Seneca Valley High School

== History ==
[[File:Seneca Valley High School's parking lot in 1974.png|thumb|Seneca Valley High School's parking lot in 1974]]
Seneca Valley High School sits on land that was once the site of a dairy farm owned by baseball player [[Walter Perry Johnson]]. Johnson purchased the land in 1935 and lived there with his family until his death in 1946.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.germantownmdhistory.org/?q=node/2|author=Germantown Historical Society|work=Germantown Historical Society|title=Germantown's History, A Brief Overview|quote=Johnson bought his dream farm in Germantown in 1935 and lived here with his five children and his mother, his wife having died, until his own death in 1946. His dairy farm was located where Seneca Valley High School is today. He was elected by the local people to two terms as a County Commissioner.|accessdate=March 10, 2013}}</ref>

Seneca Valley High School opened in 1974 as the first high school in Germantown and remained the only one until 1998, when [[Northwest High School (Maryland)|Northwest High School]] opened. In its first year of operation, the 1974-1975 school year, under Principal Nathan Pearson, Seneca Valley hosted students in grades seven through ten. In the following 1975-1976 school year, the school operated grades nine through eleven, with 8th graders transferring to the newly opened Ridgeview Junior High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland. During the 1976-1977 school year, Seneca Valley became a senior high school, hosting grades ten through twelve, and graduating its first class in June 1977.

In 1988, Seneca Valley changed to its present state of full-fledged high school with grades 9-12.

In 2017, construction work began for a completely new school building and campus. The original building was demolished in 2020 and replaced with a new building on-site which was completed in 2021.<ref>{{cite web|title=Germantown Community Meeting with Councilmember Craig Rice |url=https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/Rice/Resources/Files/GermantownCommunityMeeting.pdf |date=October 7, 2015 |website=Montgomery County Public Schools |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151116232552/https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/Rice/Resources/Files/GermantownCommunityMeeting.pdf|archive-date=November 16, 2015}}</ref> The new 440,000-square-foot building makes SVHS the physically largest high school in Maryland. The larger facility also changed enrollment boundaries to draw more students from the [[Clarksburg High School|Clarksburg]] and [[Northwest High School (Maryland)|Northwest High School]] areas, and accommodates 14 career and technical education programs (CTE) for the upcounty student population.<ref name="moco360" />