Roswell High School (RHS) is a public high school in Roswell, Georgia, United States established in 1838. It serves most of the city of Roswell west of Georgia State Route 400 and the city of Mountain Park, as well as small portions of Alpharetta and Milton. Roswell High School neighbors both Fellowship Christian School and Blessed Trinity Catholic High School. It is the oldest of Fulton County's schools in the northern portion of the county, opening before Milton High School (1921), and Chattahoochee High School (1991). Roswell is currently on its third campus and sixth schoolhouse, which opened in 1990. The current building is the oldest in-use high school building in north Fulton.
Roswell is a member of the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) and Region 4-AAAAAAA for athletic competition, as of the 2016–2017 academic year. The school's mascot is the Hornet, and the school colors are green and white. Roswell offers 16 different sports, comprising 23 varsity level teams. Eight of the Roswell Hornet teams have won state championships, totaling 20 overall. The most championships won by a single team is seven, accomplished by the girls' gymnastics program.
History
Roswell High School first opened in 1838 as The Academy and then The Roswell School, and is the oldest high school in Fulton County north of the Chattahoochee River. Like the city of Roswell, the school bears the name of Roswell King. King founded the cotton mill that would eventually be the city's economic backbone for much of its early history. The immediate predecessor to Roswell High School was the Roswell Public School on Mimosa Boulevard, which housed grades 1–10 and opened in the 1892 after the Georgia General Assembly passed Act No. 51 on December 20, 1892, allowing the city to elect a school board and levy taxes for support of the school. Students from outside the city limits were required to pay tuition. In 1896, the city council and mayor were authorized by the state to issue $5,000 in bonds to build a new school building.
In 1914, the existing school was torn down and two new structures were built. Since schools were segregated at that time, a two-story brick building was constructed on Mimosa Boulevard to house the white students in grades 1 through 10, and a one-room wooden building was built on Pleasant Hill Avenue for black students in grades 1 through 7. The Pleasant Hill facility also served as a meeting place for a local lodge and the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church until the church built its own facility across the street in 1922. Grade 11 was added in the 1920s to the Mimosa Boulevard school. Black students who progressed past grade 7 could then attend Washington High School in Atlanta.
During the Great Depression, the city of Roswell was annexed into Fulton County from Cobb County as part of its 1932 combination with Milton County and Campbell County. Roswell students in grades ten and eleven were then sent to Milton High School in Alpharetta or North Fulton High School in Atlanta to finish their secondary education (which ended upon completion of grade 11). In 1949, the Mimosa Boulevard building was demolished, and a new school was built on the existing site to allow the 10th and 11th grades to return to Roswell and students were divided within the school between elementary and high school grades. G.W. Adams was the first principal after the division and oversaw the addition of more rooms to the school over the next few years. During this growth, the Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist churches also located on Mimosa Boulevard were used to house auxiliary classrooms. Also in 1949–1950, the high school began participating in athletics with a varsity basketball team and other senior high school extracurricular activities. In 1950, Roswell High School added grade 12 as part of the statewide standard for high schools, and played its first varsity football season. The first graduating 12th grade class was in the spring of 1951. Prior to that year, students graduated in 10th and 11th grades.
Construction began nearby on Alpharetta Highway near the present-day Roswell City Hall on a new campus. That facility opened in the fall of 1954 and allowed the high school (grades 8–12) to physically separate from the elementary school (grades 1–7). Roswell High's second campus was designed by the architecture firm Stevens & Wilkinson, which innovated school designs and used a "finger plan" to improve functionality of the school. It had a capacity of 400 students and had facilities for industrial arts, a shop, music halls, science labs, an art room, an indoor gymnasium, athletic fields, a football stadium, and a track. The School started getting crowded in the early 70s. This forced Fulton county to establish Crestwood High School to relieve it. The School also relieved similar overcrowding at North Springs Charter School of Arts and Sciences. The primary school remained in the Mimosa Boulevard building as Roswell Elementary. As of 2007, the brick elementary building is part of an expanded structure still owned by the Fulton County School System, and it housed the Crossroads Second Chance North Alternative School until 2013 and still serves as the Teaching Museum North. Roswell High remained at the Alpharetta Highway campus until the fall of 1990 when the current campus on King Road was opened.
Current campus
The current campus is the third that Roswell High School has occupied. It opened in the fall of 1990 on King Road, just off of Highway 92, with an enrollment of nearly 2,000 students. It is the oldest high school building in North Fulton. The new campus was expanded with a football stadium and softball field added in 1994 and an auditorium in 1995, paid for by the RHS Foundation. The campus includes science, computer, video, and cosmetology labs; baseball and softball fields, a stadium for football and soccer, a lacrosse field, an additional practice field, a dome style gymnasium, a cross country trail, and lighted tennis courts for athletics.
