Modesto High School

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Modesto High School" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Modesto High School is a public high school in Modesto, California, United States. It offers the International Baccalaureate Program and the Avid program, Performing Arts Program and was the first public school to do so in the Central Valley of California.

Modesto High School is the oldest high school in Modesto and among the oldest in California, marking its 100th year anniversary in 1983.^[2]

In 1883, Ruliff Stephen Holway saw the need for a high school that could provide for needs extending beyond a primary grammar education. According to Sol P. Elias, member of the first graduating class of Modesto High School students, R.S. Holway was "a young schoolmaster... with the advantage of a charming character and a sympathetic mind... zeal and personality... [who] guided the pupils almost through the entire course until his departure... to accept a professorship at the University of California." Holway, the school's first principal, was responsible for the education of the entire student body, playing a role of both teacher and administrator before he left to teach in the UC system. Forty pupils comprised the first class organized at the first building located at 14th and I Streets; after four years, ten of these students remained to take part in the first graduation of MHS students. In the succeeding years, the number of seniors receiving diplomas fluctuated greatly; the lowest number occurred in 1893 when no one remained in school all four years to graduate.