Virgil I. Grissom High School, more commonly referred to as Grissom High School, is a public high school in Huntsville, Alabama, United States with approximately 2000 students in grades 9–12 from Southeast Huntsville. The school was named a 2007 Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. In the Newsweek ranking of schools throughout the nation for 2015, Grissom High School was ranked second best in the state and 390th nationally. Grissom was the only high school in Huntsville to make the 2015 list.
History
Grissom High School was founded in 1969 and is named for astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, killed in the Apollo 1 fire at Cape Kennedy, Florida on January 27, 1967. Huntsville is home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and has ties to the space program. At the same time, the Huntsville City Schools named Roger B. Chaffee Elementary and Ed White Middle School for Grissom's fallen Apollo 1 crewmates. In August 2012, the Huntsville City Schools announced plans to tear down the original two-story main high school building and replace it with a three-story structure at an estimated cost of $58 million. The new building was opened for the 2017–18 school year. Tom Drake served as Grissom's principal from 2000 through August 2013. The school board named June Kalange, then a vice-principal and former science teacher at Grissom, as his replacement in early August 2013. In 2015, Rebecca Balentine, the then principal of Jones Valley Elementary School, was announced as the new principal of the school. She was principal until the end of the 2017-2018 school year. The current principal is Grissom High alumni, Jeanne Greer.
Academic achievement
In 2007, Newsweek magazine ranked Grissom among the top 5% of all high schools in the United States. The school was ranked 531 among the top 1200 high schools in the nation based on the number of Advanced Placement, Cambridge tests, and/or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school and then dividing by the number of graduating seniors. In the Newsweek ranking of schools throughout the nation for 2015, Grissom High School was ranked second-best in the state and 390th nationally. Grissom was the only high school in Huntsville to make the 2015 list. Grissom produced 28 National Merit Semifinalists for 2007, the highest number in the state. Grissom's math teams and academic team have also earned national recognition. Grissom's 2007 Science Olympiad state team placed 2nd at the state competition at Samford University. They participated in the National Science Olympiad competition in Kansas in May 2007, and in 2008 participated in the National competition in Augusta, Georgia. In 2008, Grissom's Debate and Speech Team qualified for, and competed in the NFL National Tournament in Las Vegas, Nevada.
As of 2007, Grissom has football, boys' and girls' basketball, volleyball, baseball, cross country, softball, track, golf, swimming and diving, boys' and girls' soccer, boys' and girls' tennis, wrestling, and cheerleading teams, a dance program, a choral program, a theatre program, as well as marching, symphonic, and jazz bands. Other notable extracurricular activities include an academic team and an extremely competitive math team, that in addition to competing in contests, runs numerous mathematics programs, camps, and competitions. Rocket City Math League is an international mathematics competition run by Grissom math team students. A wide variety of extracurricular clubs are also present at Grissom. Grissom's academic team has won nine Alabama UAB/Alabama Scholastic Competition Association state championships, 1987, 1991, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2013 ) – the most of any Alabama high school. Grissom’s wrestling team has won seven AHSAA State Championships, and has been runner-up seven times as well. Its most recent state championship was in 2004, while its most recent runner-up placement was in 2012. The program has also developed many individual state champions.
School publications
Grissom's bimonthly newspaper is The Imprint, which is recognized by the Alabama Scholastic Press Association. The annual literary magazine is called Seed, and the annual school yearbook is named Invictus.
