Saratoga High School is a grade 9–12, public high school located in Saratoga, California. It is ranked No. 1 Best College Prep Public High School in California according to Niche.

Academics

Saratoga High School is consistently designated a top academic high school. It is one of two schools in the

Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District The Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District (formerly Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District) is a high school district in the greater San Jose, California, U.S. area. It operates two high schools, and is ranked the Best Schoo ...

, which is ranked the Best School District in California. Saratoga High School has a four-year Project Lead the Way engineering program, and is ranked No. 23 in the U.S. for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The school offers 35 honors and Advanced Placement courses. The graduation rate is 99%, and 97% of students attend college. It is jointly accredited by the California Department of Education and the

Western Association of Schools and Colleges The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) was an organization providing accreditation of public and private universities, colleges, secondary and elementary schools in California and Hawaii, the territories of Guam, American Sam ...

. Student enrollment averages around 1300, with a student-teacher ratio of 20:1. It is a diverse high school, with total minority enrollment of 75%. The school community includes families that speak 39 languages. In 2017, Saratoga High School was named a California Gold Ribbon School for the strength of its Student Support Programs and its focus on Social Emotional Learning.

Activities

Athletics

The Saratoga Falcons compete in the

Santa Clara Valley Athletic League Santa Clara Valley Athletic League (SCVAL) is a high school athletic conference and part of the CIF Central Coast Section of the California Interscholastic Federation. Its 14+ member schools are in the northern part of the Santa Clara Valley. Each ...

(SCVAL) of the

CIF Central Coast Section The Central Coast Section (CCS) is the governing body of public and private high school athletics in the portion of California encompassing San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, Monterey County, San Benito County, Santa Cruz County and a few pri ...

(CCS). More than 60% of students participate in Saratoga High School athletics. From 2015 to 2020, every varsity team competed in the CCS playoffs; titles and runners up were earned in Boys and Girls Tennis, Boys and Girls Basketball, Boys Cross Country, Boys Volleyball, and Badminton. In addition, individual medals were won in Wrestling and Boys and Girls Track and Field. In 2019, the Boys Golf Team finished No. 4 in California. Boys Volleyball won two Northern California championships in 2016 and 2017. Saratoga Football has won five CIF Central Coast Section championships: 1973, 1976, 1980, 1987, 1996. The team formerly played night games at

Los Gatos High School Los Gatos High School (LGHS) is a high school in Los Gatos, California. It was founded in 1908 and is part of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District, which in 2021 was ranked the best high school district in Caliifornia The sch ...

; in April 2006, the Trustees of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District approved permanent lights for the football field. SHS Baseball won a Division II CCS championship in 1999. In 2009, the girls' varsity tennis team defeated rival

Monta Vista High School Monta Vista High School is a four-year Public school (government funded), public high school located in the Silicon Valley city of Cupertino, California, Cupertino, California, US. Part of the Fremont Union High School District, the school serves ...

5-2 for their first CCS championship in the history of the program and went on to win the title again in 2010.

Theater Arts and Music

Performing Arts is a strong area of achievement at Saratoga High School. Almost 40% of students perform onstage through theater arts, vocal ensembles and instrumental music. The Saratoga Strings orchestra performed in the prestigious

Midwest Clinic The Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference is the world's largest instrumental music education conference, annually drawing approximately 17,000 attendees to Chicago from all 50 states and as many as forty countries. It is he ...

International Band and Orchestra Conference in Chicago, Illinois in 2018. The Marching Band and Color Guard marched in the 2016

Tournament of Roses Parade A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses: # One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...

in Pasadena, California. The Marching Band participated in the 2012 Macy's Parade in New York City.

Chess team

At the 2005 National Grade Level Chess Championships in Houston, the 9th graders were national champions. The team won the NorCal State Championship for a record six consecutive years (2004–2010).

Campus

The school has 8 tennis courts, an

all weather track An all-weather running track is a rubberized, artificial running surface for track and field athletics. It provides a consistent surface for competitors to test their athletic ability unencumbered by adverse weather conditions. Historically, v ...

, an artificial turf football field, an artificial turf soccer field, an artificial turf softball field, a

quad Quad as a word or prefix usually means 'four'. It may refer to: Government * Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States * Quadrilateral group, an informal group which inc ...

