Liberty High School (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania)

Liberty High School is a large urban, public high school located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the United States. Liberty is the larger of two public high schools in the Bethlehem Area School District, with Freedom High School being the other. Liberty's current attendance area includes students from the City of Bethlehem, Fountain Hill, Freemansburg, and Hanover Township. For the 2017–2018 school year, enrollment was reported as 2,673 pupils in 9th through 12th grades.[1]

Liberty High School
Liberty High School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 2020
Address
1115 Linden Street

Bethlehem
,
Northampton, Lehigh
,
Pennsylvania
18018

United States
Coordinates40°37′46″N 75°22′17″W
Information
TypePublic high school
School districtBethlehem Area School District
SuperintendentJoseph Roy
PrincipalHarrison Bailey III
Teaching staff151.00 (FTE))[1]
Grades9–12
Enrollment2,673 (2018–19)[1]
Student to teacher ratio17.70[1]
Color(s)  Burgundy
  Navy
Fight songLiberty Forever
Athletics conferenceEastern Pennsylvania Conference
NicknameHurricanes
RivalFreedom High School
Websitewww-lhs.beth.k12.pa.us
[2]
Bethlehem School District region in Northampton County
Bethlehem Area School District region in Lehigh County

Liberty High School students may choose to attend the Bethlehem Area Vocational-Technical School for training in the construction and mechanical trades. In 2015 the District reported that over 1,000 Bethlehem Area pupils were enrolled in the Vocational school's programs. The Colonial Intermediate Unit IU20 provides the school with a wide variety of services like: specialized education for disabled students; state mandated training on recognizing and reporting child abuse; speech and visual disability services; criminal background check processing for prospective employees and professional development for staff and faculty.

Liberty High School holds football games and other sporting events at the Frank Banko Field at the Bethlehem Area School District Stadium. Graduation takes place annually at Stabler Arena.

History

Liberty High School was built in 1918 and opened in 1922. At the ceremony in May 1923, Liberty High School was dedicated to "the progressive spirit of the citizens of Bethlehem." At the opening of the school, Liberty was seen as "one of the greatest achievements of the City of Bethlehem," and designed to not only "further the well-being of youth" but also to stand as a "War Memorial, commemorating the valor of Bethlehem men who went to the front, the sacrifice of the heroic dead and the manifold contributions and productions of the city toward bringing the war to swift and just conclusion." Liberty High School was given its name to cement this War Memorial status. It is located in the geographical center of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the state.

Liberty High School served all of Bethlehem until Freedom High School was built. Afterwards, Center City, Pembroke, and South Side residents attended Liberty while Bethlehem Township and Hanover Township residents went to Freedom. Adjustments have been made to these borders however, and Liberty now has students from Hanover, Center City, Pembroke and some of South Side (with some South Side residents attending the Freedom school).

Up until Liberty's recent remodel, the school was composed of three classroom buildings, two buildings with four floors and one science center with two. Over the years, several renovations have been performed on the school, with the most recent being an overhaul of the main building, along with the construction of a new student activity center.

Liberty High School's Main building (Common's Building) is currently home to the Freshman Center. It is a new program established in 2013 meant to help freshmen make the transition the high school a little easier. Students there are now following a different schedule than the 10-12 graders attending Liberty. All freshmen take classes in the 2nd and 3rd floor of the commons building and travel for gym, business and sciences classes. It was developed due to the fact that freshmen typically struggle academically with such a big transition from middle school. This is the first time Liberty High School has done something like this in its history.

Extracurriculars

Bethlehem Area School District offers a wide variety of clubs, activities and an extensive sports program at Liberty High School.

Athletics
See also: Eastern Pennsylvania Conference (PIAA)

The school's athletic teams compete in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, one of the premier high school athletic conferences in the nation that also includes high schools from Allentown, Easton, Emmaus, and other Lehigh Valley locations.

The sports include cheerleading (non-competitive and competitive), baseball, field hockey, boys and girls soccer, boys and girls track and field, goys and girls basketball, football, softball, boys and girls volleyball, Co-ed golf, boys and girls swimming, rifle, boys and girls tennis, girls and boys lacrosse, wrestling, and boys and girls cross country. In December 2008, the Liberty High School varsity football team won the Pennsylvania 4A State Championship.[3] Liberty High School has the fifth most Eastern Pennsylvania Conference championships in all sports, behind Parkland High School, Emmaus High School, Easton Area High School, and Allentown Central Catholic High School.[4]

Liberty High School (as well as Freedom High School and Bethlehem Catholic High School) plays at Frank Banko Field at Bethlehem Area School District Stadium, a 12,000 capacity high school stadium that is one of the largest in Pennsylvania.[5]

Grenadier Band

The Liberty High School Grenadier Band is the official marching band of the school. The band is unique in that is uses the format for military bands in the British Army's Household Division, a format it began using in 1967. Since then, it has been adapted and made suitable for the American high school marching bands with the addition of Sousaphones, Mellophones, Baritone horns and fewer trumpets. The band was originally founded as the Bethlehem High School Band in 1926. At that time, the school was one of its kind since it opened in 1922. After the school's name change in 1966, the band began to orient itself towards the Coldstream Guards by issuing new uniforms and creating a pipe band (which itself resembles the Scots Guards). The LHSGB as of 2019 consists of 300 students which, besides the bagpipe section, also includes a colour guard section, majorettes, corps of drums, fanfare trumpeters, and a drum major.[6]

The Grenadier Band was featured in a 2016 PBS39 documentary, Second to None: Liberty High School Grenadier Band.[7] The documentary follows the historic legacy of the band, as well as the process by which the band conducts itself every year.[8]

Notable alumni

Notable faculty

References
  1. "Liberty HS". National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
  2. http://www-lhs.beth.k12.pa.us/2010_11.profile/2014-2015_LHS_Profile.pdf
  3. Keith Groller (January 25, 2016). "2008 state championship football team among new Liberty High Hall of Fame inductees". The Morning Call.
  4. "LVIAC Past Champions" (PDF). Lehigh Valley Interscholastic Athletic Conference. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-05-22. Retrieved 2010-08-13.
  5. Sara K. Satullo (January 13, 2015). "Bethlehem Area School District weighing synthetic turf refresh, new turf fields". LehighValleyLive.com.
  6. https://www.mcall.com/entertainment/music/mc-liberty-grenadier-band-documentary-20160703-story,amp.html
  7. "WLVT Specials | Second To None: Liberty High School Grenadier Band | Season 2017 | Episode 8 | PBS". PBS.
  8. https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/2015/03/liberty_high_school_grenadier_1.html
  9. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
  10. IMDb.com (2016). "Jonathan Frakes Biography". IMDb.
  11. http://thegoodmancompany.com/bio_goodman.php
  12. Stamm, Dan (2010-07-30). "Longtime Voice of NBC10 Dies, J.J. Maura was a fixture at NBC10 for 2 decades". WCAU-TV. Retrieved 2010-08-07.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.