Rocky River High School – Home of the Ravens!

RRHS Vision: To create a safe school climate where all students can achieve, and teachers are empowered to be creative educators.

RRHS Mission: To create a nurturing environment that embraces career readiness, academic proficiency, and global citizenship.

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​Rocky River High School is part of an urban school district, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, and is located in the town of Mint Hill, NC. Rocky River High opened in 2010. The school serves students from grade 9 to grade 12. 

The history of this area includes interesting facts about the family that initially owned the land that is now Rocky River High School. Allen Station (the street that leads up to the school) was recognized in 1933 as the focal point of the incorporated small town of Allen. The Allen's, large landowners and farmers, were instrumental in developing the general store and train depot that popularized this area. A cotton gin purchased from McCormick began processing cotton from the local farmers and was responsible for transporting it throughout the country. Allen Station thrived from the late 1920s to the 1950s. A river, the Rocky River, runs through much of our land area. The land and waterways, including tributaries of the Rocky River, also comprise an "environmentally-protected area" on our campus. Many of the spirit rocks that are in place in various areas of the campus were found on site. The campus also has rain gardens that filter runoff water through natural filters and then drain the water back into the small river. 

Rocky River High School serves students living in east Charlotte. However, a small percentage of students reside in the Mint Hill, NC community. As a result, most students attending Rocky River are bused from their east Charlotte neighborhood to school.  

Our staff is comprised of a dedicated group of professionals who strive to make our students lifelong learners. We have over 100 licensed personnel, ranging from 3 Assistant Principals, 2 Deans of Students, Teachers, Counselors, a Social Worker, an Instructional Accountability Facilitator, an Academic Facilitator, a Technology Facilitator, a Career Development Coordinator, a Career Technical Education Instructional Coordinator, and a school nurse. In addition, we have an experienced staff, with over 70% of our certified staff members remaining in education for over five years. 

• ​School Map (opens in new window)​ 

Our Purpose

Rocky River High School is proud to operate on the road to becoming the premier high school in the south. As a vision, Rocky River High School strives to create a nurturing environment where students are prepared for success in the 21st century. Working with the various communities and a supportive parent partnership, we foster the development of the whole individual and encourage each student to develop to the best of his or her abilities. Our staff takes ownership in seeking ways not only to grow as individual professionals but also to grow as a cooperative group toward total school success. Our mission is to create a safe school climate where all students can achieve, and teachers are empowered to be creative educators. Our school's motto, "Learners Today, Leaders Tomorrow," helps us embody our core beliefs of:

• Every student will have the right to a quality education.
• Faculty and staff will have shared responsibility for the achievement of school-wide goals.
• All students will be treated with mutual respect and dignity.
• Our school will foster a learning environment conducive to academic and personal success.
• Every student will graduate prepared to enter various segments of society and prepared to be a responsible global citizen in the 21st century.
  
  

Our school's mission and purpose live in the visual environment of the school and the daily interactions amongst students, staff, parents, and the community. School safety and a positive, affirming school culture allow our students to achieve their highest potential. Over the last three years, our school has worked diligently to support our students who make behavioral mistakes at school and provide positive options and opportunities for students. For the past two years, we have lived and breathed the Rocky River High School Code (Respect, Responsibility, Honor, and Service - RRHS). We have forged strong relationships with our students by teaching and modeling behavioral expectations and enjoy celebrating their successes. Our students also participate in Advanced Placement courses, online coursework, and Career Technical Educational coursework in Business and Marketing. Our school is clean and orderly. 

Notable Achievements

The power of an authentic high school diploma for a student is unmatched. Faculty and staff daily interactions at Rocky River High School are driven by our commitment to our 9th graders every year that they will graduate in four years or less with a quality diploma. This promise is confidently given because of our implemented systems to support students. Five times a year, our administrative and counseling teams review the transcript, grades, behavior, and attendance of every senior at our school. Students are identified for interventions and are assigned a mentor that checks in weekly with the student. Our school's strengths are community/family, a solid commitment to teaching, learning, and growing as a community, and a strict policy of positive conduct and behavior. 

Our school has also embraced student achievement data to adjust our instruction to students. For example, the school uses common planning time for core teachers to support student interest and mastery of the content. As a result, we have been able to generate aligned, rigorous assessments, track student progress on these assessments, create interventions to support their misunderstandings/enrichment, and plan engaging lessons. 

Our Areas of Improvement

We are using our Instructional Leadership Team to build out school-wide literacy strategies across all content areas grounded around four prioritized common core state standards (RL.1; RI.1; W2; S&L1). We want to continue to increase our attendance rates, leveraging our attendance committee to support this initiative. We also want to use data to maximize our instructional time to support individual student mastery of key content areas. Therefore, we continue our use of data as well as consider how we leverage our time during the school day to support student learning. Additionally, we want to reduce our teacher turnover, especially of our irreplaceable teachers. Providing opportunities for teacher leadership, continuing our work around staff culture, sharing feedback and acting on the feedback from our teacher surveys, and building solid relationships with our teachers will support the overall outcome of our school.