuel, actor Charlton Heston, U.S. Congressman Mark Kirk, Boeing CEO James McNerney, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Nobel laureate Jack Steinberger.

External links

• New Trier High School
• New Trier High School Profile
• New Trier Salaries
• Microsoft Terraserver satellite image of Northfield Campus
• Microsoft Terraserver satellite image of Winnetka Campus
• City of Trier, Germany

Bird's-eye images

• Northfield Campus
• Winnetka Campus

42.094544°N 87.719137°W / 42.094544; -87.719137