Atlantic City High School (ACHS) is a comprehensive public high school in Atlantic City, in Atlantic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is the lone upper secondary school of the Atlantic City School District.
The current school building opened in 1994 and holds approximately 2,500 students. The school serves students from Atlantic City, along with those from Brigantine, Longport, Margate City and Ventnor City, who attend the school as part of sending/receiving relationships with their respective school districts.
As of the 2024–25 school year, the school had an enrollment of 1,731 students and 149.8 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 11.6:1. There were 1,342 students (77.5% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 94 (5.4% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.
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History
Atlantic City's first high school building was constructed in 1895 at Illinois and Arctic Avenues, on a small site that limited room for growth. In 1901, the high school relocated to a building at Ohio and Pacific Avenues. After the high school relocated a third time, the former building was reused as Central Junior High School for many years. The third building, located at Albany and Atlantic Avenues, opened on September 17, 1923. Constructed at a cost of over $1.75 million (equivalent to $33.1 million in 2025), it included a 1,000-seat auditorium and a 6,000-pipe organ.
Atlantic Cape Community College, the second community college to be established in New Jersey, opened in 1966 in space leased from the high school and moved to its campus in Mays Landing in February 1968.
The fourth, and current Atlantic City High School was constructed on "Great Island," opening to students in November 1994, at a cost of $83 million and had its formal dedication ceremony later that month before a gathered crowd of 4,000. The building was designed by Blumberg Associates Architecture.
Awards, recognition and rankings
The school was the 262nd-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 339 schools statewide in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2014 cover story on the state's "Top Public High Schools", using a new ranking methodology. The school had been ranked 214th in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 247th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 255th in 2008 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 270 in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which surveyed 316 schools across the state. Schooldigger.com ranked the school 334th out of 376 public high schools statewide in its 2010 rankings (a decrease of 9 positions from the 2009 rank) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the language arts literacy and mathematics components of the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).
Athletics
The Atlantic City High School Vikings compete in the Atlantic Division of the Cape-Atlantic League, an athletic conference comprised of public and private high schools in Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Gloucester counties, operating under the aegis of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. With 1,398 students in grades 10-12, the school was classified by the NJSIAA for the 2022–24 school years as Group IV South for most athletic competition purposes. The football team competes in the United Division of the 94-team West Jersey Football League superconference and was classified by the NJSIAA as Group V South for football for 2022–2024, which included schools with 1,333 to 2,324 students.
The boys swimming team won the state non-public championship from 1921 to 1929. In 1924, the team won the state swimming championship for a fourth time, setting three meet records in the process, with the Lawrenceville School coming in second and The Peddie School in third. The next year, at a meet held in Philadelphia, the swim team won the national interscholastic championship, breaking the streak of four championships won by Mercersburg Academy. In March 1925, the Atlantic City swim team were the guests of President Calvin Coolidge at the White House, in recognition of their championship.
The girls' basketball team won the Group IV state championships in 1981 vs. Eastside Paterson and repeated in 1982 vs. Plainfield High School. The 1981 team finished the season with a record of 29–1 after winning the Group IV state title with a 45–43 victory in the finals against an Eastside team that came into the game undefeated.
The 1994 Boys Varsity 8 Crew had an undefeated season and took the Triple Crown, winning the Philadelphia City Championships, Stotesbury Cup Regatta and National Rowing Championships. The V8 went on to place second in the Princess Elizabeth Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta on the Thames River in England.
The 1999 football team won the South Jersey Group IV state championship at Rutgers Stadium with a 31–29 win over Eastern High School, a victory that marked the program's first sectional title.
The boys' basketball team won the NJSIAA Group IV state championship in 2012 (defeating Ridgewood High School in the tournament final), 2012 (vs. Elizabeth High School) and 2013 (vs. Linden High School). The team won the Group IV tournament in 2005, defeating Trenton Central High School 71–70 in the semifinals, and Ridgewood High School by a score of 56–42 in the championship game at Rutgers University. In 2012, the Viking's boys' basketball team won the South Jersey Group IV title and the Group IV state championship with a 53–47 win against Elizabeth High School, marking the team's second state title. The Vikings repeated as Group IV state champions in basketball in 2013, defeating Linden High School in overtime by a score of 60–54 to become back-to-back champions.
Administration
The principal of Atlantic City High School is Constance Days-Chapman. Her administration consists of four vice principals.
Rules
Dress code
Beginning in 2007, in the hopes of preventing gang identification, Atlantic City High School required students wear a uniform, putting it in a minority of public schools to do so in the United States. Other high schools in South Jersey, such as Middle Township High School, Vineland High School, and Bridgeton High School, followed suit. The change was controversial, with some parents saying in 2009 that enforcement of the dress code had become a "distraction from education," after the school suspended as many as 150 students in a single day at the start of the school year for violating the uniform rules. For example, in the 2013–2014 school year, it was required that students wear collared shirts in only the two school colors plus black, with no logos except ACHS's own logo (or that of one of its sports teams).
In August 2019, the Board of Education dropped its uniform policy for the 2019–2020 school year, opting instead for a dress code. ACHS students are still restricted from a few garment types, such as bare midriffs, ripped jeans, leggings, and "do rags", or garments the school deems to have "obscene" words or images on them.
Truancy
Chronic absenteeism, or truancy, is a problem for ACHS; in 2015, 21% of its students were deemed chronically absent. The school has established a Truancy Task Force to enforce state laws requiring school attendance.
Academics
Atlantic City High School offers many Advanced Placement (AP) courses, in addition to the standard college-prep and Honors classes. ACHS offers 20 AP courses: AP Biology; AP Calculus AB; AP Calculus BC; AP Chemistry; AP Studio Art; AP Microeconomics; AP Macroeconomics; AP English Language and Composition; AP English Literature and Composition; AP Environmental Science; AP French Language and Culture; AP United States Government and Politics; AP Latin; AP Music Theory; AP Physics 1; AP Physics C; AP Psychology; AP Spanish Language and Culture; AP Statistics; and AP United States History.
Notable alumni
Martin Agronsky (1915–1999, class of 1932), journalist
Valerie H. Armstrong (class of 1964), retired judge of the New Jersey Superior Court
James Avery (1945–2013), television actor
Ellen Bass (born 1947), poet and author
Barry Beckham (born 1944), playwright and novelist
Brad (born 1963) and Eric Blumberg (born 1966), real estate entrepreneurs and developers of mobile GPS real estate information technology
Bugs Bower (1922–2020), composer, music arranger, bandleader and record producer
Fredrick Brennan (born 1994, class of 2012), software developer and type designer who founded the imageboard website 8chan
David Brog (born 1965/1966), former executive director of Christians United for Israel
Bob Brooks, basketball player
Carole Byard (1941–2017), visual artist and illustrator of children's books, who was the recipient of a Caldecott Medal and multiple Coretta Scott King Awards
Rosalind Cash (1938–1995), actress whose career endured on stage, screen, and television, despite her staunch refusal to portray stereotyped "black" roles
Tim Cavanaugh, journalist and screenwriter who is a news editor at The Washington Examiner
Joe Cicero (1910–1983), professional baseball player with the Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics