New Trier High School (, also known as New Trier Township High School or NTHS) is a public four-year high school, with its main campus for sophomores through seniors located in Winnetka, Illinois, United States, and a freshman campus in Northfield, Illinois, with freshman classes and district administration. Founded in 1901, the school serves the Chicago North Shore suburbs of Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, most of Northfield, and parts of Glenview. New Trier's logo depicts the Porta Nigra, a symbol of Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The athletic teams are known as the Trevians, an archaic demonym for the city's people.
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History
New Trier Township High School was founded in 1901 in Winnetka, Illinois, with seventy-six students and seven faculty members. Chicago's north shore communities had decided to build a school that would enable parents to educate their children without sending them to college preparatory schools on the Eastern seaboard.
The school has been marked by a series of firsts and other notable events. In 1912, New Trier became the first high school in America with an indoor swimming pool. During World War I, New Trier became a training ground for soldiers. A student fundraising drive at the time led to the purchase of a field ambulance. In 1928, New Trier began its advisory system, the first such in American public secondary education, in which each student meets with one faculty adviser and the same fellow advisory students every morning throughout his or her career. Students sold tax warrants door-to-door in the 1930s to keep the school operating as the flow of property tax funds dwindled in the Great Depression. During World War II, students sold bonds to finance both a B-17 (The Spirit of New Trier) and a B-29.
In the 1950s, New Trier became the first American high school with an educational, non-commercial FM broadcast license for a radiated station (WNTH, 88.1 FM). By 1970 New Trier was home to the nation's first public high school-based CCTV instructional station, ITV, which broadcast educational programming to township elementary schools via microwave signals. Students operated WNTH under a faculty adviser, and ITV was operated by students under professional television technical and programming staff.
By 1962, student enrollment was more than 4,000. Some 20 "temporary" trailer classrooms lined the rear of the building, which had been designed for 3,000. To accommodate the growing baby boom student body, voters approved a referendum for New Trier to purchase forty-six acres in Northfield. Chicago architecture firm Perkins and Will was selected to design a campus of curricular buildings clustered around a central library and administration building. The resulting modernist design was widely noted in secondary education architecture literature and practice, and emulated by Winnetka's Carleton Washburne junior high school several years later.
"New Trier West" opened to freshmen and sophomores in 1965. What had been "New Trier," at 385 Winnetka Avenue in Winnetka, became "New Trier East." In 1967, New Trier West was dedicated as a separate four-year high school. U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare John Gardner keynoted the dedication, which was also attended by U.S. Senator Charles Percy (1937) and Congressman Donald Rumsfeld (1950).
Enrollment reached an all-time peak of 6,558 students in 1972. By 1981, enrollment had dropped significantly. As a result, the school board decided to combine the East and West schools and convert New Trier West into the freshman-only campus. The division of freshmen (at the former New Trier West) from upperclassmen (at the former New Trier East) lasted from September 1981 until June 1985. By then enrollment had declined enough for the board to bring all students under one roof, close the former New Trier West, and convert the Northfield campus into a community recreation space. The campus later housed a senior center, corporate dormitories, a public swimming pool, and an alternative high school program known as West Center Academy.
Jonathan Kozol wrote a book called Savage Inequalities in 1991 that discussed the harsh conditions in the poorest school districts in the United States, making a correlation between inequality and racial separation and segregation. In the book, Kozol contrasted New Trier High School's spending per student to impoverished schools within Chicago.
New Trier was featured in the December 9, 1996, issue of Time in an article entitled "High Times at New Trier High." Among other claims, the article stated that "New Trier kids who smoke pot" were "by all accounts more than three-fifths of the student body," compared with national averages at the time closer to 33%. However, on the school's WNTH's radio program, the writer acknowledged that the "three-fifths" claim had been inadvertently rewritten during the editing process in such a way that seemed to imply that more than 60% of New Trier students may be regular users of marijuana, whereas that figure should have been clearly labeled as the portion of students who had ever used marijuana, including many who had used it only once or twice.
