Piscataway High School is a four-year comprehensive community public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades from Piscataway in Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as the lone secondary school of the Piscataway Township Schools. The school is comprised of two main buildings named after Susan B. Anthony and George S. Patton. The school is accredited by the New Jersey Department of Education and has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1963.Piscataway Township High School, Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools. Accessed February 9, 2022. Piscataway Township High School is known for its football program; three former players were drafted in the first round of the National Football League draft in two years, the first time in history that such an event has occurred.
As of the 2023–24 school year, the school had an enrollment of 2,127 students and 151.3 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 14.1:1. There were 532 students (25.0% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 254 (11.9% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.School data for Piscataway Township High School, National Center for Education Statistics. Accessed December 15, 2024.
Awards, recognition and honors The school has received the following notable awards and recognitions.Awards , Piscataway Township High School. Accessed November 8, 2009. Governor's School of Excellence, November 21, 2003McGreevey Celebrates Schools that are "Getting it Right": Schools of Excellence Winners Demonstrate Effectiveness of Governor's Education Priorities , New Jersey Department of Education press release dated November 211, 2003. Accessed December 15, 2009. Best Practice Award, 2002-03 for Comfort Zone Best Practice Award, 2004-05 for Life Skills and Beyond Golden Achievement Award, 2004 Best Practice Award, 2005-06 for Senior Citizens Outreach Program & Exchange (SCOPE) Coalition of Essential Schools, 2005. First school in the state to be granted full membership. National AVID School Certified School, 2006 Amistad Fellow, 2006
Piscataway High School received an "A" and was ranked "above average to excellent" in a recent issue of Inside Jersey Magazine, a publication of The Star-Ledger. The article, entitled "New Jersey's Top Performing Public High Schools," rated schools throughout the state based on academic achievement and test score growth over a four-year period. Piscataway High School was one of only nine schools out of 27 in Middlesex County to be given an "A" rating.Indide Jersey: New Jersey's top performing High Schools, www.nj.com. Accessed July 13, 2015. The school was the 144th-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.Staff. "Top Schools Alphabetical List 2014", New Jersey Monthly, September 2, 2014. Accessed September 5, 2014. The school had been ranked 217th in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 140th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed.Staff. "The Top New Jersey High Schools: Alphabetical", New Jersey Monthly, August 16, 2012. Accessed September 7, 2012. The magazine ranked the school 146th in 2008 out of 316 schools.Staff. "2010 Top High Schools", New Jersey Monthly, August 16, 2010. Accessed March 22, 2011. The school was ranked 177th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which surveyed 316 schools across the state."Top New Jersey High Schools 2008: By Rank", New Jersey Monthly, September 2008, posted August 7, 2008. Accessed August 19, 2008. Schooldigger.com ranked the school tied for 151st out of 381 public high schools statewide in its 2011 rankings (a decrease of 15 positions from the 2010 ranking) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the mathematics (84.0%) and language arts literacy (93.0%) components of the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).New Jersey High School Rankings: 11th Grade HSPA Language Arts Literacy & HSPA Math 2010-2011, Schooldigger.com. Accessed March 5, 2012.
Curriculum Advanced Placement (AP) courses are offered in AP English Language and Composition, AP English Literature and Composition, AP French Language, AP Statistics, AP Spanish Language, AP Calculus, AP Computer Science, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics, AP United States Government and Politics, AP United States History, AP World History, AP Environmental Science, AP Psychology, AP Macroeconomics, AP Music Theory, and AP Studio Art.
Its radio station is WVPH, also known as 90.3, "The Pulse of Piscataway", with students broadcasting for an hour in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, while students from Rutgers University broadcast on the station during the other hours.WVPH 90.3 FM , Piscataway Township Schools. Accessed December 31, 2011. "During the school year, student broadcasters are on the air Monday through Friday from 6:30am to 7:15am and 1pm to 4pm on WVPH 90.3FM."
