page_title: Holyoke High School
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Holyoke High School / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of the former Holyoke High School building designed by George P. B. Alderman in 1898, and razed by a fire in 1968, soon after its renovation for use by Holyoke Community College.
context_page_description: Holyoke High School is a public high school in western Massachusetts, United States that serves the City of Holyoke. Since 2015, the school, along with the district, has been in state receivership and through a series of changes in practices, such as innovative restorative justice disciplinary programs, has seen marked improvement in student retention and graduation rates. In the 2017-2018 school year Holyoke High received higher combined SAT scores than the average for schools in Boston, Worcester, and Springfield.
context_section_description: Established in 1852 by the city, the school's first principal was Stephen Holman, a polymath engineer, lawyer, linguist, and educator who went on to found the Holyoke Machine Company and Deane Steam Pump Works, purchased the Holyoke Paper Company, and was credited as the first to introduce modern cost accounting into the paper industry.
  From 1872 to 1881, Holyoke High School was one of about a dozen New England schools which received students from the Chinese Educational Mission. Upon returning overseas some of these students would go on to serve important roles in Qing dynasty China including, but not limited to, Shung Kih Ting, class of 1880, who would eventually serve as acting deputy commissioner of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and Chow Wan Tang who graduated in 1881 and revisited Holyoke in 1908 as general manager of the Imperial Chinese Telegraph Administration.
  On January 21, 1924, the school hosted the first of a series of debates in the United States between feminists Adele Schreiber-Krieger of Weimar Germany and Helen Fraser of the United Kingdom, under the topic "That the Hope of Civilization Depends Upon the Continued Growth of Labor Parties Throughout the World" with Schreiber arguing for and Fraser countering.
  During a visit to Holyoke in 1916, former President and future Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft gave a lecture at the high school on the institution of the US presidency. In 1969 the school was bestowed with the National Bellamy Award, presented annually to one school in the United States. Begun in 1942 by Margarette Miller, and named for Francis Bellamy, writer of the original pledge of allegiance, the award is given to a school each year which embodies the ideals of which the pledge aspires. Although the award is annually presented by an independent organization, in recognition of the school's award, Holyoke High received an official citation from President Richard Nixon, on May 13, 1969.
caption: The G.P.B. Alderman-designed high school, used from 1898 to 1964 when the present building opened
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