140 YEARS
PAGE 4I ■ SUNDAY, JULY 18, 2010
NORTHEAST MISSISSIPPI DAILY JOURNAL
TUPELO SCHOOL DISTRICT GROWS INTO STATE LEADER ■ Strong community support has been key to the successes. BY CHRIS KIEFFER
O
Daily Journal
ne hundred and thirty years after the Tupelo Separate School District was created, the city’s school system has blossomed as one of the best in the state. Thanks to a strong history of community support, the district has had its schools receive National Blue Ribbon awards from the U.S. Department of Education seven times. This year, the district will roll out the most extensive computer initiative in the state when it provides laptops to all sixth- to 12th-grade students to use during the school year. Now known as the Tupelo Public School District, the local school system has come a long way since its founding in 1880 and the construction of its first school in 1890. That school was built at “Freeman’s Grove,” the
present site of Milam Elementary, despite complaints that the $10,800 11-room building was too expensive and too far out of town, according to a history compiled by the district. Prior to 1890, students attended different academies and schools, none of which were supported by public funds. Students attended those schools for free for four months and had to pay tuition for the remainder of the year. A Male Academy, located at 524 Jefferson St., and The Tupelo Female Seminary, situated just south of the present Church Street Elementary School, both opened in 1870. In 1894, Nettie Armstrong and Clarence Rugg were the first two students to receive diplomas from Tupelo High School. That graduation must have gone much quicker than the 2010 version, when the school produced 356 graduates. By 1913, the Tupelo Public School District had 596 students and needed a new building, according to an article in the Daily
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Journal. That building was completed to house the high school and was located next to the original school. The Tupelo Separate School District operated its first 12grade school in 1917 and earned accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1918. The district has maintained that accreditation. Several schools were added during the 1920s: the first Church Street Primary School (1923), the original East Tupelo (Lawhon) School building (1926) and a new Tupelo High School (1927). The new high school cost $125,000 and is now part of Milam Elementary School. President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Church Street Elementary in 1934, the same year that East Tupelo High School produced its first four graduates. When a tornado destroyed Tupelo on April 5, 1936, it also did extensive damages to the district’s school buildings. Classes resumed eight days later using Ledyard Primary School, the only usable school, as well as temporary classrooms in churches, the Masonic hall and the former Tupelo Military Institute, according to the district’s history. Federal funds helped to rebuild the high school and construct Milam Junior High for students in seventh and eighth grades. The high school was rebuilt by September of that year and the junior high was completed by September 1937. Repairs at East Tupelo High School were also completed in 1936. That school was annexed by the city school district in 1947, and students in grades 11 and 12 were sent to Tupelo High School. For a short time after the consolidation, the school housed students up to the 10th grade, but those students were later moved to the high school and then to Carver. East Tupelo, which was renamed Lawhon School after its late Superintendent Ross Lawhon, then housed students in grades one to eight. George Washington Carver School was constructed in 1938, the same year the new Church
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COURTESY PHOTOS
Large photo: The current Tupelo Middle School was built and dedicated as the high school in 1961 (North Mississippi Community Hospital is in the top right background). Inset: The 1914 Tupelo High football team consisted of front row, from left, Laney Weaver, Preston Gardner, Louis Christian, Dennis Moore, Turner Baldwyn, Ben McWhorter and Henry Robinson; back row, from left, Coach Fred Rawls, Carl Smith, Welfer F. Riley, Clayton Mitchenor, Keith Murff, Jim Murff, Robert St. John and Fritz the mascot. Street Elementary School opened. Carver began as the district’s school for black students. Longtime principal Harry Grayson told the Daily Journal in 1992 that while operating as a high school before integration, Carver averaged about 750 students a year and offered an arts program, band and chorus. Students, Grayson said, would participate in many afterschool activities at Carver. It was not uncommon, he said, for the school to be open until 8 p.m. for students and teachers. It was also a central part of the community. In 1970, Carver High School students were sent to Tupelo High School as the result of integration that was much more peaceful than in other Southern cities. The effort began in 1968 when Rachel Holloman became the first African-American student to graduate from Tupelo High School under the Freedom of Choice Desegregation plan, according to the district history.
After desegregation, Carver became a 10th grade school for a year and later was made a ninth-grade school. Today, it serves kindergarten to secondgrade students. Tupelo continued to build schools during the 1950s and ’60s, adding Rankin and Joyner elementaries in 1952, a new Tupelo High School in 1961 (now Tupelo Middle School), Green Street Elementary (now the King Early Childhood Education Center) in 1961, Thomas Street Elementary in 1964 and Pierce Street Elementary in 1967. The jewel of the school system was built in 1992 after the community passed a $17 million bond issue to allow for the construction of a new Tupelo High School, at its current site on Cliff Gookin Boulevard. At the time, it was the largest single bond issue for local education facilities to be passed in the state of Mississippi, according to the district history. Seven years later, the commu-
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This story includes information from a Sept. 6, 1992, story in the Daily Journal.
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As Reed
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nity approved a $29.5 million bond issue to build Parkway and Lawndale elementary schools, as well as a ninth-grade building at Tupelo High School, the Tupelo High School Performing Arts Center and the Career-Technical Center at THS, as well as extensive renovations throughout the district. Today, the district has 12 K-12 schools to serve roughly 7,200 students. It also boasts approximately 110 National Board Certified Teachers, the most per capita in the state, and is the fourthlargest employer in Lee County. Five Tupelo teachers have won the national Milken Foundation Award. Tupelo High School is one of 24 public high schools in the country to have a Cum Laude Society chapter and was named by Sports Illustrated as the No. 3 high school athletic program in the nation.
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