In 2001, due to increasing enrollment, the Northfield campus reopened. The decision to make it a freshman-only campus was a compromise from a stalemate between plans to either increase capacity at the Winnetka campus or reopen the Northfield campus as a separate school. The Northfield campus also houses the administrative offices of the New Trier Township High School District.
In the summer of 2008, Illinois state senator James Meeks made a public plea for parents of Chicago public school students to assist their children in skipping the first day of school (September 2), and instead attend a protest at New Trier that involved attempting to mass enroll students there. The protest was regarding inequities in school funding between schools in Chicago and New Trier. New Trier administrators were supportive of the protest. Students were greeted by cheerful parent volunteers to register at the Northfield Campus. After a relatively quick and peaceful registration, the buses left.
In 2016, Newsweek magazine ranked New Trier as the top open enrollment high school in Illinois and the 17th best high school in the country.
Master planning process
New Trier High School recently invested in an extensive campus expansion and modification plan for its two campuses, called the "Master Planning Process". The process took input, in roughly equal shares, from (1) faculty, (2) staff and administration, (3) students and (4) community at large when formulating the plan.
In the spring of 2015, District 203 began work on the Winnetka Campus Construction and Renovation Project. Phase One of the project opened in August 2016, which includes a new library, student cafeteria, 16 new core academic classrooms, a new culinary lab, a green roof, art studios, and applied arts labs. The entire project is scheduled for completion at the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year.
The New Trier High School Board of Education's members are mostly from Glencoe and Wilmette. As of September 1 2017, the current superintendent of New Trier Township High School District 203 is Dr. Paul Sally. He replaces Dr. Linda L. Yonke, the first woman to hold the position, at the end of June 2017. For the 2016-2017 school year, Yonke's total compensation is stated as $336,350,.ref>http://newtrier.k12.il.us/Board/District_Financial_Information/Documents/Administrative_Compensation_Reports/2016-2017_Administrative_Compensation_Report/</ref>
Academics
Profile and recognition
New Trier spends more than $15,000 yearly per student, well above the state average of $8,786. It has been included in the "Top Hundred" and "Most Successful" lists of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Parade magazine. The school was identified as "quite possibly the best public school in America" by Town & Country, in a six-page article on New Trier that cited the "rich" and "demanding" curriculum, extensive arts and activities, strong participation in athletics, and faculty of the caliber typically found teaching at good colleges. Life also recognized New Trier as one of the best high schools in America with cover stories in 1950 and 1998.
In the class of 2016, 38 students were National Merit Semifinalists, 34 were National Merit Finalists, 59 received letters of commendation and 447 were Illinois State Scholars. For this same class, the mean ACT composite score was 27.8, the highest in Illinois for an open enrollment public school and among the top school scores in the United States. According to an article by the University of Michigan Department of Psychology, "New Trier students outperform their Illinois classmates on every conceivable measure." The article also points out that 92% of the school's funding comes from the high property taxes of its affluent surroundings. The degree to which the school's performance is actually high given its resources is not addressed. Approximately 98% of the class of 2014 went on to enroll in college.
New Trier ensembles or individuals have received 39 awards in the Downbeat Student Music Awards program. A record-setting seven of these were achieved in 2007 alone. More than 1,100 students participate in the music department. The student-run Soundtraks Club produces all 24 concerts a year, webcast live on the internet at ntjazz.com, on local cable television, and in stereo on WNTH radio.
New Trier was named a Grammy Signature School Gold recipient by the Grammy Foundation in 2000 for its commitment to music education, and was named the National Signature School in 2007 as the nation's top high school music program. In April 2006, the school's Concert Choir and Symphony Orchestra performed in New York City at Carnegie Hall. In the summer of 2000, the school's Jazz Ensemble, Chamber Orchestra and Bluegrass Band enjoyed a successful two-week concert tour of China.
According to official state of Illinois reports retrieved by the Family Taxpayers Network, 2005 salaries of more than $100,000 were received by 127 administrators, teachers and other staffers, all but 11 of whom were listed as working for 10 months of the year.
