Paradise High School (PHS) is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

Paradise, California Paradise is a town in Butte County, California, United States in the Sierra Nevada foothills above the northeastern Sacramento Valley. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 4,764. On November 8, 2018, a major wildfire, the Camp Fire ...

, United States. It is part of the

Paradise Unified School District Paradise Unified School District is a public school district in Butte County, California, 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 l ...

. The school's curriculum is organized into 13 subject area departments, and students can take up to six classes a day. Senior students can enroll concurrently at

Butte Community College Butte College is a public community college in the Butte-Glenn Community College District in Chico and Orland, California. History After the passage of the 1960 Donahoe Act, the voters of Butte County created a local community college d ...

. Sports offered by the school are football, basketball, volleyball, cross country, swimming, tennis, soccer, track, golf, wrestling, baseball, softball, and cheerleading.

History

Fire and relocation

When the

Camp Fire A campfire is a fire at a campsite that provides light and warmth, and heat for cooking. It can also serve as a beacon, and an insect and predator deterrent. Established campgrounds often provide a stone or steel fire ring for safety. Campfires ...

destroyed most of the town of Paradise in November 2018, the school campus was mostly spared, losing only a half dozen temporary classrooms. The wildfire, the worst in California's history, burned down 19,000 structures and killed 85 people. The population of the town of Paradise plummeted from 26,800 to 2,034. The campus was shut down for the remainder of the 2018–2019 school year; students studied in nearby

Chico, California Chico ( ; Spanish for "little") is the most populous city in Butte County, California. Located in the Sacramento Valley region of Northern California, the city had a population of 101,475 in the 2020 census, reflecting an increase from 86,18 ...

or via online courses wherever they were staying. In June 2019, 220 seniors returned to the empty campus for their graduation ceremony on the football field. When the school reopened its doors in the fall of 2019, an enrollment of 600 was expected, but 900 showed up on the first day of school. Many of the students had lost their homes in the fire, and some were living with friends or driving long distances to attend school each day. The school made national news that same fall when its football team, less than a year after the fire, had an undefeated regular season and went to the section championship. Only three members of the varsity team were living in Paradise; the rest were commuting from locations up to 90 minutes away. But the team had vowed to make a championship run, saying they were "playing for the brothers we lost." (No Paradise High School students died in the fire.) The entire town and surrounding communities rallied behind the team. One player commented, "You look at the stands, the whole town of Paradise is here... it's really our only event right now, so it means everything." Paradise Mayor Jody Jones said, "The football team has come to represent all of us."

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

columnist

Bill Plaschke William Paul Plaschke (born September 6, 1958, in Louisville, Kentucky) is an American sports journalist who has written for the ''Los Angeles Times'' since 1987. Biography As a child he attended St. Albert the Great Elementary School in Louisvill ...

was inspired to write a book about the team and the town, ''Paradise Found: A High School Football Team’s Rise from the Ashes''. The

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...

invited the team and coaches to a

Monday Night Football ''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, AB ...

game just four days after the fire, and honored them again at another home game in October 2021. At that time, the team's record was 5-1 and they were hoping to reach the state playoffs.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Paradise, California High schools in Butte County, California Public high schools in California