Montclair High School is a comprehensive four-year public high school located in Montclair, in Essex County, New Jersey, United States, serving students in ninth through twelfth grades as the lone secondary school of the Montclair Public School District. The school has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1928. As of the 2021–22 school year, the school had an enrollment of 1,998 students and 154.6 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 12.9:1. There were 249 students (12.5% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 46 (2.3% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch. Background Founded in 1886, MHS quickly outgrew its original location (torn down in the 1930s) on Orange Road, the site of which is now the field of Hillside School. The current "Main Building" was then opened, and it is one of the older public high schools in New Jersey. It initially was only the "Main Building," as it is colloquially referred to, but as time went on and the enrollment grew, the board of education allowed the high school to annex George Inness Junior High School across the street, which is called "the Annex" or the "Freshman Building", in which many of the ninth grade classes take place. Grounds The school holds classes in two buildings on opposite sides of Park Street. The Main Building of the high school is located on the west side of Park Street, and the George Inness Annex, also known as the Freshman Building, is located on the east side of the street. Traffic is stopped eight times a day for five minutes between periods to allow students to cross the street. Many fences and a crosswalk have been installed to restrict the students' routes to a meter path. Gym classes are sometimes held at Woodman Field of Essex Park, two blocks away, and otherwise in the school's four gymnasiums. Montclair High School has an outdoor amphitheatre through which a brook flows, which is where graduation ceremonies are held, weather permitting. The amphitheater is also the site of pep rallies, concerts, and public movie showings. The brook is Toney's Brook, which also runs through Rand Park. Awards, recognition, and rankings The school was the 120th-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 339 schools statewide in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2014 cover story on the