Holmdel High School is a comprehensive community four-year public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades from Holmdel Township, in Monmouth County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as the lone secondary school in the Holmdel Township Public Schools. The school has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1977.
As of the 2021–22 school year, the school had an enrollment of 950 students and 82.8 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 11.5:1. There were 13 students (1.4% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 3 (0.3% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.
Holmdel High School is known for academic, athletic, and artistic excellence. The school regularly ranks highly in academic competitions. Holmdel sports teams, notably the field hockey and boys tennis teams have been New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) state champions.
History
Until 1962, the district had sent students in grades nine to twelve to Keyport High School as part of a sending/receiving relationship. The district started sending students to Red Bank High School in 1962 and then Red Bank Regional High School when that district was established in 1969, which ended when the district opened Holmdel High School.
The high school opened in September 1970 with a ninth grade that was housed in a middle school building that had been constructed two years earlier. While less than 60% of graduating eighth-graders in 1969 moved on to Red Bank High School, nearly all of the students who completed eighth grade in Holmdel in 1970 moved on to attend the new high school.
The high school was constructed at a cost of $8.2 million (equivalent to $ million in ) and a design capacity of 965 students, with a building that featured many large roof spans above open spaces and unusually shaped rooms that added substantially to the cost above those of other facilities constructed at the same time for comparable numbers of students. Ground was broken for the new facility in September 1971 and the first group of 701 students started attending the school two years later, in September 1973.
Awards, recognition and rankings
In its listing of "America's Best High Schools 2016", the school was ranked 91st out of 500 best high schools in the country; it was ranked 19th among all high schools in New Jersey and sixth among the state's non-magnet schools. In Newsweek's annual list of the top public high schools in America for 2015, Holmdel High School ranked at number 41 in the nation, the 13th-highest in New Jersey and the third-ranked of the state's non-selective high schools.
In its 2013 report on "America's Best High Schools", The Daily Beast ranked the school 244th in the nation among participating public high schools and 19th among schools in New Jersey. The school was ranked 179th in the nation and 13th in New Jersey on the list of "America's Best High Schools 2012" prepared by The Daily Beast / Newsweek, with rankings based primarily on graduation rate, matriculation rate for college and number of Advanced Placement / International Baccalaureate courses taken per student, with lesser factors based on average scores on the SAT / ACT, average AP/IB scores and the number of AP/IB courses available to students.
In the 2011 "Ranking America's High Schools" issue by The Washington Post, the school was ranked 20th in New Jersey and 735th nationwide. In Newsweek's May 22, 2007 issue, ranking the country's top high schools, Holmdel High School was listed in 480th place, the ninth-highest ranked school in New Jersey. The school was ranked as the 45th-best public secondary school in New Jersey and the 380th-best in the U.S. in Newsweek magazine's listing of "America's Best High Schools" in 2006., and was ranked 426th in the 2005 rankings.
The school was the 12th-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 339 schools statewide in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2014 cover story on the state's "Top Public High Schools", using a new ranking methodology. The school had been ranked 13th in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 17th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 11th in 2008 out of 316 schools. Schooldigger.com ranked the school 38th out of 381 public high schools statewide in its 2011 rankings (an increase of 1 position from the 2010 ranking) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the mathematics (94.3%) and language arts literacy (97.2%) components of the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).