, and an Olympic-size swimming pool.Burleigh, Nina.
Sexting, Shame and Suicide
" ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

''. September 17, 2013. Retrieved November 4, 2013. The McAfee Performing Arts and Lecture Center, a community facility, opened in 2006.

Notable alumni

Mark Ames Mark Ames (born October 3, 1965) is a Brooklyn-based American journalist. He was the editor of the biweekly ''the eXile'' in Moscow, from its founding in 1997 until its closure in 2008. Ames has also written for the ''New York Press'', ''PandoDail ...

(1983) – journalist *

Zach Gill Zach Gill (born May 18, 1975) is a multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter. He performs regularly as a solo artist in addition to being a member of Animal Liberation Orchestra and Jack Johnson's band. Gill has performed at festivals and on te ...

(1993) – musician *

Lance Guest Lance R. Guest (born July 21, 1960) is an American film and television actor, best known for his starring role in 1984's ''The Last Starfighter''. Biography Guest developed a serious interest in acting as a freshman while attending Saratoga H ...

(1978) – actor * Lee Hancock (1985) –

MLB Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

player *

Bill Haselman William Joseph Haselman (born May 25, 1966) is an American professional baseball coach and former player. He played as a catcher in Major League Baseball (MLB) for 13 seasons between 1990 and 2003. A first-round selection in the 1987 MLB draft, he ...

(1984) – MLB player and coach * Dan Janjigian (1991) – actor and bobsledder *

Alex Lagemann Alexander Robert Lagemann (born July 28, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter, TV personality, and former collegiate athlete. During his time playing football at UC Berkeley, he began making hip-hop music, which eventually led him to start the ...

(2007) – musician * Beth Lisick (1987) – author * Patricia Miranda (1997) – bronze medalist in wrestling at

2004 Summer Olympics The 2004 Summer Olympics ( el, Θερινοί Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες 2004, ), officially the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad ( el, Αγώνες της 28ης Ολυμπιάδας, ) and also known as Athens 2004 ( el, Αθήνα 2004), ...

* Cyndy Poor (1971) – 1976 Olympian and American record holder * Anil Raj (2002) – human rights activist,

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

board member, killed in Kabul while working on

United Nations Development Programme The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...

. *

Kyle Shanahan Kyle Michael Shanahan (born December 14, 1979) is an American football coach who is the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL). He came to prominence as the offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons, wh ...

(1993) – head coach of NFL's

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...

Varun Sivaram Varun Srinivasan Sivaram (born 1989) is an American physicist and political advisor on clean energy technology and climate change policy. He is senior advisor to U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry as his senior director for ...

(2007) –

Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...

, CTO of

ReNew Power ReNew Power is India's largest renewable energy company by operational capacity. Based in Gurgaon, Haryana, it has an asset base of over 10 GW, with around 5 GW operational. ReNew Power operates over 110 projects across 18 states in India, dev ...

, and author *

Ed Solomon Edward James Solomon (born September 15, 1960) is an American filmmaker. He is best known for writing the screenplays to ''Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure'' (1989), ''Men in Black'' (1997), and '' Now You See Me'' (2013). Life and career Solo ...

(1978) – actor, director, writer and producer *

Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American director, writer, and producer. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spie ...

(1965) – Academy Award-winning film director * Carrie Steinseifer (1986) – 1984 Olympic swimmer *

Mark Suciu Mark Suciu (pronounced Soo-Choo) (Born August 3, 1992) is an American professional skateboarder from Saratoga, CA, based out of New York City. In 2021, Suciu was named ''Thrashers Skater of the Year. Early life and education Mark Suciu w ...

(2010) – professional skateboarder *

Vienna Teng Cynthia Yih Shih (born October 3, 1978, Saratoga, California), better known by her stage name Vienna Teng, is an American pianist and singer-songwriter who was based in Detroit, Michigan and now lives in Washington, DC. Teng has released five s ...

(1996) – singer-songwriter *

David Warshofsky David Warshofsky (born David A. Warner; February 23, 1961) is an American film, television and stage actor. Life and career Warshofsky was born David A. WarnerAccording to the State of California. ''California Birth Index, 1905-1995''. Center fo ...

(1979) – actor

Notes

External links

Saratoga High School official web site

Saratoga High School principals
{{Authority control Educational institutions established in 1959 Saratoga, California High schools in Santa Clara County, California Public high schools in California 1959 establishments in California