Emmaus High School
Emmaus High School is a large public high school located in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. The school serves grades 9–12 in Pennsylvania's East Penn School District in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania.
Emmaus High School is located immediately off Cedar Crest Boulevard, at 500 Macungie Avenue in Emmaus, a borough miles south of Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Student population
As of the 2023-24 school year, Emmaus High School had a student enrollment of 2,819 students and 193.35 classroom teachers on an FTE basis for a student–teacher ratio of 14.58, according to National Center for Education Statistics data. There were 861 students eligible for free lunch and 84 eligible for reduced cost lunch.Emmaus High School serves students grades nine through 12 from Emmaus, Lower Macungie Township, Macungie, Upper Milford Township, and Alburtis, all located in the Lehigh Valley, the third-largest metropolitan region of Pennsylvania.
The school ranks among the top Lehigh Valley public high schools in its percentage of graduating students who pursue post-secondary education. Among its Class of 2024, 82 percent of Emmaus High School graduates entered colleges, universities, or other post-graduate education. The school also maintains a program for academically gifted students, which includes advanced classes and a mentorship program. Noting the academic quality of Emmaus High School, Money magazine named Emmaus one of the nation's "Top 100" places to live in 2007 and again in 2009.
Two middle schools, both located in Macungie, serve grades six through eight and feed into Emmaus High School. Seven elementary schools and one elementary charter school feed into the two middle schools and then Emmaus High School.
History
19th century
What today is the East Penn School District was founded in the 1880s as the Emaus School District, initially using the Pennsylvania Dutch spelling named for the Biblical village of Emmaus, where, according to the Bible's Gospel of Luke, Jesus was seen by his disciples Luke and Cleopas in what is known as his Road to Emmaus appearance following his crucifixion and resurrection.Upon its founding in the 1880s, Emaus School District began offering high school classes, providing education up to tenth grade in one of the rooms of a four-room school building on East Main Street in Emmaus. The first graduating class on record was the Emaus High School class of 1890 with two graduates. The following year, in 1891, the high school grades were moved to the Central Building on Ridge Street in Emmaus.
20th century
In 1915, Emaus High School obtained its own home, moving into a new building on North Street between Fifth and Sixth Streets in Emmaus. While the building was designated the Jefferson Building, yearbooks of the era identify the school as Emaus High School. The high school was then made up of tenth-grade, eleventh-grade, and twelfth-grade. The yearbook of the class of 1916 features photos of 18 graduates, evenly divided between boys and girls. The Emaus High School class of 1931 had 45 graduates.The Jefferson Building was enlarged several times. By 1934, it was considered a state-of-the-art high school with 16 classrooms, a library, an auditorium, a gymnasium, a woodshop, and a home economics room. The 1931 yearbook lists a band, chorus, orchestra, 16 different clubs, and teams for football, basketball, and debate. Emaus High School's main football rival at this time was East Greenville High School, now Upper Perkiomen High School, which met Emmaus annually on Thanksgiving Day in what was referred to as the "Turkey Day" game. In the 1930s, the Emaus High School football field was located roughly a mile from the high school at the site of the present-day recreational Fourth Street Field in Emmaus.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the boroughs of Macungie and Alburtis contracted with Emaus district to send their high school students to Emaus High School. There were no school buses, and out-of-borough students commuted to and from the high school by Reading Railroad passenger train service at the Emaus train station. Located on Jubilee Street, the station was constructed in the late 19th century, decommissioned, and destroyed by fire on March 1, 1993.
In 1938, Emmaus abandoned the Pennsylvania Dutch spelling of its name in favor of the town's current spelling, and East Penn School District and the high school followed suit. With Emmaus High School's population growing rapidly, the Jefferson Building could no longer accommodate the growing school's needs. The boroughs of Emmaus, Macungie, and Alburtis, and the townships of Lower Macungie and Upper Milford merged their school districts into what was then called the East Penn Union School District and is now East Penn School District. The unified district combined their efforts and resources to expand Emmaus High School, which was constructed at the school's current location at 500 Macungie Avenue in Emmaus.
