History
The institution currently known as Palm Beach Lakes Community High School was founded in 1908 as Palm Beach High School. It has the legacy of being the oldest high school in the School District of Palm Beach County. The school is a year older than Palm Beach County, which was founded in April 1909.
Palm Beach High School served as the original site of Palm Beach Junior College, now Palm Beach State College. County school superintendent Joe Youngblood and Howell Watkins, the principal of Palm Beach High School who later became the college's first dean, were instrumental in opening the college. The college's initial goal was to provide additional training to local high school graduates who were unable to find jobs during the Great Depression. PBJC was founded in 1933 and is the oldest community college in the state of Florida.
At the start of the 1970–1971 school year, Palm Beach High School merged with Roosevelt High School, forming PBLCH's second incarnation, Twin Lakes High School. The latter, Roosevelt High, was established as the high school for African-Americans in West Palm Beach. They were athletic rivals with John F. Kennedy High School, the High School for African-Americans in Riviera Beach. This school would go on to become part of Suncoast Community High School. Roosevelt High was located at the site of the current Roosevelt Service Center, on the Northwest corner of Tamarind Avenue and L. A. Kirksey Street (15th Street). This site would also become known as Roosevelt Junior High School in the 1960s.
The name of the new school was Twin Lakes High School, derived from the fact that the merging of the schools had integrated them, and also that the new school setting was diverse with differing groups of ethnicities merging into a future that was united. The site was located in Downtown West Palm Beach at the current Dreyfoos School of the Arts site.
In 1988, the school once again changed not only names, but location. It was moved from Downtown West Palm Beach to a new building in Palm Beach Lakes and renamed Palm Beach Lakes Community High School. This site is its current location, on the Northeast corner of Shiloh Drive and Military Trail.
Read more about this topic: Palm Beach Lakes Community High School
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