Central High School (Philadelphia)

Central High School is a public high school in the Logan section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1836, it is a four-year university preparatory magnet school.

About 2,400 students attend grades 9 through 12. Central High School is the only high school in the United States with authority, granted by an 1849 Act of Assembly of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, to confer academic degrees upon its graduates. This authority to grant academic degrees led Central to refer to the principal of the school as the “President” of Central High School. The current and fifteenth president of Central High School is Katharine S. Davis.

Central, rather than using a general class year to identify its classes (as in "class of 2021"), uses the class graduating number system (as in "280th graduating class" or "280"). This tradition started shortly after the school's founding when it was common to have two graduating classes per year – one in January and one in June. In June 1965, semiannual graduations were replaced by annual graduations. As of the 2024–2025 school year, the current senior class is 284. Provided by Wikipedia