Piscataway Township High School

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Piscataway Township High School is a four-year public high school in Piscataway Township in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States, serving students in grades 9-12 as part of the Piscataway Township Schools.

Piscataway High School has been recognized as a Governor’s School of Excellence and is the only secondary school in New Jersey to be admitted as a full member in the Coalition of Essential Schools.

For the 2004-2005 school year, the school had an enrollment of 2,265 students (including 517 seniors), and a faculty of 170.

The school is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and by the New Jersey Department of Education.

Advanced Placement Program (AP) courses are offered in AP English Language and Composition, AP French Language, AP Statistics, AP Spanish Language, AP Calculus, AP Computer Science, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics, AP United States History and AP Studio Art.

1 Notable Legal Cases
2 Athletics
3 Administration
4 External links

[edit] Notable Legal Cases

Two notable legal cases have originated at Piscataway High School.

New Jersey v. T. L. O.

In 1984, the school was involved in a case that made it to the Supreme Court of the United States.

A fourteen-year-old freshman, known by the initials T. L. O., was caught by a teacher smoking in a bathroom with another girl at the high school. The teacher took both students to the Principal's Office where they met with Assistant Vice Principal Theodore Choplick. In a search of T. L. O.'s purse, Choplick observed a pack of cigarettes, and while removing the cigarettes he noticed a package of rolling papers, often closely tied to the use of marijuana. Choplick then began a more thorough search for the evidence of drugs, which revealed a small amount of marijuana, a pipe, empty plastic bags, a large quantity of money in $1 bills, an index card that appeared to list students who owed T. L. O. money, and two letters that implicated T. L. O. in being a drug dealer.

Choplick then notified T. L. O.'s mother and the police, to whom he turned over the evidence of drug dealing. The police requested the mother to take her daughter to police headquarters, where T. L. O. confessed to selling marijuana at the high school. Using the confession and the evidence obtained by Choplick's search, the State brought delinquency charges against T. L. O. in the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of Middlesex County.

T. L. O. claimed the assistant principal's search violated the Fourth Amendment. She moved to suppress the evidence found in her purse as well as her confession, arguing, the evidence was "fruit of the poisonous tree." The Juvenile Court denied the motion to suppress. Although the court concluded that the Fourth Amendment did apply to searches carried out by school officials, it held:

"a school official may properly conduct a search of a student's person if the official has a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is in the process of being committed, or reasonable cause to believe that the search is necessary to maintain school discipline or enforce school policies." Id., at 341, 428 A. 2d, at 1333 (emphasis in original).

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the search and seizure by school officials without a warrant was constitutional, as long as the search is deemed reasonable. This overturned the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling.

Piscataway Board of Education v. Sharon Taxman

Piscataway Board of Education v. Taxman, 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir. 1996) was a racial discrimination case begun in 1989. The school board of Piscataway, New Jersey needed to eliminate a teaching position from the high school Business Education department. Under New Jersey state law, tenured teachers have to be laid off in reverse order of seniority. The newest tenured teachers, Sharon Taxman and Debra Williams, white and African-American respectively, had started working at the school on the same day. In the interest of maintaining racial diversity (Williams was the only black teacher in the department, and 50% of the students were minorities), the school board voted to lay off Taxman, even though she had a master's degree and Williams only had a bachelor's degree. Taxman complained to the EEOC, saying that the board had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Taxman. The school board appealed to the United States Supreme Court and a hearing was scheduled for January 1998, but civil rights groups, fearing that the case could lead to the prohibition of affirmative action, provided money for the board to settle the case out of court, so the case was never heard.

Taxman was subsequently rehired. Both teachers are currently teaching in Piscataway. Williams remains at the high school, while Taxman has been reassigned to Conackamack Middle School.

[edit] Athletics

The Piscataway High School Chiefs compete in the Greater Middlesex Conference, comprised of 33 public and private high schools located in the greater Middlesex County area. The league operates under the supervision of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association.