Pascack Hills High School
Pascack Hills High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school, one of two secondary schools serving students in ninth through twelfth grade as part of the Pascack Valley Regional High School District in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Pascack Hills serves the residents of both Montvale, where the campus is located, and the neighboring community of Woodcliff Lake. The other high school in the district is Pascack Valley High School, which serves the communities of Hillsdale and River Vale.
As of the 2023–24 school year, the school had an enrollment of 767 students and 77.2 classroom teachers, for a student–teacher ratio of 9.9:1. There were 5 students eligible for free lunch and 5 eligible for reduced-cost lunch.
History
The school opened in September 1964, having been built to alleviate crowding at the district's original facility, Pascack Valley High School, which had been opened in 1955. Constructed at a cost of $2.9 million, the facility was designed with a system of folding walls that could be adjusted to handle student groups of varying sizes. The district received a $12,000 grant from a unit of the Ford Foundation that would allow the school to use IT&T computer systems run by a senior program analyst from that firm that would allow students to select classes on their own. The school spent its first five decades relatively unchanged in terms of architecture. In 2006, an extra gym was added. Most recently, the new science wing was opened as well as a new entrance building. This school is one of the first locally to provide every student with a laptop, which can be taken home, and be used in school every day. Every classroom is fitted with a wireless access point, which provides the students with internet. For the 2007–08 school year, the school upgraded all of its laptop computers to Apple MacBooks.Awards, recognition and rankings
Pascack Hills High School was the 7th-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. The school had been ranked 18th in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 7th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 12th in 2008 and was ranked 8th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which included 316 schools across the state. The school's peak rating by New Jersey Monthly was in 2001 at 2nd. Schooldigger.com ranked the school 46th out of 381 public high schools statewide in its 2011 rankings which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the mathematics and language arts literacy components of the High School Proficiency Assessment.In its 2013 report on "America's Best High Schools", The Daily Beast ranked the school 345th in the nation among participating public high schools and 27th among schools in New Jersey.
In the 2011 "Ranking America's High Schools" issue by The Washington Post, the school was ranked 62nd in New Jersey and 1,782nd nationwide. In Newsweek's May 22, 2007 issue, ranking the country's top high schools, Pascack Hills High School was listed in 1194th place, the 40th-highest ranked school in New Jersey.
As of February 2024, U.S. News & World Report ranked Pascack Hills as the No. 968 High School nationwide, and No. 42 within New Jersey.
As of February 2024, Niche ranked Pascack Hills as the No. 95 public school within New Jersey.
Campus
Pascack Hills High School's athletic facilities include a regulation size track, a turf football field named for long-time principal Bart DiPaola, four tennis courts, a combination softball and baseball field that can be utilized for soccer, and two gymnasiums, which house basketball and volleyball.Academics
Students at Pascack Hills High School are required to take four years of English, three years of mathematics, two years of world language, three years of science, and three years of social studies in order to graduate. In addition, the class of 2014 and beyond must successfully complete a half year of the state-mandated Financial Literacy course. The school offers Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese, and ESL courses for their world language program. The AP courses offered to students for the 2015 to 2016 academic year are AP English III, AP English IV, AP US History, AP World History, AP Calculus, AP Environmental Science, AP Computer Science, AP Statistics, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics, AP Spanish Language, AP French Language, AP Studio Art, and AP Art History. The school also offers an array of Virtual High School courses via an online option. "Virtual schooldays" are part of the plan.Athletics
The Pascack Hills Broncos compete in Colonial Division A of the North Jersey Interscholastic Conference, which is comprised of public and private high schools located in Bergen, Hudson and Passaic counties, and was established following a reorganization of sports leagues in Northern New Jersey by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. Before the 2010 realignment, the school was one of the 12 high schools participating in the North Bergen Interscholastic Athletic League. With 607 students in grades 10–12, the school was classified by the NJSIAA for the 2019–20 school year as Group II for most athletic competition purposes, which included schools with an enrollment of 486 to 758 students in that grade range. The football team competes in the American Red division of the North Jersey Super Football Conference, which includes 112 schools competing in 20 divisions, making it the nation's biggest football-only high school sports league. The school was classified by the NJSIAA as Group II North for football for 2024–2026, which included schools with 484 to 683 students.Formerly known as the "Cowboys", while Pascack Valley was the "Indians", the old team names were eliminated by the district at a July 2020 board meeting. In March 2021, the Board of Education ratified new team names that had been selected by a vote of students and staff at each school, with Pascack Hills being renamed the Broncos and Pascack Valley adopting the Panthers as its new team name.
