I think you're simply reading too much into his imprecise usage of grammatical tense. "Our local high school" probably refers to when he was in high school him

I think you're simply reading too much into his imprecise usage of grammatical tense. "Our local high school" probably refers to when he was in high school himself decades ago, being born in 1953, that would put those years right around the time period when children of Manhattan Project physicists have demonstrated their academic talent. Given the fact that Los Alamos High School is not academically renowned in the current day, but was so half a century back, this is the only context in which his series of statements make any sense.