Mountlake Terrace High School

Mountlake Terrace High School is a public high school located in Mountlake Terrace, Washington. It is the third largest high school in the Edmonds School District.

Academics

STEM Education

The school is a registered Project Lead the Way magnet school. Project Lead The Way is a national program that aims to educate middle and high schoolers in STEM curriculum.^[2] The school offers engineering and robotics classes that offer college and university level credit if an AP exam is taken. Approximately 100 students are enrolled in the program. The school offers college-level engineering classes that offer college credit through the local Edmonds Community College's College in the High School program. The school also offers several Advanced Placement classes.

"Small Schools" Initiative

In September 2003 the school reorganized under five "small schools," ^[3] each with a specific emphasis: the Terrace Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Discovery School, the Innovation School, the Renaissance School and the Achievement, Opportunity and Scholarship School. The school received a $833,000 grant in return for their participation.^[4] The effort had been met with mixed reactions.^[5] Students were to stay in a school until their junior year, or to file a petition with a school administrator to transfer between programs. The "small schools" program ended in 2008, after which MTHS returned to a traditional high school format.

Theater department

The Mountlake Terrace Theatre Company is one of the top high school theater groups in the United States. The school's theatre sports team has won the Hogan Cup competition at the Market Place Theatre at Pike Place Market twice.

Music program

Mountlake Terrace High School is known for its music program. There are two concert bands and two jazz bands, as well as a percussion ensemble, three choirs, and two orchestras. The upper-level concert band, known as Chamber Winds, is a regular attendee at music festivals such as the University of Washington Music Festival and the Central Washington University's music festival. They also toured Europe in 2008. The school's upper jazz band, Jazz 1, has attended Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington Jazz Festival and Competition in New York in 2000, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2012; they placed third in the competition in 2005 and in 2011. They also received an honorable mention in 2002.^[6] The jazz band has gone on several European tours. The top jazz choir, Dynamics, was a winner of the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Idaho, 2007, the third win in a row for the choir. Mountlake Terrace has an all girls audition choir, Accents, as well as having a non-audition, all girls Chamber Choir. The MTHS orchestra has been to Gresham, Oregon, and other places.

Athletics

Mountlake Terrace High School's athletics department offers programs for the 2010-2011 year:^[7]
Boys football, girls volleyball, boys tennis, cross country, girls soccer, girls swimming, boys basketball, girls basketball, boys swimming, wrestling, track and field, soccer, girls tennis, boys baseball, girls Fastpitch softball, golf (boys and girls).

The 2005 football team had the best record in twenty years for the school, with a 5-5 record. The 2005 team had four players move onto Junior College at Ventura Community College. In 2008 the team amounted a 4-6 record, concluding with a victory over Monroe High School. In 2009 the team went 6-4 and made it to the playoffs for the first time in school history.^[8]

The school's fight song is to the tune of The Victors, the fight song of the University of Michigan. The chorus is as follows:
Hail to the Hawks so valiant
Hail to the conquering heroes
Hail to the Terrace Hawks
The leaders of the West.

Mountlake Terrace won the state 4A Boys soccer title in the 1974/1975 season defeating Newport High School (Bellevue) 3-2 in the championship game.

Mountlake Terrace won the state AAA basketball title in 1976/77 season defeating Richland High School in the state championship game with a season record of 27-1.

Notable alumni

• Seamus Boxley, American professional basketball player who currently plays for a team in the Ukraine.
• Mark O'Connor, fiddler (musician). He has talked about how there was virtually no music program when he attended the school.^[9]
• Ryan Strieby, professional baseball player. He currently plays first base for the Camden Riversharks, a non-MLB-affiliated team.
• Aleksey Chernov, civil rights activist and politician and the first ethnically Jewish student at MTHS. In 1987, a candlelight vigil was held in his honor at Mountlake Terrace City Hall in response to an assault following an announcement of his homosexuality.

History and facilities

The existing school is a replacement facility constructed in 1991^[10] and designed by Bassetti Architects.

See also

• Edmonds School District

References

External links

• Mountlake Terrace High School website
• The Hawkeye
• MTHS bands website
• Greatschools.org
• Project Lead The Way
• Catherine A. Wallach, Converting a Comprehensive High School Into Small Learning Communities: A Case Study of Mountlake Terrace High School, 2002