Eagan High School (EHS) is a public high school in east-central Eagan, Minnesota, United States. The school opened in fall 1989 for ninth-grade students and for grades ten through twelve the following year. It is particularly noted for its fine arts programs and use of technology. As of the 2022–2023 school year, EHS had 2,171 students.
The school is a part of Minnesota Independent School District 196 (Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School District), and is affiliated with the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL). The school was a member of the Lake Conference from their first year until the 2010–11 school year when they joined the South Suburban Conference.
History In the 1970s and 1980s, Eagan began to grow rapidly, due to the completion of I-35E, I-494 and the new Cedar Avenue Bridge. and During those years, high school students from Eagan who lived within the District 196 boundaries attended nearby Rosemount High School and Apple Valley High School. Both of these high schools were greatly over capacity. In June 1987, Thomas F. Wilson was appointed as "Principal on Special Assignment" in charge of planning a new high school and middle school on a site that had been purchased years earlier. To save costs, the two schools were designed to share some facilities. The $33 million building was designed by Hammel, Green and Abrahamson (HGA).
The school was built in four different bid phases (called fast tracking-necessary due to earlier bond issue defeats) and bids on the fourth phase, anticipated to be approximately $27 million, came in at $33 million. Because the school district did not have the money for that large bid, the bid was rejected. Wilson, Superintendent Red Rehwalt and Assistant Superintendent John Hanson spent several months working with HGA officials to trim elements of phase four to get its costs in line with the bond revenues available from the public approval process. Eventually, the school board adopted a different construction firm (Wold Association-Architects) and this caused a delay in the construction time line and time, and spawned a lawsuit.These issues and the delay to scale down the building were documented in a number of contemporary news articles about the school. The final cost of the building came in at $72.54 per square foot.
Before it opened, Wilson met with parents and students to choose the school's colors, nickname, logo and school song. They chose the Wildcats as the school mascot and decided the school's colors should be Royal Blue, Kelly Green, Silver, and White. School nurse Sharon Geiger led the color selection process. Wilson and Assistant Principal David Lange sought and received permission from the Kansas State University Athletic Director (fee of $1.00) to use their Wildcat logo. Assistant Principal Polly Reikowski and Speech Program Director Joni Anker developed the words for the School Song, sung to the tune of the Notre Dame Fight Song. and The high school first opened in the fall of 1989–90, operating on the west side of the building (Dakota Hills Middle School) with 350 ninth-grade students. These students attended school on the second floor, while sixth and seventh grade students attended on the first floor of the same middle school, fulfilling a promise to parents that students from the two schools would not be mixed together, even though they were attending school in the same building. By the opening of the 1990–1991 school year, students in grades nine through twelve completed the full opening of Eagan High School. The first class to graduate from Eagan High School was the class of 1991, with students who had attended only their senior year at EHS.
The first principal was Thomas F. Wilson, who had previously been principal at Rosemount High School within the District. Wilson held the position for fifteen years of the high school's existence, from 1987 to 2002. Upon his retirement in 2002, a controversial replacement, Jane Stewart, was appointed by the Superintendent at the time, John Haro. Citing her "paucity of qualifications" and upset at her quick appointment, the entire faculty walked out of their first meeting with her. Stewart nonetheless began as principal, but early-on was involuntarily transferred to a position in the district office—spawning a lawsuit for employment discrimination.A Federal District Court dismissed most of Stewart's claims as being without legal merit, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Stewart v. I.S.D. 196, 481 F.3d 1034 (8th Cir. 2007). Assistant Principal for Fine Arts, Polly Reikowski was promoted to Principal.
School facilities
The high school is attached to Dakota Hills Middle School, and the two schools each have access to a common auditorium, a series of athletic fields, and a municipal park. Although they share a common building, the two schools are completely separated and there is almost no incidental interaction between the middle school and high school students.
Expansion and renovation When the high school opened, it was built to accommodate 1200 students but was designed to be expanded to handle an additional 800 students. This expansion was necessary almost immediately and was completed within a few years of the opening. That expansion, completed in March 1993, included additional classrooms, teacher offices, and science labs. Another expansion was completed in 2005; this most recent expansion added yet more classrooms but also included additional locker bays, circulation improvements to prevent hallway congestion, and an improved entryway for students and visitors.