Subject levels
New Trier has practiced subject-level grouping for over fifty years. In this system, up to four different levels of difficulty are offered for each academic subject. Level 2E is considered a general level. Levels 2, 3 and 4 are college preparatory, honors, and high honors levels, respectively. Level 5 was reserved for Advanced Placement classes and other college-level classes, such as multivariable calculus and linear algebra, but the level was phased out beginning with the class of 2011. (All 5-level courses are currently counted as 4-level.) Students may work at different levels in different subjects. Other levels include 8 and 9. Level 8 classes are counted for elective credit and level 9 classes, generally a combination of a level 3 and 4, are graded as level 3 classes.
New Trier offers both unweighted and weighted grade point averages (GPA), and plus and minus grades are reported on transcripts. In calculating a weighted GPA, grades in a student's coursework are given different values depending on the level in which the grade is earned. For example, an "A" in a 2-level course is weighted at 4.00, while in levels 3 and 4 the values are 4.67 and 5.33, respectively (an "A" in a 5-level AP class is worth 5.67). In 2009, New Trier announced that for the 2010-2011 school year the level 5 will be eliminated. A.P. classes will be weighted to level 4.
Since the late 1990s, the Board of Education has been examining how to encourage students to pursue a strong academic career without their focusing too much on their class rank. The first step taken by the administration was to eliminate the process of reporting class rank and to switch to decile ranking. Around the same time, the scale for weighted GPA calculations was modified and plus and minus grades were implemented. In 2008, New Trier eliminated the reporting of ranks in a class entirely.
Student life
Athletics
New Trier's mascot is the Trevian, named after soldiers from the city of Trier, Germany during the Roman Empire. The Trevian mascot was chosen in recognition of the fact that the Grosse Pointe area of Wilmette was largely settled by immigrants from Trier, Germany. From 1901 to 1948, the school's sports teams were known as the "Terriers" and "Green Wave." During the 1948-49 school year they were renamed "Indians", reflecting the school's location in the Indian Hill section of Winnetka. When the new campus in the western part of the district opened in 1965, the new school's sports team was known as the "Cowboys". The year before the two schools merged in 1981, a number of student forums were held on both the East and West campuses, giving students the opportunity to provide feedback on potential school colors and nicknames. After a series of student votes, the school adopted "Trevians" as a team name and green, blue, and gray as the school colors (East having previously been green and gray, while West was blue, gray, and white). During the 2004-2005 school year the mascot was named "Trevius Maximus" after conducting a student poll.
New Trier's biggest conference rival is Evanston Township High School. Their football rivalry is one of the oldest uninterrupted sports rivalries in the history of high school sports, dating back over 100 years. Both schools compete in the Central Suburban League conference. The two annual basketball games New Trier plays against Evanston draw so many people that from 2001 to 2013 they were held at Northwestern University's larger Welsh-Ryan Arena; more recent competitions at Evanston's and New Trier's facilities frequently fill to capacity. New Trier's biggest non-conference rival is Loyola Academy, which is located in Wilmette, just down the road from the Northfield campus.
With more than 120 state championships, New Trier High School currently has more than any other high school in Illinois. New Trier also leads the state in both boys' and girls' state titles. The sports in which New Trier has the most IHSA-sponsored state titles are boys' swimming and diving (23), boys' tennis (19), girls' swimming and diving (13), boys' golf (9), girls' tennis (9), and girls' badminton (8). New Trier has been strong in the sport of baseball, twice as state champions, winning in 2000 and 2009. New Trier has also historically been strong at non-IHSA sponsored sports, including 18 Great Lakes High School Fencing Conference (formerly Midwest High School Fencing) championships in men's fencing and 10 in women's fencing, eleven state titles (Blackhawk Cup) in boys' ice hockey, twelve state championships in boys' lacrosse, 1995, 1998, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017 six state titles in girls' ice hockey, 2 national championships in boys' rowing, 7 national championships in girls' rowing, five state championships in girls' lacrosse, and one state championship in girls' cross country. The top varsity ice hockey team for boys, New Trier Green, won the first ever USA Hockey High School National Championship title in 2010.
In May 2005, New Trier was ranked #12 in Sports Illustrated's list of the "Top 25 High School Sports Programs in America," and first in Illinois.
