East Chapel Hill High School ("East") is a public high school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It is the second high school of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district, which also contains Chapel Hill High School and

Carrboro High School Carrboro High School is located in Carrboro, North Carolina, United States. It is located close to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Carrboro High school is part of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district which contains ...

. The total enrollment in the 2013–2014 school year was 1,409 with 48% minority students. Although East previously ranked within the top 100 of American public high schools on ''U.S. News'', reaching as high as #23, it has not appeared on the list since the 2009–2010 school year due to being disqualified by achievement gaps. In 2012, it ranked #88 in ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

s "America's Best High Schools 2012."

Academics

East is a highly competitive school in which students typically score above the national average on standardized tests. In the 2010 school year the median weighted GPA was 3.91, and the median

SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...

score was 1809, compared to the state average of 1485. Also, 614 students participated in Advanced Placement (AP) examinations with 79% of all scores above a 3. The school scored the 2nd highest average SAT score in the Raleigh Durham area (behind Raleigh Charter High) in 2012 with 141 students taking the test and scoring and average of 1858. In 2010, the average was also 1858.

Competitions

East has consistently performed strongly in academic competitions. In both 2009 and 2010, East was a finalist in the

International Space Settlement Design Competition The International Space Settlement Design Competition, more commonly known as "SpaceSet" or "ISSDC", is an annual competition founded by Anita Gale, Dick Edwards, and Rob Kolstad. The competition is supported by various Aerospace, Engineering, and ...

. East also placed 1st in both 2011 and 2012's North Carolina Ethics Bowl competitions, and both 1st and 2nd in 2013 and 2014 North Carolina Ethics Bowl and 1st in 2014 Ethics Bowl Nationals. In 2012, East hosted the first North Carolina tournament for the

National History Bee and Bowl The National History Bee and Bowl (NHBB) are nationwide history quiz competitions for high school, middle school, and elementary students in the United States. International Academic Competitions oversees both NHBB and the comparable Internatio ...

, in which East teams placed 1st in both Junior Varsity and Varsity divisions, and the 1st and 2nd places in the Varsity division Bee went to East players. At the 2012

NAQT National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC is a question-writing and quiz bowl tournament-organizing company founded by former players in 1996. It is unique among U.S. quiz organizations for supplying questions and hosting championships at the midd ...

high school national championship tournament, East tied for 13th place overall in the playoffs, with individuals ranked 31st and 43rd. Two members were also named to the North Carolina All-Star Team, which placed 7th overall in the 2012 NASAT. East finished with a year-end ranking of 14, the highest of any team from North Carolina. In 2013, East tied for 8th place in the HSNCT, with an 11th ranked individual. In 2016, East claimed the national championship title for High School Fiscal Challenge. Due to their radical, left-leaning proposal including a financial transactions tax, creating an aggressive estate tax, cutting agricultural subsidies, and shrinking the defense budget, the Koch Foundation pulled their funding from the competition. Fiscal Challenge has not hosted a national high school competition since. East's Speech and Debate Team has claimed several national placements, across events including Congressional, Public Forum, Lincoln Douglass, and Policy Debate. East's Model United Nations team frequently wins national titles at university conferences, including DUMUNC (Duke University), MUNCH (UNC Chapel Hill), and ILMUNC (Ivy League).

Demographics

According to 2014–2015 school statistics, 53% of the school's student body is white, 11% is

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

, 11% is

Hispanic The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to viceroyalties forme ...

, and 19% is Asian. 48% of the student body is male and 52％ is female. Over the same time period, out of a total of 1411 students 27.1% (383 students) were in the 9th grade, 24.7% (349 students) were in the 10th grade, 24.2% (342) were in the 11th grade and 23.9% (337 students) were in the 12th grade. There were a total of 86 teachers making for a 1:16 ratio of teachers to students.

Athletics

Athletic programs make up a large part of student life at East, and East's teams have been highly competitive and successful every year since the school's inception in 1996. East fields teams in sports across the board. Fall sports include: football, men's soccer, women's

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

field hockey Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting ...

