Bids were requested by January 1970 for a 1,350-seat school to be built for an estimated $2.6 million.[2] Opened in 1971 as a model school for the nation, it was Columbia's first high school. It had an open doughnut-shaped design with "open classrooms," and was a model school for new teaching settings.[3]
In 1994, the original 910-student building, which did not meet current safety standards, was demolished. A new $20 million 1,200-seat building with a more traditional style was reconstructed on the same site by Cochran, Stephenson and Donkevoet.[4] The new building, opened in 1996, replicates the open idea, with a central main street, and halls surrounding it and a bridge across the second floor.
The racial makeup of the population during the 2017–2018 school year was 26.7% White, 43.8% Black or African American, 7.2% Asian, 14.6% Hispanic or Latino, 0% Native American, 0.4% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and 7.4% two or more races.[1]
Jim Rouse Theatre
Wilde Lake has a modern 750-seat theater named for Columbia founder James Rouse, who went by "Jim".[6] The theatre has its own separate entrance and is used by both school and community groups. The 12,500-square-foot performance space is also used for community meetings, sales rallies, exhibitions, and business training sessions. The theatre has a total of 739 seats and eight handicapped accessible locations.[7]
Athletics
Wilde Lake High School has a number of sports teams for each season of the academic year, including football, soccer, golf, volleyball, basketball, and cross country.[8] The school has won the following state championships:
Wilde lake no longer fields an independent ice hockey team. From 2011–2018, a co-op team with players from Oakland Mills and Hammond High Schools was formed, known as the “WHO”. In 2018, Centennial and Long Reach High Schools joined the WHO to form the Wolves.
In 2015, Carol Satterwhite, a physical education teacher at the Wilde Lake High School was selected for the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association Hall of Fame.[22]
Band program
The school has a band program consisting of groups including the marching band and wind ensemble.[23]
The Paw Print
The Paw Print is an independent publication of Wilde Lake High School.[24]
Accommodations
Wilde Lake has a special education program.[25] In addition to its programs for the disabled, Wilde Lake accommodates teen mothers through their in school daycare center.[26]
Notable alumni
This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Please improve this article by removing names that do not have independent reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article AND are alumni, or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate citations.(May 2023)
Wilde Lake also produced a number of prominent athletes, including Olympic gymnast Elise Ray (2000),[32] Major League Baseball player Jim Traber (1979), and football players Zach Brown and Isaiah Coulter, who attended freshman through junior year.[33]
Former child prodigies who graduated from Wilde Lake High include John Overdeck, a billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist.[35] Another is Curtis Yarvin (1988), a computer scientist, political philosopher, and neoreactionary thinker[36]
^Tom Vesey (July 16, 1986). "A 'Normal' Math Whiz". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 19, 2018.
^Mencius Moldbug (October 26, 2011). "The Holocaust: a Nazi perspective". Unqualified Reservations. Retrieved April 19, 2018. The point was driven home for me at Wilde Lake High School in 1988, where I found myself in an auditorium listening to a long, bathetic string of student awards.