Student enrollment is nearly 1,900 in grades 9-12, from the school's neighborhood attendance district, as well as from elsewhere in Chatham County through the Honors Academy for Academic Excellence. Jenkins operates on a block schedule in which students take four courses over one semester, and four other courses over the next semester. Senior students are eligible for the Joint Enrollment Program which partners with Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah Technical College, and Savannah State University. Joint Enrollment students take college core courses with free tuition. In addition, Jenkins offers AP courses, honors/advanced courses, and Project Lead the Way courses. PLTW was a program designed to instill technological learning into schools. The program was briefly interrupted during the 2006-07 school year, but was reinstated and continues to serve as the engineering-related school of the Savannah-Chatham County School System.
Honors Academy for Academic Excellence and Engineering Academy
The primary focus of this program is to provide higher-level courses to advanced students. Any student in Chatham County who meets program criteria is eligible to enroll at Jenkins. Approximately 300 students are enrolled.
History
The school is named for the late local philanthropist Herschel Vespasian Jenkins. The building was a "Florida-style" school. Typically, these schools were characterized by a low-ceiling building with outdoor corridors. In the early 1990s, the school was expanded with several new buildings, including a new social studies building, expanded science building, a new technology building, and a new gymnasium. The old gym was then renovated into an auditorium. The existing buildings heavily remodeled with the renovation complete by the 1992-93 school year. Jenkins was named a Blue Ribbon School in 1997 and a School of Excellence in 1998. The principal of Jenkins High School as of August 2013 is Heather Handy. Beginning in the summer of 2019, the first of several phases to replace the school building in its entirety began. The estimated completion of the new facility is the end of the 2021-2022 school year. Hussey, Gay, Bell is serving as the design team for the project.