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Sum ...

cheerleading Cheerleading is an activity in which the participants (called cheerleaders) cheer for their team as a form of encouragement. It can range from chanting slogans to intense physical activity. It can be performed to motivate sports teams, to ente ...

, women's

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

, and men's and women's cross country. Winter sports include: men's and women's

swimming Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, or other liquid, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs and the body to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that r ...

and

diving Diving most often refers to: * Diving (sport), the sport of jumping into deep water * Underwater diving, human activity underwater for recreational or occupational purposes Diving or Dive may also refer to: Sports * Dive (American football), a ...

, men's and women's

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...

, cheerleading, and men's and women's indoor track and field. Spring sports include men's tennis,

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

, men's and women's

track and field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping eve ...

, men's golf, women's soccer, and men's and women's

lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensiv ...

. East's women's tennis team won seven consecutive 3A state championships from 1998 to 2004. In 2005, ''Sports Illustrated'' named East Chapel Hill the best sports high school in North Carolina. In the spring of 2008, the men's tennis team won the 4A state championships. The women's lacrosse program has won four state championships in six appearances since the program's inception, including three consecutive titles from 2002 to 2004; the most recent state title was won in 2013. In the fall of 2015, the field hockey team won the NCFHA State Championship for the eighth year in a row but finished fourth in their 2016 season losing to rival Chapel Hill High School. The East men's lacrosse program has also won 2 state championships and was runner up three times in the past ten years. The mascot is the

Wildcat The wildcat is a species complex comprising two small wild cat species: the European wildcat (''Felis silvestris'') and the African wildcat (''F. lybica''). The European wildcat inhabits forests in Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus, while th ...

, in keeping with the school system's theme of big cats for high school mascots. The school has a rivalry with the nearby Chapel Hill High School.

Alumni association

Proposals for the creation of an alumni association for East began in fall of 2007. These efforts took off in 2009 with the drafting of organizational bylaws, the creation of a Board of Directors, and the launching of their website.

Hostage crisis

On April 24, 2006, eighteen-year-old student W. B. Foster held teacher Lisa Kukla and a student hostage with a shotgun, a hunting knife, and a pistol in the schools "Lower Quad C" hall in what is now Ms. Burek's room. After more than an hour, Lisa Kukla was able to talk Foster out of harming her or the student. Instead, Foster fired a shot through the window and fled, but was later turned in to the police. It's unknown why Foster held those two hostage, since he was never taught by Kukla, and didn't seem to know the student. In June 2007, Foster was sentenced to five years of probation, because his attorneys said he had

schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social wit ...

Notable alumni

* Lindsey Shockley '99,

comedy writer Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term origin ...

, producer and

improviser Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...

best known for her work on HBO's ''

Hello Ladies ''Hello Ladies'' is an American sitcom created by Stephen Merchant, Lee Eisenberg, and Gene Stupnitsky. It stars Merchant as an Englishman looking for love in modern Los Angeles. The series premiered on the American network HBO on September 29, ...

'' and ABC's '' Blackish'' *David Gura '02, correspondent for

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

; former anchor and correspondent for

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and politi ...

and

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...

Anoop Desai Anoop Manoj Desai (born December 20, 1986) is an American singer-songwriter and actor best known for his time as a contestant on the eighth season of ''American Idol''. Desai was the first ever 13th finalist on ''American Idol'' and was the se ...

'04, ''

American Idol ''American Idol'' is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to Ap ...

'' season 8 top six finalist * Michelle Kasold '05, Olympic

striker * Antonio Sales '07, track and field sprinter * Ryan Watts '08, Democratic Nominee for the United States House of Representatives in North Carolina's 6th Congressional District (2018) * Nick McCrory '09, bronze medalist in synchronized diving at the 2012 Summer Olympics * Dan Jackson '11, professional soccer playerDan Jackson Denver Men's Soccer
''denverpioneers.com''. Retrieved March 7, 2019.

References

External links

*
Athletics

East Chapel Hill High on "Public School Review"

Alumni Association webpage

The ECHO – The School Newspaper
{{authority control Public high schools in North Carolina Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Schools in Orange County, North Carolina