Technology Eagan High School stresses technology in education, a commitment set down by former principal Wilson and shown in the school's motto: "Technology-enhanced education with a human touch." When the school opened, it became the first fully networked high school in the nation. Six hundred computers were sold at a discount by Apple Computer, which publicized EHS worldwide as a "demonstration school". Every room was equipped with a television, which received satellite broadcasts as well as programs from the school's television studio. Now, EHS has replaced those televisions with LAN projectors that any teacher can connect to wirelessly while connected to the school's network.
Departmental fundraising allowed for the construction of a fully operational television studio within the school. The main purpose of the studio was the ability to loan out the equipment for student or community projects, but the construction of the studio also allowed the school to create a weekly television series called Eagan AM. It is aired every Thursday morning during PAWS, a homeroom-like activity that takes place each morning, and can be viewed online at CatCast, the school's video-sharing platform.
In 1999, the school helped test the use of fingerprint scans for checking out books in the library—making it one of the first schools in the nation to use biometric data for school services. They have since discontinued this method of checkout and now use student and faculty ID cards instead.
In 2002, EHS became one of the first high schools in the nation to require students to register for classes online. The school uses Infinite Campus, a student-teacher communication and grading service, to do this.
The building has wireless Internet access throughout the school for student, faculty, and guest use. Teachers use MacBook Pros to wirelessly transmit attendance and grades to Infinite Campus, an online student/teacher communication platform. This information can be accessed through individual Infinite Campus accounts made available for students and parents. The school has ten iMac computer labs, all running on Mac OS X. Every school Mac is also equipped with the full Adobe Publishing and Creative suites, the Microsoft Office 2008 or 2011 suite, and the Apple iWork suite. There are two different kinds of labs the school utilizes: stationary and mobile computer labs. The stationary labs consist of 40 iMacs each, allowing students to get online and collaborate on projects. The mobile labs consist of 30-40 MacBooks each and can be wheeled around from classroom to classroom on carts.
In 2011, district 196 rolled out a new tool to its schools: Google Apps (later Google Workspace for Education. This Google Apps platform gave students and faculty access to collaborative educational tools such as Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Slides. Most teachers at EHS currently use this platform to grade student assignments and monitor student collaboration activities. Many students there now prefer using Google Docs as an alternative to Microsoft Word or Pages, as they can work with other students more easily online. Because of the positive feedback District 196 has received from its students about Google Apps, it plans to keep using it as an educational tool.
In 2012, EHS's health department began using iPad 2s in the classroom. In each health classroom, there are 40 iPads available for student use; students use them to read articles selected by their teachers, take tests and quizzes using Infinite Campus, also an online testing platform, and watch videos pertaining to the subject matter they are currently studying. Eagan is the first high school in District 196 to implement the iPad in the classroom.
In 2013, EHS began participating in a beta-test program of different electronic devices for potential use throughout ISD 196. In the 2013–14 school year, freshman history classes tested the use of Chromebooks in the classroom. This program was being expanded in the 2014–15 school year district-wide, as several classrooms beta-tested the use of iPad Minis for each student.
In 2015, voters in district 196 approved a bond referendum that designated $5 million per year for ten years to improve technology in the school; one part of this plan was to provide an iPad mini to every student in fourth through 12th grade. In the first phase of the district-wide one-to-one initiative in 2016, every EHS 9th grader was given an iPad mini. The iPad minis were used to allow students to work together, take online notes, turn in assignments online, and even take online quizzes and tests.
In 2017, EHS seniors, and juniors were given full-sized iPads, while all the other students were given iPad minis. This completed the district-wide one-to-one initiative so that every student in the building would have access to the internet from their own personal iPads.
Academics Students at Eagan High School receive a liberal arts education, rather than specializing in one area of study. Social studies and English are required each year, and students must choose from a sampling of physical education, fine arts, math, science, and foreign language classes before graduation. These core requirements leave ample room for electives and individual courses of study, and many students take advantage of Business, Technology Education, Family and Consumer Science, and other courses. Classes are organized into a trimester system and the school day is divided into seven periods.
Advanced coursework A variety of options are offered for high-achieving students, including a decent number of Advanced Placement courses in the areas of art, literature, writing, history, math, and science. In 2014, over 950 Advanced Placement tests were administered, the highest in recent EHS history. Additionally, seniors may earn credit for Language and English at the University of Minnesota through its "College in the Schools" (CIS) program or take classes at local universities and colleges through the state-sponsored Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program.
LINK program