West Bloomfield High School has been around for a very long time. The original building was Roosevelt, which at the time the school was Actually K-12. Then the high school moved over to what is now Abbott. Finally in 1971 the building we know as West Bloomfield High School was opened. Though it didn’t look quite the same. It didn’t have a second floor. The number of students filling this building with spirit has ranged from 1416 students to 2111 students. The school currently has 1677 students. So you think the halls are crowded now, imagine in 2006 with the max number of students this school has seen. Nearly 400 students more.

One thing about WB that is a huge plus is the fact that there are so many sport options available, classes, and clubs. These have changed and evolved through out the years. In 1970 the clubs were as follows, AFS (american field service), Co-op, debate, student council, chess club, radio club, NHS, choir, band Anchor (the school news paper) yearbook, ski club, lit club, pep club, drama, football, powder puff, cross country, ski team, basketball, baseball, track/field, wrestling (first year), tennis, golf, cheer leading, poms, girls athletic association.

They did not have girl sports they simply had the Girls Athletics Association.

The football team that year did relatively well.

Some things are similar, “along with homecoming came rain,” says the yearbook. The students today can relate seeing as it has rained during almost every homecoming in the past few years.  Others are different. The news paper at the time called Anchor  was a paper edition.“the 1970 anchor staff put out the best newspaper ever this year, expanding it to eight pages. advertising was included for the first time.” Now we have an online form of the paper, something that wasn’t even possible when Anchor ran its stories.

In 1980 some new clubs and sports emerged as some disappeared. Student gov, foreign language club, DECA, dance club, business office education club, broadcasting WBLD, Spectrum( the school paper) swim, dive. Things like chess club and lit club were no longer at the school.  However there was a jump forward in the sports offered to girls.

They had a radio station at the time. It broadcast ed the sports games as well as playing music. Now we have a radio station but it only does sports and it just started again this year.

Focusing in on today we have an ever expanding array of clubs and sports. Some of the newer ones include, book club, GSA, earth club, model UN, law club, art club, robotics, AAA, MIFA, ITS, and hockey. This list changes every year with the addition of the equestrian team, sailing club, figure skating in just the past year. 

Even the kinds of classes that are offered have changed. Mr. James Corcoran a teacher at WBHS has been teaching here for years. He said that, “There used to be some great classes offered that have disappeared from the English Department like Philosophy of Lit, Literary Criticism, American Dream, Science Fiction, Advanced Science Fiction, European Literature, Humanities, Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Composition, Oral Communications, Mythology, Creative Writing, Studying the Short Story…the list goes on and on. There used to be a writing clinic in the media center, manned by an English teacher every hour for students to drop in and get writing help.”

WB has been around for a while. There are families that have three generations of WBHS graduates. It has grown in size and population. With that grown there came more opportunities and great resources for the students.