Keystone Oaks High School

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Keystone Oaks High School
School type	Public high school
Established	1969
District	Keystone Oaks School District
Grades	9–12
Principal	Scott Hagy
Students	865
Mascot	Golden Eagle
Location	1000 Kelton Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15216 Coordinates: 40.387120° N 80.030297° W
Information	412-571-6039
Website	K.O. High School

Keystone Oaks High School, built in 1969, is a public high school in the South Hills suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the only high school in the Keystone Oaks School District. It is usually referred to as "KO."

1 History
2 The Building
3 Athletics
4 Alumni
5 Standard & Poor's Rating of Allegheny County School Districts
6 References

[edit] History

The main building of the high school was built in 1969, four years after the three suburbs of Green Tree, Dormont and Castle Shannon combined their students to form a common school district. The high school was built on a 43-acre tract of land in neighboring Mount Lebanon, a neighborhood located between Dormont and Castle Shannon. The site adjoined the Kelton Avenue Elementary School's grounds.

Due to the deteriorating state of the district's Jay Neff Middle School (the original Dormont High School), a new middle school was attached to the old high school in 1996. This precipitated a massive redesign of the grounds, including the demolition of a little-used outdoor amphitheatre and the construction of a band practice field and new tennis courts. These tennis courts were later repaved in 2006.

Through the summer of 2001 and the 2001-2002 school year, the high school was extensively renovated.

In January of 2007, the school officially decided to turn its Journalism and TV/Video Classes into clubs, so as to ease the strain of increased class sizes on English teachers.

[edit] The Building

Keystone Oaks High School is a two-and-a-half story red brick building. Its shape is basically rectangluar, with a one-story library bisecting its longest sides. Two arms extend out from its western and southern corners; the western arm houses the gymnasium, weight room, and pool, and the southern arm links to the middle school, auditorium, and art classrooms. The bottom floor of the main building houses lockers, administrative offices, and (since the 2001-2002 renovations) middle school classrooms. The top two floors are almost entirely classrooms.

The High School contains a planetarium that had languished in disrepair from the mid 1980s into the late 1990s. It has since been refurbished and is one of the school's most interesting bits.

[edit] Athletics

Keystone Oaks is a member of the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League. While not known as any athletic powerhouse, the wrestling, swimming, and tennis teams have at times seen success. The cheerleading squad also wins awards fairly often. In 2001, the football team reached the playoffs for the first time since 1983, and in 2002, it succeeded in winning its first-ever playoff game, at home against Highlands High School.

The school only has a few rivalries of note. Chartiers Valley High School can be considered a rival, but KO is especially at odds with Thomas Jefferson High School. Both can be considered rivals of KO due to the similarities in demographics and due to the fact that the three schools often are in the same section of WPIAL. In some sense, Mount Lebanon High School is also a rival by geography, since KO is located within Mount Lebanon, but has no student from there. Seton La Salle High School, located across the street from KO, was in former times a rival, but declining enrollment has led the two schools to be moved into different classes in WPIAL, and the rivalry has died down.

[edit] Alumni

The comedian Dennis Miller graduated from Keystone Oaks. Supposedly one of his popular early routines was about an algebra teacher from the school. Terry Haas, co-host of the HGTV series Designed to Sell, is also a Keystone Oaks alumna.^[1] Congressman Ron Paul of Texas also attended the school. (He graduated from Dormont High School, which merged into Keystone Oaks in 1965.)