West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South (known locally as South), is a four-year comprehensive public high school located in the Princeton Junction section of West Windsor in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, serving students in ninth through twelfth grades. The school is part of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District, a regional school district serving students from West Windsor and from Plainsboro Township (in Middlesex County). It is one of two high schools in the district, the other being West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North.

Students at High School South outperform other students in New Jersey on college admissions tests, scoring an average of 1351/1600 on the SAT compared to New Jersey students' average of 1080/1600. The school determines both unweighted and weighted GPAs for students and does not rank students with the exception of the top five in every graduating class.

History

Prior to the school's opening, students from West Windsor and Plainsboro townships attended Princeton High School as part of sending/receiving relationships with the Princeton Public Schools. The high school was opened in September 1973 as West Windsor-Plainsboro High School and was described by The New York Times as the state's first high school to be developed with an "open space" plan, with open areas that could be divided off for instructional space that it said "looks more like a modern airline terminal than a high school". The school, constructed at a cost of $8 million (equivalent to $54.9 million in 2023), initially served 700 students in grades 7 to 10, while the remaining students in grades 11 and 12 finished their schooling at Princeton High School through their graduation, with an expected enrollment of 1,300 once the partnership with Princeton was ended. Population growth in the district throughout the 1990s necessitated an additional high school. In 1997, the school was renamed by appending "South" to the school's name concurrent with the opening of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North.

Renovations and additions begun in 2006 and completed at end of the 2008–09 school year included a new gym, more parking spaces, a new cover for the pool, more classrooms, improvements on the HVAC system, and artificial turf for the football field. The estimated cost of the projects included in the referendum was $23 million. As of January 2010, all projects had been completed including the new pool 'bubble' enclosure.

Demographics

As of the 2022–23 school year, the school had an enrollment of 1,630 students and 123.8 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 13.2:1. There were 69 students (4.2% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 23 (1.4% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.

2018-19 Racial/Ethnic Group Statistics

Racial/Ethnic Group	% of total enrollment	% who graduated in 4 years	% enrolled in any post-secondary education
White	12.0	96.3	81.9
Hispanic	3.9	*	90
Black or African American	5.3	87.0	*
Asian	85.4	98.5	91.9
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander	0.1	*	91.9
American Indian or Alaska Native	0.1	*	*
Two or More Races	0.8	*	*
Total	100	96.9	88