Leonia High School
Leonia High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grade from the Borough of Leonia in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States, operating as part of the Leonia Public Schools. Students from Edgewater attend the school as part of a sending/receiving relationship with the Edgewater Public Schools.[3][4]
Leonia High School | |
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Location | |
![]() ![]() Leonia High School ![]() ![]() Leonia High School ![]() ![]() Leonia High School | |
United States | |
Coordinates | 40.869355°N 73.987778°W |
Information | |
Type | Public high school |
Established | 1912 |
School district | Leonia Public Schools |
NCES School ID | 3408520[1] |
Principal | Charles Kalender |
Faculty | 62.6 FTEs[1] |
Grades | 9–12 |
Enrollment | 740 (as of 2018–19)[1] |
Student to teacher ratio | 11.8:1[1] |
Color(s) | Maroon and gray[2] |
Athletics conference | North Jersey Interscholastic Conference |
Team name | Lions[2] |
Yearbook | Lion's Pride |
Alumni | LHS Alumni website |
Website | School website |
As of the 2018–19 school year, the school had an enrollment of 740 students and 62.6 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 11.8:1. There were 77 students (10.4% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 26 (3.5% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.[1]
History
The school opened at its current location in January 1977, after multiple issues with subcontractors led to several delays from the original planned opening in September at the start of the school year. Constructed at a cost of $4.5 million and offering 50% more space than its predecessor, the building served 650 students, including 140 from Edgewater.[5]
Awards, recognition and rankings
In the 2011 "Ranking America's High Schools" issue by The Washington Post, the school was ranked 14th in New Jersey and 657th nationwide.[6]
The school was the 94th-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 339 schools statewide in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2014 cover story on the state's "Top Public High Schools", using a new ranking methodology.[7] The school had been ranked 52nd in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 49th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed.[8] The magazine ranked the school 51st in 2008 out of 316 schools.[9] The school was ranked 67th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which included 316 schools across the state.[10]
Schooldigger.com ranked the school as 174th out of 376 public high schools statewide in its 2010 rankings (a decrease of 4 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 (HSPA).[11]
Extracurricular activities
In 1957, the school's chess team was the New Jersey high school team champion, winning the Father Casimir J. Finley Trophy.[12]
Academic Competition
Leonia has had an active quiz bowl team for decades. In April 2017, Leonia won the Junior Varsity National Championship title for the Small School Division of the National History Bowl, led by Nathan Finn, who was the 2016 Junior Varsity New Jersey History Bee State Champion.[13]
Athletics
The Leonia High School Lions[2] participate in the North Jersey Interscholastic Conference, which consists of public and private schools located in Bergen County, Passaic County and Hudson County, following a reorganization of sports leagues in Northern New Jersey by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association.[14] Prior to the realignment that took effect in the fall of 2010, Leonia was a member of the Bergen County Scholastic League Olympic Division.[15] With 508 students in grades 10–12, the school was classified by the NJSIAA for the 2015–16 school year as North II, Group II for most athletic competition purposes, which included schools with an enrollment of 508 to 770 students in that grade range.[16]
The school operates as the host school / lead agency for joint girls' soccer and boys' and girls' swimming programs with Palisades Park High School, under an agreement that expires at the end of the 2018–19 school year; in turn, Palisades Park High School is the host school / lead agency for a cooperative football program with Leonia that expires at the end of the 2018–19 school year.[17]
The school has fielded only one team to win a New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association statewide championship, the 1967 varsity basketball team, which defeated Burlington Township High School in the Group I tournament final.[18][19]
Leonia football, which is a co-op program with Palisades Park High School, became the first cooperative program to have reached a finals game in state history when the team made the North Jersey II Group III state championship game in 2012, falling to Summit High School by a 30–0 final score.[20][21] The team finished 9–3 which was the most wins in Leonia school history, and Head Coach David Schuman was awarded NJIC coach of the year and The Record ranked the team No. 12 in North Jersey.
Administration
The principal is Charles Kalender. His administration team includes the vice principal and athletic director.[22]
Notable alumni
- Barbara Corcoran (born 1949, class of 1967), real estate investor and agent.[23]
- Toomas Hendrik Ilves (born 1953), class of 1972, President of Estonia (Eesti Vabariigi president).[24]
- Lim Kim (born 1994), South Korean musical artist.[25]
- Bob Klapisch, sportswriter.[26]
- David Klass screenwriter and novelist who has written more than 40 Hollywood screenplays and published 14 young adult novels.[27]
- Vera Maxwell (1901–1995), fashion designer.[28]
- David Mansfield (born 1956), rock musician.[29]
- Christiane Noll (born 1968), singer and actress known for her work in musicals and on the concert stage.[30]
- Nick Prisco (1909–1981), football tailback who played one season in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles.[31]
- Ivory Sully (born 1957), former NFL cornerback who played for nine seasons, mostly with the Los Angeles Rams.[32][33]
References
- School data for Leonia High School, National Center for Education Statistics. Accessed April 1, 2020.
- Leonia High School, New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. Accessed October 10, 2015.
- Leonia Public Schools 2015 School Report Card Narrative, New Jersey Department of Education. Accessed May 29, 2016. "The high school continues to increase in numbers as now approximately 725 students from both Edgewater and Leonia are enrolled in grades 9-12 at Leonia High School."
- Leonia Schools at a glance Archived 2015-04-02 at the Wayback Machine, Leonia Public Schools. Accessed May 29, 2016. "Enrollment is 1835. Of this, 380 are Edgewater students in grades 7-12."
- Staff. "Leonia's New High School Opens Following Several Postponements", The New York Times, January 5, 1977. Accessed December 22, 2016.