In 2004, the football team joined the Bergen-Passaic Scholastic League, to play against other schools of similar enrollment size. Citing lower enrollment, and the loss of Hillsdale and portions of River Vale to Pascack Valley as a result of redistricting, Pascack Hills left the North Bergen Interscholastic Athletic League for football only and played an independent schedule for two seasons, as PHHS was classified by the NJSIAA as a Group I school and all of the other schools in the league were Group II or Group III schools. Prior to the NJSIAA's realignment that took effect in the fall of 2010, Pascack Hills was a member of the NBIAL for most sports. Pascack Hills is the only former NBIAL school in the NJIC, joining Queen of Peace High School and Rutherford High School as the only two schools moved to the NJIC that had not come directly from the Bergen County Scholastic League National / Olympic divisions or from the BPSL.
School colors are brown and white with orange. Sports offered include cheerleading, dance, cross-country, football, boys' and girls' soccer, tennis, volleyball, gymnastics, basketball, bowling, ice hockey, swimming, wrestling, Winter Track, baseball, softball, and lacrosse.
The school participates as the host school / lead agency in a joint cooperative gymnastics team with Pascack Valley High School, while Pascack Valley is the host school for ice hockey and boys / girls swimming teams. These co-op programs operate under agreements scheduled to expire at the end of the 2023–24 school year.
Football
In 1979, the football team completed an 11–0 undefeated season and won the North I Group III state sectional championship, the program's first title, with a 24–14 victory over previously unbeaten Hoboken High School in the championship game, played in front of a crowd of 4,000 at Giants Stadium. That Hoboken team was coached by Ed Stinson, who would eventually become the Cowboys head coach during the 1980s.In 2005, under the leadership of Head Coach Brooks Alexander, the football team reached the playoffs for the first time in 13 seasons, losing to No. 3 seed Bogota High School in the first round by a score of 41–7. In his six-year tenure, Alexander has become one of the most successful football coaches in school history and only the second football coach in school history to lead the Cowboys to the playoffs on two separate occasions, the first being Bill Lally in 1978 and 1979. At the end of the 2005 season Alexander was named the All-Suburban Coach of the Year.
In 2006, the football team reached the playoffs for the second year in a row, this time being beaten 9–3 in a close defensive battle against the fourth-seeded Hasbrouck Heights High School Aviators. The Cowboys finished 2006 with a 7–3 record. Senior defensive leaders Dan Avento and Evan Lampert were recruited to Division I schools. The Cowboys clinched their first Conference championship since 1996 by claiming the B.P.S.L. King Division title. Coach Alexander was named both the B.P.S.L. Coach of the Year and the National Football Foundation Coach of the Year.
In 2009, the football team once again reached the playoffs under Coach Alexander. With a regular season record of 7–2, the Cowboys would go and play Ramsey High School and lose by a score of 35–6 in the North I, Group II tournament.
In 2010, the Cowboys won the N.J.I.C. conference championship. The Cowboys again made the state playoffs, losing to Ramsey, for the second year in a row, in the first round of the North I Group II state playoffs. The Cowboys finished the season with a win over Glen Rock High School at the return of the Thanksgiving Day Game, finishing the season with a 7–3 record. Head Coach Brooks Alexander won Coach of the Year honors for the fourth time.