Pinelands Regional High School (PRHS) is a four-year regional

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 ...

that serves students in

ninth In music, a ninth is a compound interval consisting of an octave plus a second. Like the second, the interval of a ninth is classified as a dissonance in common practice tonality. Since a ninth is an octave larger than a second, its ...

through

twelfth grade Twelfth grade, 12th grade, senior year, or grade 12 is the final year of secondary school in most of North America. In other regions, it may also be referred to as class 12 or Year 13. In most countries, students are usually between the ages of 17 ...

s from Eagleswood Township,

Little Egg Harbor Township Little Egg Harbor Township is a township in Ocean County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township's population was 20,065, reflecting an increase of 4,120 (+25.8%) from the 15,945 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in tur ...

and Tuckerton Borough in

Ocean County Ocean County is a county located along the Jersey Shore in the south-central portion of the U.S. state of New Jersey. It borders the Atlantic Ocean on the east. Its county seat is Toms River.Bass River Township, in

Burlington County Burlington County is a county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The county is the largest by area in New Jersey. Its county seat is Mount Holly.

, in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, United States, operating as part of the

Pinelands Regional School District Pinelands Regional School District is a regional school district in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States, serving students from Eagleswood Township, Little Egg Harbor Township and Tuckerton Borough along with the Burlington County municipal ...

. The school is overseen by the

New Jersey Department of Education The New Jersey Department of Education (NJ DOE) administers state and federal aid programs affecting more than 1.4 million public and non-public elementary and secondary school children in the state of New Jersey. The department is headquartered ...

and has been accredited by the

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (Middle States Association or MSA) was a voluntary, peer-based, non-profit association that performed peer evaluation and regional educational accreditation, accreditation of public and priva ...

Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1986.Pinelands High School

Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools. Accessed March 25, 2020. As of the 2021–22 school year, the school had an enrollment of 1,070 students and 90.0 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a

student–teacher ratio Student–teacher ratio or student–faculty ratio is the number of students who attend a school or university divided by the number of teachers in the institution. For example, a student–teacher ratio of 10:1 indicates that there are 10 students ...

of 11.9:1. There were 328 students (30.7% of enrollment) eligible for

free lunch A free lunch is the providing of a meal at no cost, usually as a sales enticement to attract customers and increase revenues from other business. It was once a common tradition in saloons and taverns in many places in the United States, with the ...

and 106 (9.9% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.School data for Pinelands Regional High School

National Center for Education Statistics The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the part of the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) that collects, analyzes, and publishes statistics on education and public school district finance ...

. Accessed December 1, 2022.

History

Prior to the opening of the school, students from those towns had attended

Southern Regional School District The Southern Regional School District is a regional public school district in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States, serving students in seventh grade through twelfth grade. The district serves the five municipalities in the Long Beach Island Con ...

in Manahawkin. Constructed on a site covering at a cost of $9.7 million (equivalent to $ million in ), Pinelands Regional High School officially opened on September 5, 1979, as a Junior-Senior High School, originally housing grades 7-11 from Tuckerton, Little Egg Harbor, Bass River, and Eagleswood, while seniors finished their education at Southern Regional. The building originally housed grades 7–8 on the third floor, 9–10 on the second, and 11–12 on the first. During the first school year (1979-1980) there was no senior class, as those students were allowed finish the year at Southern Regional High School. The building featured an experimental "

open classroom An open classroom is a student-centered learning space design format which first became popular in North America in the late 1960s and 1970s, with a re-emergence in the early 21st century. Theory The idea of the open classroom was that a large ...

" design, where a large group of students of varying skill levels would be in a single, large classroom with several teachers overseeing them; and contained no interior walls. However, this format didn't last long, and in the 1980s, the rooms were walled off, and separated by floor-to-ceiling folding partitions. In 1991, Pinelands Middle School opened across the street for students in grades 7–8. Also in the 90s, a new building was completed next to the high school, which houses a daycare center called "Rainbow Express". Students taking Child Care classes go to class in this building to help with the daycare kids. In 2002, the Middle School was expanded and the 9th grade was moved there. When the expansion was completed at the Middle School, it was renamed "Pinelands Regional Junior High School" while the High School was renamed the "Senior High School", although this name is rarely used. After rejecting all three referendum questions the previous November, voters approved all three bond questions in January 2017 to cover the costs of a $53.6 million renovation and upgrade job to address structural issues in the high school and junior high school. By October, the school was closed indefinitely due to complications in the construction process, with classes temporarily moved to available locations at the junior high school. In September 2019, the high school re-opened, housing grades 9-12 for the first time since 2002.

Awards, recognition and rankings

The school was the 185th-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 339 schools statewide in ''

New Jersey Monthly ''New Jersey Monthly'' is an American monthly magazine featuring issues of possible interest to residents of New Jersey. The magazine was started in 1976. It is based in Morristown. In addition to articles of general interest, the publication fe ...

'' magazine's September 2014 cover story on the state's "Top Public High Schools", using a new ranking methodology. The school had been ranked 173rd in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 262nd in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 241st in 2008 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 254th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which surveyed 316 schools across the state. Schooldigger.com ranked the school 254th out of 376 public high schools statewide in its 2010 rankings (a decrease of 2 positions from the 2009 rank) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the language arts literacy and mathematics components of the

High School Proficiency Assessment The High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA, pronounced "hess-pah" (/ˈhɛspə/) or sometimes just "H-S-P-A") was a standardized test that was administered by the New Jersey Department of Education to all New Jersey public high school students in ...

(HSPA).

Athletics

The Pinelands Regional High School WildcatsPinelands Regional High School

New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) is an association of hundreds of New Jersey high schools that regulates high school athletics and holds tournaments and crowns champions in high school sports. State championsh ...

. Accessed October 20, 2020. compete in Division B South of the

Shore Conference The Shore Conference is an athletic conference of private and public high schools in the U.S. state of New Jersey, centered at the Northern Jersey Shore. All schools in this conference are located within Monmouth County, New Jersey, Monmouth County ...

, an athletic conference comprised of public and private high schools in

Monmouth Monmouth ( , ; cy, Trefynwy meaning "town on the Monnow") is a town and community in Wales. It is situated where the River Monnow joins the River Wye, from the Wales–England border. Monmouth is northeast of Cardiff, and west of London. I ...

and Ocean counties along the

Jersey Shore The Jersey Shore (known by locals simply as the Shore) is the coastal region of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Geographically, the term encompasses about of oceanfront bordering the Atlantic Ocean, from Perth Amboy in the north to Cape May Po ...

.Shore Conference Realignment for 2018-2019 and 2019-2020

. Accessed November 15, 2020. The league operates under the jurisdiction of the

(NJSIAA). With 796 students in grades 10-12, the school was classified by the NJSIAA for the 2019–20 school year as Group III for most athletic competition purposes, which included schools with an enrollment of 761 to 1,058 students in that grade range. The school was classified by the NJSIAA as Group III South for football for 2018–2020. Pinelands Regional's wrestling team has won nine division titles, two district titles, and has been ranked in the top 20 in the state four times. The school's Amy Beykrich was the individual cross country champion in Group II in 1995. Joshua Allegretti set the school record for bowling the highest single game (299) and highest season average (201), during the 2007–2008 season. The school's Cheerleading Team was state champions in 2012, the team's fifth state championship, after winning four consecutive titles from 2004 through 2007. The team finished third in the nation in the years of 2010, 2011 and 2012 at the UCA National Cheerleading Championship.

Drama department

Pinelands Regional's drama and theater program has been highly successful, especially in the past several years. In 2010, the team won 19 awards at the annual Speech and Theatre Association of New Jersey competition at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

, including 8 Governor's awards, which are the highest honors in the state to be given for education. In 2017, the school had been honored with the Governor's Awards in Arts Theatre Competition for the 12th year in a row. In 2013 Robert "Bobby" Peschko and Austin Tooker were awarded Second Place in Comedic Pairs at the annual theatre competition. Tooker would go on to win the Governor's Award for Best Actor in 2014.

Cat TV

Cat TV is Pinelands Regional's local

Public-access television Public-access television is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is narrowcast through cable television specialty channels. Public-access television was creat ...

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broadc ...

station sponsored by

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

Cable. It is located on channel 21 for the area that the district serves. Most of the cast and crew is comprised of students who take the video production classes as an elective. The channel shows live morning announcements at 8:15 am daily, followed by a commercial or short skit made by members of the video productions class. Throughout the day, especially during lunch periods, other school programs or past school events are shown on the channel. The remainder of the time the channel broadcasts school and community events through the Infochannel program, along with a simulcast of lite-rock station

WWZY WWZY ("107.1 The Boss") is a classic rock music formatted radio station licensed to Long Branch, New Jersey. The station is simulcast on 99.7 WBHX Tuckerton, New Jersey. History 1960–1996 WWZY first went on the air on June 1, 1960 as WRLB ...

. The communities which it serves are Little Egg Harbor, Tuckerton, Eagleswood and Bass River, New Jersey.

Administration

The school's principal is Troy Henderson. His core administration team includes three assistant principals.Pinelands Senior High School

. Accessed January 14, 2021.

Notable alumni

Gaten Matarazzo Gaetano John Matarazzo III (; ; born September 8, 2002) is an American actor. He began his career on the Broadway stage as Benjamin in '' Priscilla, Queen of the Desert'' (2011–12) and as Gavroche in ''Les Misérables'' (2014–15). Matara ...

(born 2002, class of 2020), actor who has appeared in the

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

original series ''

Stranger Things ''Stranger Things'' is an American science fiction horror drama television series created by the Duffer Brothers, who also serve as showrunners and are executive producers along with Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen. Produced by Monkey Massacre Prod ...

''.

Notable faculty

* Sarann Kraushaar, former vice-principal of the school, who was the mistress of murderer

Robert O. Marshall Robert Oakley Marshall (December 16, 1939 – February 21, 2015) was an American businessman who in 1984 was charged with (and later convicted of) the contract killing of his wife Maria. The case attracted the attention of true crime author Joe ...

, whose slayings inspired the bestselling book ''

Blind Faith Blind Faith were an English supergroup featuring Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Ric Grech. They were eagerly anticipated by the music press following on the success of each of the member's former bands, including Clapton a ...

'', and was later a miniseries of the same name, in which a character based on Kraushaar and a fictional incarnation of the school is featured. * Lily McBeth (born 1934), transgender former substitute teacher at the school who made national news after undergoing a sex-change operation and quit a position as a substitute teacher at the school.via

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

"Transgender teacher retiring in frustration: 'All they did was put me in a closet again,' she says of N.J. school districts"

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 ...

, July 22, 2009. Accessed January 30, 2011.

References

External links

Pinelands Regional High School
*
Data for the Pinelands Regional School District

{{Authority control 1979 establishments in New Jersey Bass River Township, New Jersey Eagleswood Township, New Jersey Educational institutions established in 1979 Little Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey Middle States Commission on Secondary Schools Public high schools in Ocean County, New Jersey Pine Barrens (New Jersey) Tuckerton, New Jersey