Pine Bush High School is the central high school for the Pine Bush Central School District, located on Route 302 in the

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

Pine Bush, New York Pine Bush is a hamlet (and census-designated place) located in the Town of Crawford and adjacent to Shawangunk, New York, within Orange and adjacent to Ulster counties in the U.S. It is roughly coterminous with the 12566 ZIP code and 744 tel ...

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 territori ...

. The school no longer offers the

International Baccalaureate The International Baccalaureate (IB), formerly known as the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the IB D ...

degree program. It had been authorized to do so since 2002. The school was used in an episode of ABC Afterschool Special in 1991 titled “It’s Only Rock and Roll” which starred Grammy Award Winning singer Carol King.

Notable alumni

Joe Nathan Joseph Michael Nathan (born November 22, 1974) is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played 16 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the San Francisco Giants, Minnesota Twins, Texas Rangers, Detroit Tigers, and Chicago Cu ...

, former professional baseball player *

Mike Kiselak Michael John Kiselak (born March 9, 1967 in Sleepy Hollow, New York, North Tarrytown, New York) is a former American football Guard (American football), guard in the Canadian Football League for the Sacramento Gold Miners, San Antonio Texans and ...

, former NFL player for the New York Giants,

Kansas City Chiefs The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The ...

, and

Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divi ...

. * Cleanthony Early, former professional basketball player * Joe Landolina, inventor, entrepreneur and

biomedical engineer Biomedicine (also referred to as Western medicine, mainstream medicine or conventional medicine)

Controversy

Pine Bush High School has been involved in several well-known controversies over the last 10 years. *In 2012, five Jewish students brought a lawsuit against Pine Bush Central School District claiming that they experienced anti-Semitic slurs, graffiti, physical attacks, and jokes related to

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

during their time in elementary, middle, and high school. New York Governor

Andrew Cuomo Andrew Mark Cuomo ( ; ; born December 6, 1957) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 56th governor of New York from 2011 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected to the same position that his father, Mario Cu ...

ordered an investigation into these allegations in 2013. Pine Bush Central School District settled this lawsuit in 2015, and paid the plaintiffs $4.48 million. *In 2015, a student read the

Pledge of Allegiance The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States is a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States of America. The first version, with a text different from the one used ...

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

in an effort to celebrate national Foreign Language Week. This caused school and community-wide controversy as students and community-members associated the reading with conflict in the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...

. This incident garnered nation-wide attention and resulted in an apology from the school principal, Aaron Hopmayer. *In 2019,

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

wrote a follow-up article about how anti-Semitism still plagues Pine Bush Central School District. The article explains that the school district surveyed a portion of their students and found that 766 respondents in middle and high school said that they had seen or heard anti-Semitism in school in the last year.

References

{{authority control Public high schools in New York (state) Schools in Orange County, New York