The original Edison High School building was opened in 1903 as the all-male Northeast Manual Training High School located at 8th Street and Lehigh Avenue, which eventually became Northeast High School. New additions, such as the auditorium and vocational education shops, were added over the next three decades. Northeast High School reopened at a new location in 1957, and Thomas Alva Edison High School was opened at the site. The school remained all-male until the beginning of the 1979 school year.[2] The school was 80% African-American, 10% Anglo White, and 10% Puerto Rican in 1970. [3]
In 1988, the original school was relocated and replaced by a co-educational Edison/Fareira High School, named in part for its late principal, John C. Fareira. The new Edison/Fareira is a combined academic high school and vocational skills center. It is located at Front and Luzerne Streets with an outdoor athletic facility on the same site.[4]
The school lost 64 former students during the Vietnam War, more than any other U.S. high school. Every year the "64" are honored in a special ceremony to remember their sacrifice which includes attendance of veterans, faculty, students, community and some of the family members of the students who lost their lives.[5][6]
The graduating class of 1965 is believed to have suffered an unusually high number of casualties in the Vietnam war and was the subject of the 1995 documentary Yearbook: The Class of '65, directed by Stephen Jimenez.[7]
The previous building at 8th Street and Lehigh Avenue had been vacant since 2002 and was sold to developers. The building was heavily damaged by fire on August 3, 2011.[8][9]
Curriculum
Tenth graders select one trade area for concentration study through their senior year. A complete academic program leading to a high school diploma is required of each student. In addition, each student must complete a required sequence of career and technical courses. Each student also has the opportunity to participate in a full program of extra-curricular activities.
The overall program at Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs comprises twelve career and technical areas of study and a comprehensive academic program. Edison/Fareira Skills High School CTE students participate in school-to-career experiences, including opportunities for work-based learning in the 11th and 12th grades.
Some of the CTE offerings available to students include:
^Suess, Gretchen Elise Leuszler (Temple University). Beyond School Walls: The Politics of Community and Place in Two Philadelphia Neighborhoods (PhD thesis), ProQuest, 2008. p. 259. See profileArchived 2017-01-01 at the Wayback Machine at ProQuest.
^Bunch, Will (October 30, 2007). "Different wars, different reactions Despite unpopularity of Iraq conflict, Americans respect our soldiers - & now even Vietnam vets". The Philadelphia Daily News: City & Local.
^David Hiltbrand (11 March 2014). "Unexpected twists in a notorious murder case". The Inquirer. Retrieved 29 October 2018. Jimenez moved to Philadelphia in 1995, where he directed and produced the acclaimed documentary Yearbook: The Class of '65 for Fox29. The film looked at the graduates of Thomas Edison High School in North Philadelphia, who suffered a devastating number of fatalities in the Vietnam War. "That was a career turning point for me," says Jimenez, who now splits his time between Brooklyn and Santa Fe, N.M. "It was an opportunity to tell a powerful story with very little editorial interference and to learn firsthand about the Vietnam War from the families in Philadelphia who lost sons in the war."
Asquith, Christina. The Emergency Teacher: The Inspirational Story of a New Teacher in an Inner City School. Skyhorse Publishing Inc., November 1, 2007. ISBN1602391939, 9781602391932.
