Rahul Sharma (Editor)

Paramus High School

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Type
  
Public high school

School district
  
Paramus Public Schools

Faculty
  
105.2 FTEs

District
  
Paramus Public Schools

Lowest grade
  
Ninth grade

Established
  
1957

Principal
  
Raymond Kiem

Phone
  
+1 201-261-7800

Founded
  
1957

Paramus High School

Asst. principals
  
Lina Gudelis Louis Natalo

Address
  
99 E Century Rd, Paramus, NJ 07652, USA

Paramus High School is an American four-year comprehensive public high school, located in Paramus, in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States, serving students in ninth through twelfth grades as the lone secondary school of the Paramus Public Schools. The school has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Secondary Schools since 2006.

Contents

As of the 2014-15 school year, the school had an enrollment of 1,317 students and 105.2 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 12.5:1. There were 68 students (5.2% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 32 (2.4% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.

Paramus High School offers a wide range of course offerings to its students, including Advanced Placement courses available in 25 subjects.

Paramus high school marching band 2016 behind the scenes


History

Historically, Paramus shared many municipal services with the township of Rochelle Park, including schooling. In 1922, the school situation was the hot topic of discussion. Residents felt that the schools were too far away and wanted to make sure that their children were safe when they went to school. It was because of this that Paramus decided to become a borough of its own, and it built the high school on Spring Valley Road in 1957. The school's 50th anniversary was celebrated in 2007.

Awards, recognition and rankings

For the 1988-89 school year, Paramus High School was awarded the National Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence by the United States Department of Education, the highest award an American school can receive.

The school was the 57th-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. The school had been ranked 111th in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 98th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 77th in 2008 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 45th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which included 316 schools across the state.

Schooldigger.com ranked the school tied for 124th out of 381 public high schools statewide in its 2011 rankings (a decrease of 44 positions from the 2010 ranking) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the mathematics (83.3%) and language arts literacy (97.0%) components of the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).

In the 2011 "Ranking America's High Schools" issue by The Washington Post, the school was ranked 50th in New Jersey and 1,527th nationwide.

In its 2013 report on "America's Best High Schools", The Daily Beast ranked the school 705th in the nation among participating public high schools and 54th among schools in New Jersey.

Athletics

The Paramus High School Spartans compete in the Big North Conference, following a reorganization of sports leagues in Northern New Jersey by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. With 961 students in grades 10-12, the school was classified by the NJSIAA for the 2015-16 school year as North I, Group III for most athletic competition purposes, which included schools with an enrollment of 786 to 1,074 students in that grade range. The school had participated in the North Jersey Tri-County Conference in 2009-10. Until the NJSIAA's 2009 realignment, the school had participated in Division A of the Northern New Jersey Interscholastic League, which was made up of high schools located in Bergen County, Essex County and Passaic County, and was separated into three divisions based on NJSIAA size classification. The Paramus High School sports program has had much success over the years, most notably in baseball, volleyball, and wrestling. The ice hockey team ended a 12-year drought with a league title, league championship, and also a holiday tournament championship in the 2011-12 season.

The school participates as the host school / lead agency in a joint ice hockey program program with Hackensack High School and Lyndhurst High School, under an agreement that expires at the end of the 2017-18 school year.

The baseball program has won over 800 games since its inception in 1960 which includes four state championships, a county championship, and thirteen league championships. Many players have gone on to graduate and continue to play baseball at the collegiate level, several of which played at the NCAA Division 1 level or professionally. Former head coach Joe Cervino, who managed the team for 30 seasons from 1982-2011, was one of the most successful coaches in Bergen County history, one of only four coaches to win more than 500 games.

The girls' volleyball team has won seven state championships, winning the Division A title in 1981 against Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan, taking the Group IV title in 1982 against Hackensack High School, and earning Group III titles in 1988 (vs. Ramsey High School), 1999 (Old Tappan), 1994 (River Dell Regional High School), 1995 (Lakeland Regional High School) and 2005 (Ramapo High School). The team won the Tournament of Champions in 2005, defeating Secaucus High School in the tournament finals with a two-game sweep by scores of 25-22 and 25-23. The 1994 girls' volleyball team finished the season with a record of 22-2, winning the league and Group III state title, but lost to Paramus Catholic High School in the Bergen County tournament. The 1995 team won the Group III title for a second consecutive year, and took the Bergen County title with a win over Paramus Catholic.

The wrestling team won the North I Group IV state sectional championship in 1982, 1985, 1998 and 1999, and won the North I Group III title in 1993 and 2012.

Administration

Core members of the school's administration are:

  • Raymond Kiem, Principal
  • Lina Gudelis, Assistant Principal
  • Louis Natalo, Assistant Principal
  • Notable alumni

    Notable Paramus High school alumni include:

  • Joe Benigno (born 1953), sports talk show co-host on WFAN (AM).
  • Stacey Dash (born 1967, class of 1985), actress best known for her role in the movie Clueless and its television spinoff.
  • Spero Dedes (born 1979), sportscaster.
  • Mark Fields (born 1961, class of 1979), Executive Vice President, Ford Motor Company and President, The Americas.
  • Dean Friedman (born 1955), musician with the one-hit wonder "Ariel", a top-20 tune in 1977.
  • Matt Ghaffari (born 1961, class of 1979), 1996 Olympic silver-medal wrestler.
  • Jamie Gold (born 1969, class of 1987), won the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event.
  • Lloyd Levin (born 1958, class of 1976), film producer and executive.
  • Lauren Passarelli (born 1960), musician and educator.
  • John Robertson (born 1993), quarterback for the Villanova Wildcats football team who won the 2014 Walter Payton Award.
  • Steven H. Temares (born 1958, class of 1976), CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond.
  • Elaine Zayak (born 1965), figure skater who was the 1982 World champion and 1981 U.S. national champion.
  • Notable faculty

  • Bill Pascrell (born 1937), Congressman who taught at the school for 12 years.
  • Frank L. Ryerson (1905–1995), trumpeter who wrote the alma mater lyrics, sung to the tune "Aura Lee".
  • References

    Paramus High School Wikipedia