Columbia High School

Columbia High School is a four-year comprehensive regional public high school in Maplewood, in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It serves students in ninth through twelfth grades, as the lone secondary school of the South Orange-Maplewood School District, which includes Maplewood and South Orange, neighboring communities in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. The school has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1928; its accreditation expires in July 2025. As of the 2021–22 school year, the school had an enrollment of 1,926 students and 154.4 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 12.5:1. There were 220 students (11.4% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 41 (2.1% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch. School history Beginnings Since the days of the Revolution, a one-room stone schoolhouse had stood on a grassy area known as the Common, located close to the present intersection of South Orange Avenue and Academy Street in South Orange. In 1814, this building blocked the construction of a new toll highway from Newark to Morristown. The 73 "Proprietors and Associates" of the school met on August 3 of that year and resolved to erect a new school building near the site of the old one, naming seven trustees to thereafter oversee the education of local children. The resolution reflected "the desire of the meeting that the said school should in the future have the name of Columbian School of South Orange."