Clarksburg High School (Maryland)

Clarksburg High School
Address
22500 Wims Road
Clarksburg, Maryland, 20871-4100
United States
Coordinates 39°13′32″N 77°15′58″W / 39.22556°N 77.26611°W / 39.22556; -77.26611Coordinates: 39°13′32″N 77°15′58″W / 39.22556°N 77.26611°W / 39.22556; -77.26611
Information
Type Public secondary
Established 2006
School district Montgomery County Public Schools
School number 249
CEEB code 210381
Principal Edward K. Owusu
Faculty 127
Grades 9–12
Enrollment 1,989 (2014-15)
Color(s) Carolina blue, navy, and white
              
Mascot Coyote
Newspaper The Howl
Yearbook The Quest
Website CHS - MCPS

Clarksburg High School is a public high school located at 22500 Wims Road in Clarksburg, Maryland. It is part of the Montgomery County Public Schools system, Maryland's largest public school system. The school is named after the community in which it is located. Its students mainly come from Rocky Hill Middle School, Hallie Wells Middle School and Neelsville Middle School.

History

The building that houses Clarksburg High School originally housed the Rocky Hill Middle School until 2004, when a new building was inaugurated a short distance from it.

Academics

Advanced Placement courses offered at Clarksburg include English Language and Composition, English Literature and Composition, US Government, US History, World History, European History, Psychology, Biology, Chemistry, Physics C, Environmental Science, Computer Science, Calculus AB/BC, Statistics, Studio Art, Music Theory, Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, and Spanish Language and Composition.

39.7% of the Class of 2015 scored a 3 or higher on at least one AP exam. The average SAT composite score for the 2014-15 school year was 1529, compared to the national average of 1490.[1]

Campus

Increasing enrollment forced Clarksburg to install four portable classrooms for the 2008–09 school year. The first four portables were located on a parking lot, outside of the main gymnasium, near the back athletic fields. Four more portables were installed for the 2010–11 school year. These classrooms were installed atop two blacktop areas paved for basketball near the student parking lot (on the opposite side of the school as the initial relocatable classrooms). The social studies department currently occupies these portable classrooms. During the 2011-12 school year, Clarksburg was forced to install two more portables, overtaking yet another blacktop area. A new wing was built and completed prior to the 2014–15 school year. The lower floor of this wing is used by foreign language courses, while the top floor hosts a few science classes.

Faculty

A list of teachers and staff can be found, along with their e-mail addresses, on the Staff Directory Page[2] Clarksburg currently classifies its staff into the following departments: Science, Social Studies, Mathematics, Technology, English, Foreign Languages, Health & Physical Education, and Music & Art.

Each year the students nominate and staff select a handful of teachers to receive the PTSA "Leader of the Pack in Education" Award. Previous winners include:

  • 2008: James P. Koutsos, founding Principal; Catherine Ulicny, AP Biology teacher; Sally Kelley, Administrative Secretary
  • 2009: Jacqueline Bragg, AP Biology teacher; Michael Oakes, AP Language teacher; Rob Burke, AP US History teacher
  • 2010: Mark Bowie, AP Calculus AB, and AP Calculus BC teacher
  • 2012: Sarah Costlow, Signature Program Coordinator

Students

Clarksburg has students from many cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Many of its graduates go on to renowned post-secondary schools, including Cornell University; Duke University; Georgetown University; Georgia Institute of Technology; Harvard University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; New York University; Princeton University; University of Maryland, Baltimore County; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Michigan; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; University of Pennsylvania; University of California, Berkeley; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Virginia Tech; Williams College; and Yale University.

The student body of the 2015-2016 school year was 22.7% non-Hispanic White, 18.4% Asian, 28% African American, 26.6% Hispanic/Latino, less than 5% American Indian, less than 5% Pacific Islander, and less than 5% of mixed race.[3]

School day

The Clarksburg High School instructional day runs from the warning bell at 7:40, the class bell at 7:45, and the dismissal bell at 2:30. Classes run approximately 47 minutes on an average day with five minutes of transition time. A complete bell schedule can be found online.[4]

Lunch

The typical lunch period for students runs for about 34 minutes. Students are not allowed to leave the campus during lunch, nor are they permitted to visit cars without a pass. While many students eat in the Cafe, students may also eat in the hallways or in supervised classrooms. They are also allowed to spend their time in the media center or computer labs, though these are not places to eat.

Graduation

Clarksburg High School seniors have graduated at the Knott Auditorium on the campus of Mount Saint Mary's University since the school's opening. For the first six years, students selected school staff as their graduation speakers: Lannie Seymour (AP World History teacher), Jacqueline Bragg (AP Biology teacher), Michael Oakes (AP Language teacher), Jeremy Spoales (Sociology teacher), Kate Ulicny (AP Biology teacher), and Jeffrey Sullivan (Athletic Director).

Website

The Clarksburg High School website is housed on the Montgomery County Public Schools web server, the MCPSWeb, and is maintained by the school's student web team as well as by teacher sponsors and webmasters Sarah Costlow and Stephen Sell.