The athletic facilities include the Leslie Gates Gymnasium for basketball; two natatoriums for swimming, diving, and water polo; Phelps Field for lacrosse, encircled by the Doug Chase Track; the Robert Naughton Field at New Trier Stadium for football, soccer, and lacrosse; the Duke Childs Fields for baseball and softball; gyms for volleyball; courts for tennis; a wrestling room with four mats, and an indoor field house.
Activities
There are over 150 different extracurricular activities at New Trier, including the student-loved "Cereal Club". Although some date back decades (to the founding of the school) and have strong traditions, others are much newer and consist of only a few members.
One noted club is the New Trier chess club. They participate in tournaments all over the country.
Lagniappe-Potpourri
New Trier's Lagniappe-Potpourri is an annual student-written, student-choreography, student-composed, student-directed, student-managed, student-built and student-performed musical/comedy production with original content performed every fall. The comedy sketches and songs all include New Trier-related humor. This is one of three annual musicals and is an extracurricular opportunity open to all students. Performers in the show (sophomores, juniors, and seniors) must audition in the early fall, and board members apply for positions each spring for the following year. There are also song and music writing, management, stage crew, and pit band opportunities.
Debate
New Trier's debate program has flourished in recent years, with two students receiving the top speaker award at the Tournament of Champions, which only allows the top 72 teams in the nation to compete through a system of qualification. The school has also placed teams in the top 16 in recent years. New Trier has also had students either go to the final or win in the Illinois High School Association's state debate tournament in all four divisions, most recently winning the 2010 championship in Lincoln-Douglas debate and the 2011 and 2013 championship in Public Forum.
Philanthropy
Each of the four official class governments (Sophomore and Junior Steering Committees and the Freshman and Senior Senates) makes significant annual donations to various philanthropic causes throughout the community, state, country, and world. Every year since 2001, the Senior Senate has fully funded the construction of a house in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity of Lake County, Illinois, a non-profit organization that fights homelessness and substandard housing. A recent goal of the campaign was 10 houses in 10 years, and the class of 2010 fulfilled that goal. New Trier is the only school so far to build 10 houses with Habitat. Many fundraisers contribute to this and various other causes over the course of the academic year. The New Trier Tsunami Relief Committee donated more than $18,000 to relief organizations to save people who were affected by the tsunami, and also helped victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004.
Frank Mantooth Jazz Festival
The jazz festival began in 1983 and takes place on the first Saturday of February. Each year, the event brings in around fifty high school and junior high jazz ensembles from all over the Great Lakes region and Canada to perform during the day. The high school groups attend clinics with respected jazz educators and composers from around the country. Seminars are also held throughout the day on improvisation, transcription, and music business, as well as instrument masterclasses. A featured jazz combo and college big band perform in the afternoon, while the evening concert features a renowned professional big band. Past groups have included the Buddy Rich Big Band (led by Dave Weckl), the Woody Herman Orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, the Artie Shaw Orchestra, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Jazz Orchestra, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the Chicago Jazz Ensemble (led by Jon Faddis), the Bob Mintzer Big Band, Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band, the Mingus Big Band, Maynard Ferguson, and Dizzy Gillespie. The festival was renamed in 2005 after Frank Mantooth when the legendary jazz musician, educator, and composer died just days before the 2004 festival.
In the movies
Scenes from Home Alone, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Uncle Buck were shot at the high school's west campus in Northfield, and scenes from Sixteen Candles were shot outside the high school's east campus in Winnetka. The Breakfast Club's title comes from the nickname invented by students and staff for morning detention at New Trier High School, the school attended by the son of one of John Hughes' friends. The movie Mean Girls was based on New Trier.
Timothy Estberg
On August 28, 2016, Timothy Estberg, a choir teacher, adviser, and music coordinator at the Northfield campus, died at the age of 51. He was a faculty sponsor of both the student-run musical, Lagniappe, and of NT Soundtraks, which helped students improve their recording skills and recorded all of New Trier's concerts. Estberg, who saw the dignity and value of every individual student, was an enthusiastic advocate for LGBTQ students. A concert in Estberg's honor was held on May 24, 2017, and included performances from past and present students and colleagues.
Notable alumni
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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