the principal of South Tahoe from 2006-2014, was promoted to assistant superintendent and Chad Houck took over as principal. Since 2014, the school offers Chromebooks to students for the year free of charge. The school has accepted the Google for Education service and it is provided on all of the Chromebooks. Houck has said that there has been a correlated 10 percent drop of missing assignments since they started the pilot Chromebook program. Students at South Tahoe High School restarted a school newspaper in the fall of 2015 called The Viking Longship. The newspaper is published approximately every two weeks on the STHS website, in print, and via students' school-issued email accounts. Academics and enrollment Enrollment South Tahoe High School enrolls 1029 students and 53 full-time teachers. Females make up 48 percent of the students and males make up 52 percent. 43 percent of students are eligible for free lunch provided by the school. The following is a breakdown of student enrollment by ethnicity: The 9th grade is made up of 270 students; 10th has 281; 11th has 230; and 12th has 248. South Tahoe Middle School (STMS) is the only middle school in the Lake Tahoe Unified School District. Achievement The school received the California Gold Ribbon Schools Award from the California Department of Education in 2015. 56 percent of the students have participated in at least one Advanced Placement (AP) class and 52 percent of participants have passed at least one of their AP tests. The average number of AP exams taken per AP participant is 3.4. US News has given South Tahoe a silver ranking and a numerical rank of 1213th out of all high schools in the United States. In 1999, the school was named a California distinguished school by the state. In 2005, Newsweek magazine gave South Tahoe a rank of 996th out of 27,478 schools in the United States. 2013 was the last time that California public schools were required to administer the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program since it was replaced by the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP). In 2013, students at South Tahoe High demonstrated below average scores in all three areas tested by the STAR. The following shows the scores for the last STAR test compared the district and state average: The school has a low dropout rate at 5.5 percent, compared to the state average of