In 2008 the Roswell gymnasium was named one of the top high school gyms in the nation. Cited were the domed rotunda, the hanging four sided scoreboard, and locker room facilities.
On February 2, 2007, Roswell High had a groundbreaking ceremony for an expansion project. The expansion added ten new classrooms, including science labs and a new band room. This increased the school to a 1,900 student official capacity with the state. The addition also reduced some of the need for portable classrooms, but portable units were still used after the expansion to handle Roswell's enrollment (2400 students as of 2007). Construction officially began on February 5, 2007. The addition was paid for by a one-cent special-purpose local-option sales tax (SPLOST). Additional improvements to RHS for additional safety and security features, technology and curriculum equipment enhancements, and athletic facilities upgrades were to be implemented as part of the third SPLOST, approved by Fulton County voters on March 20, 2007.
Academics RHS is a part of the Fulton County School System and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Georgia Department of Education.
Roswell was named a National Blue Ribbon School in 1997–1998 by the United States Department of Education. It was also designated a Georgia School of Excellence in 1996.
26 Advanced Placement (AP) classes are offered, and SAT as well as ACT scores regularly exceed the national and state average. For the 2005–2006 school year, Roswell's average SAT score was 1663 with the new SAT scoring system, which ranked Roswell third in the Fulton County School System and sixth in Metro Atlanta. The Georgia state average was 1477, while the national average was 1518. 477 students took AP exams in 2005, with 84% receiving the necessary score (3 or higher) to earn college credit. Nationally, only 60% score high enough to earn college credits. Three RHS students were named National Merit Scholars in 2005.
Roswell's academic success has brought national recognition. In 2006, the school was ranked the No. 472 school in Newsweek magazine's top 1,200 schools, ranking in the top 3% nationally. Roswell was third on the list among Fulton County's 12 high schools.
Roswell offers a unique curriculum with many electives not offered anywhere else in the county. The school's unique course offerings include the Career Tech diploma track, robotics, psychology, archaeology, and foreign languages. The Foreign Language department offers French, Spanish, Latin, and Japanese, and was honored in the January 2007 issue of Atlanta Magazine for offering the most foreign language courses in the Atlanta area. RHS students participated in the 2007 Annual Japanese Challenge Academic Bowl and won the most awards of any school at the competition.
In 2007, RHS Senior Maia Bageant was named as one of 141 Presidential Scholars by the United States Department of Education. In 2008, Roswell High was one of 23 Georgia schools recognized by state school superintendent Kathy Cox as an AP Merit School (20% of students taking AP exams, 50% or more of those receiving a score of three or higher). Also in 2008, Roswell High School student Ishna Sharma was named as one of only 139 Presidential Scholars. RHS student Anand Srinivasan received the Kroger Pinnacle Award in 2014, the top award given at the statewide annual Georgia Science and Engineering Fair. Likewise, student Saif Ali tied for first place in the state science fair in 2016.
U.S. News & World Report ranked Roswell High 162nd in its 2014 list of best high schools for the academic disciplines of Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and 339th on the 2014 list of best high schools in the United States.
Career Tech The Career Tech department at Roswell High is made up of Broadcast and Video Production, Cosmetology, Family and Consumer Sciences, Diversified Technology, Pre-Engineering, Business Education, and JROTC. Through this department, students may take three consecutive years of one of the branches to obtain a Career Technology High School Diploma in place of a College Prep Diploma. Courses cover diverse topics such as culinary arts, business, computers, interior design, and introduction to education and early childhood care.
Broadcast and Video Production The Broadcast and Video Production department is designed to teach students about the television industry. Using a hands-on method, students learn about all aspects of television from pre-production to production to post-production. The facility is made up of a working television studio, a large control room, six edit rooms (each equipped with both linear and non-linear editing systems), a radio station, and a normal classroom. Students in the program learn to produce everything from commercials and PSAs to dramas, news shows, and sporting events. The advanced classes produce a weekly news show, the Morning Buzz, which airs at the beginning of the day. The Broadcast and Video department supports the student-run radio station WRHS the Hive, the film club, and the yearly School House Rock concert.
Rifle team
The Rifle Team is jointly run by the Roswell High School JROTC program and the Athletics Department, and represents the school in the Olympic sport of riflery. The team won the Region 6 championship six straight years between 1996 and 2001. The team finished second in the state in 2000 finishing with a score of 1142. State champion East Coweta High School finished with a score of 1150.
Fine arts Roswell High School offers fine arts opportunities in art, band, chorus, drama, and orchestra. The groups meet throughout the year as elective classes and extracurricular activities, and hold many events. These include performances at football games, murals painted in the school's halls, concerts, plays, and a spring musical jointly put on by the drama and choral departments.