Thomas Jefferson High School, also known as TJ High School, is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

Northwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each s ...

Dallas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

( USA) that serves grades 9- 12. The school is part of the

Dallas Independent School District The Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD or DISD) is a school district based in Dallas, Texas ( USA). It operates schools in much of Dallas County and is the second-largest school district in Texas and the seventeenth-largest in ...

and is classified as a 5A school by the UIL. The school is named after the third

President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal gove ...

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...

History

Until 1972, the ( Confederate) Rebel served as school

mascot A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as ...

and the

Confederate Battle Flag The flags of the Confederate States of America have a history of three successive designs during the American Civil War. The flags were known as the "Stars and Bars", used from 1861 to 1863; the "Stainless Banner", used from 1863 to 1865; and ...

was a recognized school emblem. The negative associations of both symbols led to a change following

desegregation Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact o ...

of Dallas schools in the early 1970s. In the 2005–06 school year, the school celebrated its 50th anniversary. In 1987 John Kincaide, the athletic director of DISD, said that the district is prepared to allow Jefferson to be reclassified by the

University Interscholastic League The University Interscholastic League (UIL) is an organization that creates rules for and administers almost all athletic, musical, and academic contests for public primary and secondary schools in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the largest organi ...

(UIL) from athletic class 5A to athletic class 4A; the UIL had the possibility of demoting the school to athletic class 4A as part of its biannual reclassification. On October 20, 2019, the school was heavily damaged by an EF-3 tornado. Students were relocated to the former Edison Middle School, and are expected to remain there for at least the rest of the 2019–20 school year.

Neighborhoods served

Jefferson serves several sections of Dallas, including a portion of Walnut Hill, Walnut Hill Lane and the adjacent residential area, the apartment complexes along the Webb Chapel Extension, the Love Field neighborhood, and The Creeks of Preston Hollow. It serves a portion of the Preston Hollow area.

The campus

The class of 1965 had 962 members, the largest graduating class of any high school in Texas up to that time. Beginning in the mid-1980s, TJ's student body changed from predominantly white to predominantly Hispanic/Latino. Although the school is located in a primarily white neighborhood, most students come from majority-Hispanic areas north of Love Field. The high school shot put record was set at the Golden West Invitational in 1979 by then-senior Michael Carter, who threw the 12-pound shot 81 feet, 3-1/2 inches. As of June 2006, the record had yet to be broken or even approached.John Crumpacker
The Carter family puts its emphasis in Sacramento
''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The pa ...

'', June 6, 2006 In 2006, the League of United Latin American Citizens provided uniforms for all 20 members of the TJ boys' soccer team after learning that the team, which had taken second place in the athletic district, had been unable to afford to outfit the full team for the previous four years. On September 16, 2011, football team won their first homecoming game in many years, sparking a large celebration by the students and faculty.

Academics

For over a decade,Dave Sorter
"TJ educator offers rare Holocaust high-school course, says lessons teach empathy,"
''Texas Jewish Post'' (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 45, Ed. 1, November 5, 2009, pp. 3,25. the school has offered an elective course in

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

studies. The semester-long history study culminates in a set of student presentations on

Holocaust Remembrance Day Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah ( he, יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה, , lit=Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day), known colloquially in Israel and abroad as Yom HaShoah (יום השואה) and in English as Holocaust Reme ...

as part of a day-long museum on campus, often including a presentation from a local survivor of the tragedy. The course was instituted by former U.S. Holocaust Museum educator and present TJ history teacher Cathleen Cadigan. The language program includes

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

classes for heritage and novice speakers of the language, as well as a program in

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...

that began under a former principal."Event highlights partnership between Chinese school, Thomas Jefferson,"
Dallas Independent School District, September 2012 The Chinese program includes an exchange component in which a small number of students have been able to travel to Hainan, China to study during the Dallas school's summer vacation.

Student discipline

Use of recreational drugs

In the mid-2000s students at TJ called the school the "Cheesehead Factory" due to the presence of the

heroin Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a potent opioid mainly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects. Medical grade diamorphine is used as a pure hydrochloride salt. Various white and bro ...

-based drug

Cheese Cheese is a dairy product produced in wide ranges of flavors, textures, and forms by coagulation of the milk protein casein. It comprises proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats, or sheep. During productio ...

. A hall monitor at TJ first discovered Cheese in 2005 when the monitor discovered it in a bottle of

Tylenol PM Tylenol may refer to: * Paracetamol (acetaminophen), a medication used to treat pain and fever * Tylenol (brand) Tylenol () is a brand of medication, advertised for reducing pain, reducing fever, and relieving the symptoms of allergies, cold, ...

held by a student. During the height of the epidemic, around 2005/2006, students were using the drug in class and in the restrooms. In the 2005–2006 school year there were 43 cheese-related arrests of students by the DISD police. Principal Edward Conger combated the problem by installing a new discipline program. In the 2007–2008 school year there were around 21-22 arrests. In 2011 there were two arrests. In 2012 Erin Nicholson of the ''

Dallas Observer ''Dallas Observer'' is a free digital and print publication based in Dallas, Texas. The ''Observer'' publishes daily online coverage of local news, restaurants, music, and arts, as well as longform narrative journalism. A weekly print issue circ ...

'' wrote that the school "had reportedly done a pretty good job of ridding it from their hallways."Nicholson, Erin.
Cheese Heroin Reappears at Thomas Jefferson
"
Archive
''

''. Friday May 18, 2012. Thomas Jefferson's "Street Team", a club attributed to bring drug awareness throughout the school, continues to bring an increasing number of students pledging to be drug free each year. In 2014 there were incidents of TJ students abusing prescription drugs.

