Parkersburg High School (PHS) is a secondary school located in Parkersburg, West Virginia, United States, that serves grades nine through twelve and is part of the Wood County School District. As of the 2018-2019 West Virginia Secondary School Activity Commission's high school classifications, the school has 1,739 students and the average classroom size is twenty-five. The Wood County School District has 13,746 students in 29 schools. Its partner in education is DuPont.
Parkersburg High is the second-largest populated school in the state of West Virginia (behind Cabell Midland High School in Ona, WV) and has the largest campus in West Virginia. The feeder schools contributing to this student population are Jackson Middle School, Hamilton Middle School and Van Devender Middle School.
When the current high school campus opened in 1917, the former high school building was re-established as Washington Junior High School. Previously, Washington Junior High School fed PHS as well. The Washington Jr. High School building was demolished in 1964. Washington Junior High then opened in the former Jefferson Elementary School on Plum Street, adjacent to a newly built Jefferson Elementary School. Washington Junior High closed in 1992, combining with Jefferson Elementary School to become an elementary center in 1998.
History
Parkersburg High School was one of the first high schools in the state of West Virginia. The school was founded in 1867, originally located in downtown Parkersburg. The current building housing PHS has a Tudor Style architecture with three stories. It was designed by noted Ohio architect Frank Packard (1866–1923), and built in 1917, making it one of the oldest school buildings in West Virginia. It remains the largest high school campus in the state. Later additions included Stadium Field and the Field House, a multi-story gymnasium. It is located in the Parkersburg High School-Washington Avenue Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
PHS continued to serve as the only high school in Parkersburg, at one point holding a population of around three thousand students. It was only after graduating a class of eleven hundred thirty seven (1137) students in 1965 that a second public school, Parkersburg South High School, was founded in 1967. This in turn started a rivalry between the two schools that continues to be one of the largest and most famous in the state of West Virginia. The rivalry between the two sides of Parkersburg originated much earlier in the town's history, so the rivalry between the two schools was a natural spin-off that has brought about some dramatic competition.
Planetarium
The construction of a planetarium was conducted in the 1960s through the joint efforts of the Rotary Club of Parkersburg, Corning Glass Works, the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) and the Wood County Board of Education. Cost for constructing the room and purchasing equipment was $32,770.00. It is one of the first high schools in America to have a planetarium.
Data Processing Center
During the 1965–66 school year, PHS became one of the first high schools in the United States to offer students classes in data processing and computer programming in the "new" and expanding technology. The Burroughs computer required a huge, temperature controlled room of its own, and had a memory capacity of 640 Kb—considered top-of-the-line then. It used six phone booth-sized magnetic tape readers for computations. in 1967, upon completion of the second high school, the computer center was re-located to the new building.
Notable alumni and faculty
Alumni
Joseph Albright (class of 1956), West Virginia supreme court justice
Zak Boggs, professional soccer player
Glen Gainer, Jr. (class of 1945), State Auditor of West Virginia, 1977–1993
Linda Goodman (class of 1943), astrologer
Bill Earley (class of 1938) Assistant Head Coach Notre Dame, 1946-1954
Leon Claire Metz (class of 1948), cultural historian
Greasy Neale, football coach
Mick Staton (class of 1958), West Virginia Republican politician
Gibby Welch, football player
Patsy Ramsey, (class of 1975), Miss West Virginia 1977, Mother of JonBenét Ramsey Doug Marks, Founder of Metal Method guitar instruction Nick Swisher (class of 1999), outfielder for the Atlanta Braves Stephen D. Barnett (Class of 1985), Rear Admiral U.S. Navy, Commander of the Navy Region of Hawaii Brenton Strange, (class of 2019), TE Jacksonville Jaguars, drafted in 2023.
