one of nine schools in the state recognized as Exemplary High Performing Schools. In 2007, Dr. Albert Einstein Academy School No. 29 became one of 24 schools selected from across the United States and the only NASA Explore School in the state of New Jersey at that time. In the 2012 "High School Challenge" published by The Washington Post, a continuation of high-school rankings formerly published in Newsweek, ranked Elizabeth High School as the best public high school in New Jersey, and the 76th-best in the United States. History Battin High School was constructed in 1913 at 300 South Broad Street on the site of a mansion that had been donated to the city nearly 25 years earlier by Joseph Battin, president of the Elizabethtown Water Company, and namesake of the school. Originally operated on a coeducational basis, the school became female only starting in 1929, after Thomas Jefferson High School was constructed and dedicated to serve male students. In 1977, district officials stated that the inability to determine attendance zones for the two comprehensive high schools after Thomas Jefferson High School opened in 1929 combined with the expansive shop facilities in the new building, led the district to decide to split students by sex, with girls at Battin and boys at Thomas Jefferson. By 1972, Battin was the only public high school in New Jersey operated exclusively for women, despite coeducational programs at both Princeton University and Vassar College. By that time, a policy under which pregnant students had been required to withdraw from school had been eliminated and students were allowed to return to school after giving birth and attending a special off-site program during their pregnancy. Though 40% of graduating students went on to college and district officials insisted that the curriculum was standard across the district's separate high schools, a student criticized the difference in expectations of male and female students, noting that "Boys are expected to be engineers and attorneys. Girls are supposed to be secretaries and mothers." Battin High School and Thomas Jefferson High School were both closed at the end of the 1976-77 school year, after the Elizabeth High School complex was completed and all of the district's students, male and female, were accommodated at the new four-building facility, ending the city's status as "the only community in the state with separate public high schools for boys and girls". The $29.3 million project