Programs

APPS program

One of Clarksburg's programs is the four-year Advanced Placement Power Scholars program (APPS). Students can apply for the program during eighth or ninth grade. Modeled after Walter Johnson High School's APEX Program, the APPS program requires its members to take a rigorous number of Advanced Placement classes. By the end of a member's senior year, they will have taken at least 6 AP classes, and will have taken the classes' respective exams distributed by the College Board. The sponsor of the group is Signature Program Coordinator Sarah Costlow.

APPS students take AP US Government their freshman year, AP US History their sophomore year, and more AP classes their junior and senior years. Many take AP English Language and Composition and AP World History as juniors.

CHStage

CHStage is the award-winning drama department at Clarksburg High School. It is under the direction of Michelle Meyer. Two shows, at least one a musical, are produced each year and have included Tarzan, Once Upon a Mattress, The Little Princess, In The Heights, and The Little Mermaid. Each year CHStage attends theater festivals throughout Maryland, and has won awards at every festival they have attended since 2008.[5]

Honor societies

Clarksburg offers students the chance to participate in the National Honor Society (NHS), Science National Honor Society, Spanish National Honor Society, Tri-M Music Honor Society, International Thespian Society, and the National Art Honor Society.

The Howl

The Howl, Clarksburg High School's student-run newspaper, is produced by a small but growing group of student writers and editors. The school had a good paper at the beginning but after 2012 it went downhill. Quickly.

InvenTeam

The Clarksburg High School InvenTeam is one of 16 high school teams in the nation to receive grant funding from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The team presented its TorchCord invention at the March Madness for the Mind event in the National Museum of American History, part of the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance's 13th annual meeting in Washington, DC. The team also traveled to MIT for the Lemelson-MIT EurekaFest event in 2009, having created a pressure-sensitive illuminated computer cable. Sarah Debelius Costlow, the Signature Program Coordinator, and Paul Koda, a science teacher, sponsored the team.[6]

Marching band

The Clarksburg High School Marching Band, with 65 members, traveled to Shanghai, China to perform in a parade for the Shanghai Tourism Festival at the beginning of the 2009–2010 school year, under the direction of Charles "Chuck" Orifici.

Athletics

Soccer

The boys' soccer team, coached by Jeremiah Spoales, won the state championship for the 2009 season. The girls' soccer team is coached by English teacher Christina Mann,[7] a former Montgomery County standout soccer player who went on to play Division I NCAA women's soccer at North Carolina State University.

Track and field

The 2006–2007 outdoor track and field team had a very successful season with the boys ending with 4 wins and 1 loss for the regular season and the girls' team ending their regular season with 3 wins and 2 losses. It also sent many athletes to the Maryland State Championships despite the lack of a senior class.

The 2007–2008 outdoor track and field team had another very successful season with the boys ending with 6 wins and 0 losses for the regular season and the girls' team ending their regular season with 6 wins and 0 losses.

The 2008-2009 boys' indoor track team finished second in both the Montgomery County Championship and the 2A Region Championship.

The 2008–2009 outdoor track team ended the year with an undefeated 6-0 record once again. Both the boys and the girls won the division. In the County Championship, the boys placed second while the girls placed third. The boys won the 2A West Region while the girls placed second. In the state competition, the boys finished first and became the school's first-ever state championship team.

The 2010-2011 girls' indoor track team took third at the county championship, and second at the 3A West championship.

The 2010-2011 girls took second at the 3A West Championship while the boys finished third. The 2014-15 girls' indoor track team took first place in the county, 4A West championship, and 4A State championship meets. The 2015 girls' outdoor track took also took first place in the county, 4A West championship, and 4A State championship meets.

Cross country

In the 2007–2008 cross country season the boys' and girls' teams became Division III Champions with records of 5-0.

Field hockey

The Coyotes have been known for their stingy defense. The Coyotes scored eleven in their first five games led by junior Katie Bertrand (forward/midfielder) with five goals and five assists. Among the top scorers in the county, Bertrand scored four goals and had three assists closing out the final game in September, earning Athlete of the Week honors at Clarksburg and receiving Honorable Mention. Bertand finished off the game, scoring with a late goal on September 29 as Clarksburg won its second in a row, defeating Watkins Mill, 4-0, at the Coyote Canyon. In that game, Olivia Pond had the game's first goals. Herietta Lee also scored in the first half. Pond and Bertrand had second half goals. The match at Wootton gave the Coyotes their first win of the year. They defeated the Patriots, a recent state semi-finalist, with just a few minutes in the second overtime. Zeona Walker-Latney, a junior forward/midfielder, scored both goals with assists from Bertrand and Anna Hackett, another junior forward/midfielder.

References

  1. ↑ "Clarksburg High School at a Glance" (PDF). Montgomery County Public Schools. 2016.
  2. ↑ Clarksburg HS School-o-dex Staff Directory Page
  3. ↑
  4. ↑ (PDF)
  5. ↑ www.chstage.net
  6. ↑ "Lemelson-MIT EurekaFest 2009 - Clarksburg High School InvenTeam Presentation", MIT Tech TV
  7. ↑ http://www.gazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140709/SPORTS/140709410/1022/clarksburg-coach-finds-new-but-familiar-soccer-pitch&template=gazette Archived 2014-09-05 at the Wayback Machine.
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