• bulldogs
    vm


    Veronica Machado
    Principal

    Student Enrollment (September 1,2022): 2,562
    Brick and Mortar Classrooms: 94
    Portable Classrooms: 29

  • Pasco High School, of course, draws its name from the city it serves. The City of Pasco was given its name by Virgil Bouge, an engineer who oversaw the Northern Pacific Railroad’s Cascade Branch. Prior to his work in the Northwest, Bouge worked on a railroad in the Andes of South America, of which the highest point along the rail line was the mining town of Cerro de Pasco. Bouge carried the name with him.

     
    Pasco’s first high school, West Side School, was built in 1909 for $9,000 and later named Longfellow in honor of the poet and educator Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Longfellow school was a two-story building that served both grade school and secondary students. In 1922 a second high school was built on North 3rd Street to meet growing demand. After a vote by the school board, the new school was named Washington High School. In the end, the name did not sit well with Pasco’s residents and the name was changed to Pasco High School. That building now serves as Pasco City Hall.

    The Pasco High campus that we now know was built in 1952, but without an auditorium. However, within several years the board asked for a one-year special levy to build an auditorium, and it passed by a large majority. Additions to the school were made in 1958, 1969, 1971, and 1995, at which point the auditorium was revamped and renamed to honor a previous PHS principal and PSD board member, Robert Gregson. The student mall was added in 2005. 
     
    Other previous principals include Al McCallum, Emerson Morgan, Ray Kranz, Ray Reynolds, Sherrie Atkinson, John Morgan and Raul Sital.
     
    Pasco High School has a tradition of nominating and inducting noteworthy graduates into the Pasco Hall of Fame. Have you ever seen Hud or Funny Lady? Those are just two of James Wong Howe’s many successful films. Howe was a Pasco graduate who went on to film 125 movies, was nominated 16 times for an Academy Award, winning two, and subsequently was inducted into the Pasco Hall of Fame in 1996.