In 1955, the first sections of the new Emmaus High School opened. The new building included an auditorium and gymnasium, which far surpassed those of the old building, and included science labs, language labs, and an indoor swimming pool. After the high school moved out of the Jefferson Building, that building was briefly used as Emmaus Junior High School until a seventh and eighth grade wing was added to the new high school building around 1960, making Emmaus High School a six-year school with a single principal but separate assistant principals for its high school and junior high school grades. In 1965, the Emmaus Junior High School building, with its own faculty and administration, opened on the north side of the high school building to serve grades seven through nine. The Jefferson Building, in turn, was designated as one of several East Penn School District elementary schools.
By the early 1960s, the number of sports teams at Emmaus High School expanded to include baseball, football, and wrestling for boys, cross country, field hockey, and softball for girls, and basketball, golf, rifle, swimming, and track and field for both boys and girls. A class play was presented annually; in 1969, Emmaus High School produced its first musical, Bye Bye Birdie.
By 1998, the school's population had grown significantly due to an influx of residents predominantly from New Jersey, New York City, and Philadelphia, and Emmaus High School expanded again, taking over the junior high school building, adding additional space, and using the whole complex to house grades nine through twelve. The Jefferson Building, the first dedicated home of Emmaus High School, was subsequently decommissioned, demolished in 1999, and replaced by Jefferson Elementary School, one of seven current elementary schools in the district.
21st century
In 2005, a second major expansion of Emmaus High School was completed.In October 2015, Emmaus High School was placed on lockdown amid rumors of potential gun violence.
In November 2018, a torrential rainstorm flooded the school, causing administrators to cancel five days of classes. The main office, auxiliary gym, wrestling room, 40 classrooms, and adjacent areas were impacted by stormwater. Financial aid and assistance with clean up were provided by East Penn School District.
On December 17, 2021, Emmaus High School was placed under a cautionary lockdown due to a potential external threat after various threats were made to schools across the country. Several threats were made by an Emmaus High School freshman student against the school's assistant principals and another student. After almost two hours in cautionary lockdown, students were dismissed in small groups under police supervision. The suspect, a 14-year-old female Emmaus High School student, was arrested the following day, on December 18, and charged with making terrorist threats.
Academics
Emmaus High School ranks in the top academic tier of Pennsylvania public high schools based on state testing results. In the 2008 Pennsylvania System of State Assessments, Emmaus High School ranked in the top five percent of all public high schools in the state in writing, the top 20 percent in reading, and the top 25 percent in mathematics. In 2007, the mean SAT score for Emmaus High School students was 1580. In 2013, Emmaus High School was named the top academically performing high school in Lehigh County, according to data released by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. As of 2022, 90% of East Penn School District teachers hold a master's degree or higher.The school's academic team has made several appearances at the national level, appearing three consecutive years in the Panasonic Academic Challenge at Disney World and placing fifth nationally in the competition in 2003. In 2015 and 2018, the school's academic team qualified for participation in the National Academic Quiz Tournaments in Atlanta. Emmaus High School also holds the record for the most wins of any high school in Pennsylvania's Scholastic Scrimmage contest, an advanced academic quiz game televised on Pennsylvania PBS affiliates.
Athletics
Emmaus High School competes athletically in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, one of the premier high school athletic divisions in the nation, and fields teams at the highest level of PIAA athletic competition in all sports.Since 1955, Emmaus has won EPC championships at least once in every one of the conference's sports, and several of its graduates have gone on to professional and Olympic-level athletics, including the NFL and NBA. Among the Emmaus High School Class of 2007, 26 Emmaus High School athletes signed letters of intent for full NCAA athletic scholarships.
Emmaus holds the record for the most Pennsylvania state championships in all sports among all EPC schools and has the second-most EPC conference championships in all sports behind Parkland High School. In 2017, Adidas signed a four-year deal for exclusive sponsorship of Emmaus High School's athletic teams. In 2019, the ranking and review site Niche ranked Emmaus High School the 29th-best public school in Pennsylvania for athletics. Emmaus holds the record for the most recorded EPC championships in eight conference sports: baseball, boys lacrosse, boys soccer, boys swimming, girls field hockey, girls soccer, girls swimming, and golf.
Emmaus High School's mascot is the "Green Hornet." Entrances to the Emmaus High School campus prominently feature green and gold billboards and flags stating "Home of the Hornets" in the school's colors of green and gold.