Mount Pleasant High School (Wilmington, Delaware)

Mount Pleasant High School is a public secondary school located in Wilmington, Delaware. The current acting principal is Curi Calderón-Lacy, assuming Heather Austin’s role after her resignation. There were 1035 students enrolled in the fall for the 2017-2018 school year.^[1] It was the first public high school in Delaware to offer the International Baccalaureate program, followed by John Dickinson High School.

History

Mount Pleasant was one of the first schools built following the passing of the free school law of 1829. On September 22, 1830, Joseph Orr sold a lot to the School Committee of School District #2 (note: School District #1 was Naamans Creek, now the Claymont Stone School). The original Mount Pleasant schoolhouse still stands today, located on an acre of land which is now part of Bellevue State Park.^[2] When William DuPont Jr. remodeled Woolton Hall, now called the Bellevue Mansion, he also changed the exterior of the Mount Pleasant schoolhouse from stone to its present Colonial Revival style.

In 1865, the school moved to a new location on Philadelphia Pike, just across the street from the Mount Pleasant Methodist Church, and then again in 1932 to a much larger facility on Duncan Road (now the home of Mount Pleasant Elementary School). In 1958, Mount Pleasant High School opened at its present location on Washington Street Extension.

In 1978, the Mount Pleasant Special School District and other school districts in Delaware dissolved due to desegregation, and Mount Pleasant High School became a part of the New Castle County School District. Quinton Sterling became the first African-American principal of the high school. In 1981, the larger district split into four separate school districts (Brandywine, Christina, Colonial and Red Clay Consolidated), and Frank J. Furgele became the superintendent of the newly formed Brandywine School District.

The school celebrated their 175th anniversary in a series of events during homecoming weekend, October 14 and 15, 2005, including the inaugural Mount Pleasant Hall of Fame.

Academics

In 2008, Mount Pleasant ranked #602 in Newsweek's top 1300 high schools, which uses a ratio of the number of AP, IB and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school, divided by the number of graduating seniors.^[3] In the spring of 2008, 220 students took IB exams and more than 100 students took AP exams.^[1]

Mount Pleasant's Academic Bowl team placed second in the 2008 Comcast Academic Challenge of Delaware.^[4]

Athletics

MPHS fields teams in football, boys' and girls' cross country, field hockey, boys' and girls' soccer, girls' volleyball, fall cheerleading, boys' and girls' basketball, boys' and girls' swimming, boys' and girls' indoor track, wrestling, winter cheerleading, baseball, softball, golf, boys' and girls' lacrosse, boys' and girls' tennis, and boys' and girls' track & field. Mount competes in the Blue Hen Conference, in Flight B. The current athletic director is Keith Neff.

Activities

Mount Pleasant is also the home of WMPH 91.7 FM, which began broadcasting on October 1, 1969, and was Delaware's only public high school radio station until McKean began broadcasting at WHMS 88.1 FM in 1998.^[5]

Mount Pleasant also hosts the only completely student-run Relay for Life in the region. Over the past 5 years, over $150,000 has been raised for the American Cancer Society through this event.^[6]

Mount Pleasant's chapter of the Technology Student Association has been recognized for the school's contributions to the TSA/ACS Service Project through Relay for Life. The former national president of TSA, Peter Andrews, is an alumnus of Mount Pleasant.^[7]

Mount Pleasant puts on a spring musical every year. Past productions include The King and I (2008), Damn Yankees (2009), Footloose (2010), Les Miserables (2011), Beauty and the Beast (2012), Godspell (2013), Hairspray (2014), and Rent (2015).

The choral department is composed of a chorale, concert choir, treble choir, show choir, gospel choir, jazz choir, as well as the Elite Eight and Sweet Adelines a cappella groups. The instrumental music department includes a symphonic band, concert band, jazz band, marching band, early music ensemble, and guitar quartet.

References