Columbia High School is a four-year comprehensive regional public high school in Maplewood, New Jersey, which serves students in ninth through twelfth grades, as the lone secondary school of the South Orange-Maplewood School District, which includes Maplewood and South Orange, neighboring communities in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. The school has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Secondary Schools since 1928.As of the 2014-15 school year, the school had an enrollment of 1,913 students and 146.4 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 13.1:1. There were 359 students (18.8% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 114 (6.0% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.School historyBeginningsSince the days of the Revolution, a one-room stone schoolhouse had stood on a grassy area known as the Common, located close to the present intersection of South Orange Avenue and Academy Street in Maplewood. In 1814, this building blocked the construction of a new toll highway from Newark to Morristown. The 73 "Proprietors and Associates" of the school met on August 3 of that year and resolved to erect a new school building near the site of the old one, naming seven Trustees to thereafter oversee the education of local children. The resolution reflected "the desire of the meeting that the said school should in the future have the name of Columbian School of South Orange."