Notable legal cases Two notable legal cases have originated at Piscataway High School.
New Jersey v. T. L. O.
An incident which occurred at the school in 1980 became a case that made it to the Supreme Court of the United States (in 1985).
On March 7, 1980, a 14-year-old freshman, identified in court documents only by the initials T. L. O., was caught by a teacher smoking in a bathroom with another girl at the high school. The teacher took both students to the Principal's Office where they met with Assistant Vice Principal Theodore Choplick. In a search of T. L. O.'s purse, Choplick observed a pack of cigarettes, and while removing the cigarettes he noticed a package of rolling papers, often closely tied to the use of marijuana. Choplick then began a more thorough search for the evidence of drugs, which revealed a small amount of marijuana, a pipe, empty plastic bags, a large quantity of money in $1 bills, an index card that appeared to list students who owed T. L. O. money, and two letters that implicated T. L. O. in being a drug dealer.
Choplick then notified T. L. O.'s mother and the police, to whom he turned over the evidence of drug dealing. The police requested the mother to take her daughter to police headquarters, where T. L. O. confessed to selling marijuana at the high school. Using the confession and the evidence obtained by Choplick's search, the State brought delinquency charges against T. L. O. in the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of Middlesex County.
T. L. O. claimed the assistant principal's search violated the Fourth Amendment. She moved to suppress the evidence found in her purse as well as her confession, arguing, the evidence was "fruit of the poisonous tree." The Juvenile Court denied the motion to suppress. Although the court concluded that the Fourth Amendment did apply to searches carried out by school officials, it held: "a school official may properly conduct a search of a student's person if the official has a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is in the process of being committed, or reasonable cause to believe that the search is necessary to maintain school discipline or enforce school policies." Id., at 341, 428 A. 2d, at 1333 (emphasis in original).
The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the search and seizure by school officials without a warrant was constitutional, as long as the search is deemed reasonable. This overturned the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling.
Piscataway Board of Education v. Sharon Taxman
Piscataway Board of Education v. Taxman, 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir. 1996) was a racial discrimination case begun in 1989. The school board of Piscataway, New Jersey needed to eliminate a teaching position from the high school Business Education department. Under New Jersey state law, tenured teachers have to be laid off in reverse order of seniority. The newest tenured teachers, Sharon Taxman and Debra Williams, white and African-American respectively, had started working at the school on the same day. In the interest of maintaining racial diversity (Williams was the only black teacher in the department, and 50% of the students were minorities), the school board voted to lay off Taxman, even though she had a bachelor's degree and Williams had a master's degree. Taxman complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying that the board had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Taxman v. Board Of Education of Township of Piscataway; United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. Decided: August 08, 1996, FindLaw. Accessed August 26, 2022.
The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Taxman. The school board appealed to the United States Supreme Court and a hearing was scheduled for January 1998, but an agreement was reached to pay Taxman a $435,000 settlement before the case could be heard by the court, with a majority of the money coming from civil rights organizations that feared that the Supreme Court could use the case as a justification to eliminate the practice of affirmative action.Goodnough, Abby. "Financial Details Are Revealed In Affirmative Action Settlement", The New York Times, December 6, 1997. Accessed December 31, 2011. "The lawyer, David B. Rubin, said he had asked the coalition of civil rights groups, known as the Black Leadership Forum, to send its portion of the settlement -- $300,000 -- in advance as a guarantee.... The coalition, in a highly unusual move, offered last month to pay most of the $433,500 settlement to Sharon Taxman, a white teacher at Piscataway High School whom the board had dismissed in a 1989 budget reduction to preserve a black teacher's job.... Civil rights leaders offered to help finance the settlement because they feared the Supreme Court would use the case to strike down almost all affirmative action programs."
Taxman was subsequently rehired. Both teachers returned to teaching in Piscataway. Williams went back to the high school, while Taxman was reassigned to Conackamack Middle School.
Athletics