Empire High School, also known as EHS, is a public high school in the

Vail Unified School District Founded in 1903, the Vail Unified School District (often shortened to simply Vail School District) is the school district in the town of Vail, Arizona. It also serves portions of nearby Tucson, Arizona. It operates an inclusive preschool, ten elem ...

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

. It is the first public high school in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

to use all-wireless

laptop A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

and fully

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...

(no

textbooks A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textbook ...

)

curriculum In education, a curriculum (; : curricula or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view ...

resources.

History

Empire opened to students in August 2005 as the first one-to-one laptop, textbook free, comprehensive high school in the nation."About EHS." Ehs.vail.k12.az.us. Empire High School, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. . Empire graduated its first class in 2007. Empire High School was named an "Apple Distinguished School" for the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 school years. In the 2010-2011 school year, Empire was distinguished as an A+ school, it earned that title again in the 2014-2015 and 2018-2019 school years.

Athletics

Empire hosts a wide variety of

athletics Athletics may refer to: Sports * Sport of athletics, a collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking ** Track and field, a sub-category of the above sport * Athletics (physical culture), competiti ...

, including

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

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 events ...

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 tea ...

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 ...

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 wi ...

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 Summ ...

cheer Cheering involves the uttering or making of sounds and may be used to encourage, excite to action, indicate approval or welcome. The word cheer originally meant face, countenance, or expression, and came through Old French into Middle English ...

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

and cross country. In the 2009-2010 school year, Empire's baseball team went on to the state finals. The baseball team was also able to go again to the state finals during the 2012-2013 school year. Starting in the 2012-2013 school year, students from

Andrada Polytechnic High School Andrada is a surname, as well as a Romanian feminine given name.https://www.behindthename.com/name/andrada Notable people with the surname include: * Alonso Andrada (1590–1672), biographer and ascetic writer * Diogo de Paiva de Andrada (1528–1 ...

began to compete in athletics as members of Empire's teams, moving most of Empire's teams up in divisions. In the 2014-2015 school year, Empire's softball team became the Arizona State Champions in their division which was the first time in Empire history one of their sports teams earned that title. In 2017 Empire won the state softball championship, for its second title in that sport and second overall for the school.

Fine Arts

Empire's fine arts programs include classes and extracurricular activities focusing on

guitars The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

choir A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which ...

, pop symphony,

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

(including an AP class on

drawing Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...

steel drums The steelpan (also known as a pan, steel drum, and sometimes, collectively with other musicians, as a steelband or steel orchestra) is a musical instrument originating in Trinidad and Tobago. Steelpan musicians are called pannists. Descriptio ...

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

, and

technical theatre Stagecraft is a technical aspect of theatrical, film, and video production. It includes constructing and rigging scenery; hanging and focusing of lighting; design and procurement of costumes; make-up; stage management; audio engineering; an ...

. The fine arts programs at Empire has been recognized as some of the top programs in the state. The Empire Drama Department has won countless superior awards in a variety of categories at competitions across the state, and has earned the chance to go to Nationals for their one act in the 2013-2014 school year. They were named the State Champions in One Acts, took 4th place for their category at the Musical Theatre Competitions of America in California, and also won the award for Best Musical in Tucson for their performance of ''

Urinetown ''Urinetown: The Musical'' is a satirical comedy musical that premiered in 2001, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis. It satirizes the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, burea ...

'' all in the 2014-2015 school year.

References

External links

Empire High School homepage
{{authority control Public high schools in Arizona Schools in Tucson, Arizona Educational institutions established in 2005 2005 establishments in Arizona