R. L. Paschal High School is a secondary school in Fort Worth, Texas, United States. It is part of the Fort Worth Independent School District, and is the oldest and largest high school in Fort Worth ISD.
The school is ranked 322nd in Texas and 3,892nd in the United States for best quality of education (in 2022) by U.S. News & World Report.
The following elementary schools feed into Paschal: Alice Carlson, George C. Clarke, Lily B. Clayton, Contreras, Daggett, De Zavala, South Hills, Tanglewood, Westcliff, Richard J Wilson, Overton Park, and Worth Heights.
The following middle schools feed into Paschal: Daggett Montessori, Daggett, McLean, McLean 6th Grade, Rosemont, and Rosemont 6th Grade.
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History
The school originated as the city's first secondary school, Fort Worth High School, which opened in 1882. Fort Worth High School was originally located at 200 Jennings. Robert Lee Paschal, an attorney from North Carolina, became head teacher in 1906. Briefly known as Central High School, it moved to its current location on Forest Park Boulevard in 1955. When Principal Paschal retired in 1935, the school was renamed in his honor as RL Paschal High School.
Its rival is Arlington Heights High School in west Fort Worth, and this is one of the oldest and most historic high school rivalries in Texas. In 1963, a prank on Arlington Heights led to 46 arrests, and a Heights High School bonfire being the center of a near riot. In the incident, carloads of Paschal boys and exes descended on a crowd of 500 Heights students at Benbrook Lake with an armory of weapons including baseball bats, lead pipes, whips and Molotov cocktails. A private-plane flyover by a 20-year-old pilot, a 1962 Paschal graduate, dropped rolls of school-color purple-and-white toilet paper that fluttered down onto the Heights crowd, and a 1948 sedan covered in gasoline-soaked mattresses and labeled “The Panther Ram Car” was set afire by a burly graduate and rolled toward the bonfire woodpile. There was also a ground assault by boys with bows and arrows, storming over the spillway and sailing arrows in a scene a county deputy compared to a frontier Native American attack. When all was said and done there was only one injury, when wrecker driver Junior Slayton, 33, was grazed by buckshot while towing away a student’s car. One week later, a visiting President John F. Kennedy smiled and asked at the mention of Paschal High School, “Isn’t that the school with its own air force?”
On November 19, 1969 Apollo 12 astronaut, Alan Bean, a 1950 Paschal graduate, took a Paschal High School flag to the moon with him and safely returned it to Earth. He donated the flag to the school, where it was displayed for decades.
In 1979, a Paschal student stole a bulldozer from a county construction site and rammed it into the Arlington Heights field house the day before the annual Heights-Paschal football game, severely damaging the field house.
In 1985, the school achieved a degree of notoriety when a gang called "Legion of Doom" was active at the school.
In 2006, the school won the Boys golf state championship.
Performing arts
Paschal has a competitive show choir, "Ultraviolet". In 2023 the Paschal Cheer Squad won the 6A D2 UIL State Championship.
Notable alumni
Norman Alden — actor
Audrey Anderson — actress
Charlie Applewhite — singer and radio host
Quincy Armstrong — former professional football player
Nancy Lee Bass — "First Lady of Fort Worth", philanthropist
Alan Bean — astronaut, walked on the Moon during Apollo 12
Jim Bronstad — MLB pitcher
T Bone Burnett — musician
Lila Cockrell — first woman mayor of a major metropolis in the United States
Betsy Colquitt — English professor and poet
Donald Curry — professional boxer
Abb Curtis — Basketball All-American, official, administrator
Tim Curry — former DA of Tarrant County
Price Daniel — Governor of Texas 1957–1963 and US Senator
Mike DeBardeleben — kidnapper, rapist, counterfeiter, and suspected serial killer
Aaron Dismuke — voice actor for Funimation
Germán Durán — MLB player
Kaylon Geiger — NFL Player
John Howard Griffin — writer of Black Like Me
Rivalries
Arlington Heights High School (the oldest ongoing high school rivalry in Texas history).