- Mathews, Jay. "The High School Challenge 2011: Leonia High School", The Washington Post. Accessed July 27, 2011.
- Staff. "Top Schools Alphabetical List 2014", New Jersey Monthly, September 2, 2014. Accessed September 5, 2014.
- Staff. "The Top New Jersey High Schools: Alphabetical", New Jersey Monthly, August 16, 2012. Accessed December 2, 2012.
- Staff. "2010 Top High Schools", New Jersey Monthly, August 16, 2010. Accessed June 16, 2011.
- "Top New Jersey High Schools 2008: By Rank", New Jersey Monthly, September 2008, posted August 7, 2008. Accessed August 19, 2008.
- New Jersey High School Rankings: 11th Grade HSPA Language Arts Literacy & HSPA Math 2009-2010, Schooldigger.com. Accessed February 16, 2012.
- N. J. High School Team Champions 1956 – Present, New Jersey State Chess Federation. Accessed August 13, 2013.
- Past Champions, National History Bee and Bowl. Accessed June 4, 2017.
- League Memberships – 2016-2017 Archived 2012-11-09 at the Wayback Machine, New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. Accessed May 15-2017.
- League Memberships - 2009-1010, New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, backed up by the Internet Archive as of July 24, 2011. Accessed September 16, 2014.
- General Public School Classifications 2015-2016, New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, as of December 15, 2015. Accessed December 12, 2016.
- NJSIAA 2017 - 2019 Co-Operative Sports Programs, New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. Accessed February 12, 2018.
- Klapisch, Bob. "March Magnificence: Remembering the Leonia High School 1967 boys basketball championship", (201) magazine, November 7, 2012. Accessed March 14, 2014. "Coach Lee Clark of the 1967 State champion Leonia Lions at Leonia High School.... In fact, 45 seasons later, Leonians still revere Clark for bringing them the only state championship in the program's history."
- Public Past State Champions, New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. Accessed December 16, 2016.
- Moore, Roger. "H.S. football: North 2, Group 3 battle between Palisades Park/Leonia and Summit" , The Record (Bergen County), December 7, 2012. Accessed December 26, 2016. "The Tigers are a true Cinderella story as they are the first co-op school in New Jersey to play for a sectional title."
- Doviak, Cory K. "Pal Park/Leonia's improbable run ends in section final", NorthJerseySports.com, December 9, 2012. Accessed December 26, 2016.
- Administration, Leonia High School. Accessed April 28, 2020.
- Corcoran, Barbara; and Littlefield, Bruce. Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 Into a Billion Dollar Business, p. 64. Penguin Books, 2011. ISBN 1-59184-418-5. Accessed June 16, 2011. "I looked up at the notice posted on the big bulletin board outside the Leonia High School gym:"
- Feibel, Carolyn. "Baltic president has N.J. roots", The Record (Bergen County), November 29, 2006. Accessed January 2, 2008. "Toomas 'Tom' Ilves grew up in Leonia, which not only rhymes with Estonia, but was the perfect nursery for his foreign political ambitions, his 79-year-old mother said.... The irony of the whole thing was that Toomas clearly had no problem expressing independent thought, and his later success in life reflects well on Leonia High School."
- Staff. "LHS Korean Superstars Nearly Make it to Final Round" Archived 2014-03-14 at the Wayback Machine, The Leonian, November 6, 2011. Accessed March 14, 2014. "Denny Do and Lim Kim, Leonia High School students, nearly made it to the final round of Superstar K 3, the Korean version of American Idol."
- Bob Klapisch profile, The Record (Bergen County), backed up by the Internet Archive as of December 15, 2007. Accessed March 26, 2015. "Robert Salvador Klapisch was born in New York City and grew up in Leonia. He is a graduate of Leonia H.S., where he played baseball, and Columbia University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in political science."
- Gallo, Donald R. Ultimate Sports, p. 298. Random House Children's Books, 2009. ISBN 9780307568434. Accessed November 13, 2017. "As a teenager David Klass played baseball and soccer at Leonia Public High School and went on to do the same at Yale University, from which he graduated."
- Jackson, Kenneth T.; Markoe, Karen; and Markoe, Arnie. The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives: 1994-1996, p. 352. Charles Scribner's Sons, 2000. ISBN 0-684-80644-4. Accessed September 19, 2011. "She attended Leonia High School in New Jersey for one year, then entered the Metropolitan Opera School of Ballet in New York City."
- Gray, Michael. The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 449. Continuum, 2006. ISBN 0-8264-6933-7. Accessed February 16, 2012. "Mansfield, David [c. 1956 –] David Mansfield is very coy about his birth date but he was born around 1956 in Leonia, New Jersey, where he grew up to be a multi-instrumentalist, playing mostly violin, mandolin and guitar."
- Filichia, Peter. "N.J. STAGE; Actress singing for joy at the Paper Mill.", The Star-Ledger, April 14, 2000. p. 23. "For Christiane Noll, performing in the Paper Mill Playhouse production of 'The Student Prince' is a homecoming beyond the usual definition. Growing up in Bergen County, she played Mrs. Barnum in a Leonia Middle School production of 'Barnum' and was a Jet girl in a Leonia High School staging of 'West Side Story.'"
- Nick Prisco Stats, Pro-Football-Reference.com. Accessed March 11, 2018.
- Ivory Sully Stats, Pro-Football-Reference.com. Accessed March 11, 2018.
- Caldera, Pete. "Where are they now? Ivory Sully of Leonia", The Record (Bergen County), February 6, 2012. Accessed February 16, 2012. "Sully now resides in the University of Delaware Hall of Fame. But his professional road from Leonia High School to a nine-year NFL career, with stops in Tampa Bay and Detroit, began as an undrafted free agent."