School culture

Thomas Jefferson historically had a school rivalry with W. T. White High School. David Seeley, a senior editor of the ''

'', wrote in ''

Texas Monthly ''Texas Monthly'' (stylized as ''TexasMonthly'') is a monthly American magazine headquartered in Downtown Austin, Texas. ''Texas Monthly'' was founded in 1973 by Michael R. Levy and has been published by Emmis Publishing, L.P. since 1998 and is ...

'' that the rivalry was "at its peak" in the mid-1970s with fistfights occurring regularly at Loos Field during the homecoming games where Thomas Jefferson was playing against W.T. White; Jefferson students perceived W.T. White students as snobby while W.T. White students perceived Jefferson students as low class. By 1982 the schools no longer competed at homecoming games and they had been placed in separate athletic districts. This rivalry, however, continued into the 2010s. A 2014 vandalism incident at W.T. White involved the words "TJ" being spraypainted, but the administration of W.T. White expressed a belief that the vandals were W.T. White students. According to Seeley, as of 1982, students from both schools frequently socialized with other high school students along Forest Lane on Fridays, and W.T. White and Thomas Jefferson had the largest numbers of students there. High school students "cruised" along Forest Lane beginning in the early 1960s.

Feeder patterns

The following elementary schools feed into Jefferson: * KB Polk * Jose "Joe" May * David G. Burnet * Leonides Cigarroa * Stephen C. Foster * Obadiah Knight * Julian T. Saldivar * Walnut Hill Two middle schools, Edward H. Cary and Medrano feed into Jefferson.

Athletics

The TJ Patriots compete in the following sports: *

Baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

Basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

* Cross Country *

Football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

Golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

Soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

Softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

* Swimming and Diving *

Tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cov ...

Track and Field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping eve ...

Volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Sum ...

Wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat s ...

The school habitually has a post-class dismissal cookout scheduled on the day of the

homecoming Homecoming is the tradition of welcoming back alumni or other former members of an organization to celebrate the organization's existence. It is a tradition in many high schools, colleges, and churches in the United States, Canada and Liberia. ...

American football game.

Notable alumni

* Michael Lee Aday ( Meat Loaf), rock musician *

Ryan Allen Ryan Allen may refer to: * Ryan Allen (bass) (1943–2018), American bass singer * Ryan Allen (American football) Ryan Allen (born February 28, 1990) is an American football punter who is a free agent. He played college football for the Louisia ...

was an American bass singer best known for his work in opera. * Michael Carter, former NFL player,

Olympics The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a vari ...

shot put The shot put is a track and field event involving "putting" (throwing) a heavy spherical ball—the ''shot''—as far as possible. The shot put competition for men has been a part of the modern Olympics since their revival in 1896, and women's c ...

silver medalist * Dave Huffman, All-American football player and broadcaster, member of 1977 Notre Dame championship team,

Minnesota Vikings The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansi ...

center, guard, and tackle * Jimmy Jones, 1982,

Major League Baseball 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 (A ...

pitcher, first-round draft pick *

Hal Mumme Hal Clay Mumme (born March 29, 1952) is a former American football coach and former player. He most recently served as an offensive advisor for the Dallas Renegades of the XFL. Previously, Mumme served as the head football coach at Iowa Wesleyan ...

, former New Mexico State and

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

head football coach *

Mike Nesmith Robert Michael Nesmith or Mike Nesmith, (December 30, 1942 – December 10, 2021) was an American musician, songwriter, and actor. He was best known as a member of the pop rock band the Monkees and co-star of the TV series ''The Monkees'' (1966� ...

, actor-musician and member of

The Monkees The Monkees were an American rock and pop band, formed in Los Angeles in 1966, whose lineup consisted of the American actor/musicians Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork alongside English actor/singer Davy Jones. The group was con ...

* Glenn Robinson, former NFL player *

David Ritz David Ritz (born December 2, 1943 in New York City) is an American author. He has written novels, biographies, magazine articles, and over a hundred liner notes for artists such as Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Nat King Cole. He has coauthore ...

author, lyricist and biographer. *

Burt Solomons Burt Rowe Solomons (born October 31, 1950) is an attorney from North Carrollton, Texas, who was from 1995 to 2013 a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives from District 65 in suburban southeastern Denton County. Background ...

(Class of 1968), Denton County lawyer, Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1995 to 2013 *

Brenda Vaccaro Brenda is a feminine given name in the English language. Origin The overall accepted origin for the female name Brenda is the Old Nordic male name ''Brandr'' meaning both ''torch'' and ''sword'': evidently the male name Brandr took root in area ...

, Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning actress * Robert Wilonsky, journalistRobert Wilonsky
"Yup. I Was a Cheerleader. Damned Proud of It. (Well...),"
''Unfair Park'' blog of ''Dallas Observer'', April 12, 2007. * Diane Grisham Winston, Class of 1966, member of

Louisiana House of Representatives The Louisiana House of Representatives (french: link=no, Chambre des Représentants de Louisiane) is the lower house in the Louisiana State Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Louisiana. This chamber is composed of 105 rep ...

(1996–2008) from St. Tammany Parish. *

Owen Wilson Owen Cunningham Wilson (born November 18, 1968) is an American actor. He has had a long association with filmmaker Wes Anderson with whom he shared writing and acting credits for ''Bottle Rocket'' (1996), '' Rushmore'' (1998), and '' The Royal ...

, actor (completed sophomore year at Thomas Jefferson after being expelled from St. Mark's School of Texas)Owen Wilson bio
at Wilson-brothers.com

Notes

External links

Alumni sites

Thomas Jefferson High School Alumni AssociationGrads of 1970Class of 1971TJ 1978 Alumni Site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jefferson, Thomas High School Dallas Independent School District high schools Public high schools in Dallas Educational institutions established in 1956 1956 establishments in Texas