Port Angeles High School


Port Angeles High School is a public high school in Port Angeles, Washington, United States and is part of the Port Angeles School District. It is the largest high school in the North Olympic Peninsula region.
Built in 1953, the facilities are located on 33 acres within a block of Olympic National Park borders. The school has views of the Olympic Mountain Range and the Strait of Juan de Fuca from the campus buildings. The school’s mascot is the Roughriders, depicting Theodore Roosevelt on a horse in his role as commander of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry. The school’s colors are green and white.

Academics

In addition to core courses, PAHS offers honors and Advanced Placement courses, a full range of traditional vocational courses, four choirs, five bands, four orchestras, and a full range of fine art courses. Junior and senior students have the option of taking courses at nearby Peninsula College for both high school and college credit. It is the only high school in the U.S. that offers Klallam language courses, due to its proximity to the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe reservation on the Elwha River delta and high number of tribal members who attend the school.

Athletics

Football, baseball and soccer games are played at Civic Field, a city-owned stadium about 1.5 miles from the school. PAHS also offers a variety of seasonal sports:
Port Angeles High School's Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps "Roughrider Company" is a highly decorated unit with approximately 120 cadets.
Under the leadership of Marine Maj. Leo Campbell, Ret., the unit achieved a 98 percent on-time graduation rate for cadets with four years in the unit, and has received the Distinguished Unit with Honors Award annually since 2006.
The unit won the state championship at the Northwest Drill and Rifle Championships in Tacoma, WA on March 14, 2015.
It is currently led by Navy Capt. Jonathan Picker, Ret., and Senior Chief Justin Beck, Ret.

PAHS Performing Arts Center

The school is home to the Port Angeles Performing Arts Center. The 1,150 seat auditorium was constructed in 1958 and significantly remodeled in 1978. In addition to school use, it is the venue for community arts organizations such as the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra, PALOA Musical Theater, Olympic Barbershop, Peninsula Men's Gospel Singers, Arts Northwest, and Ballet Workshop. It has hosted performances by Arlo Guthrie and the internationally known men's choir Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Student media controversy

In 2012 the PAHS student newspaper, the ‘’Timberline’’, came to the center of controversy within the scholastic community when then PAHS Principal Garry Cameron nearly prevented distribution of the newspaper because of the appearance of the letters “G-A-Y” in a word search puzzle. Students claimed that the letters had been featured in the puzzle unintentionally, and that Cameron did not have any legitimate basis for restricting distribution. A few pages later in the edition, students had written a story about President Barack Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage in which the word "gay" was used multiple times. Cameron did not object to the use of the word in that story.