History of the three Columbia high schools

COLUMBIA — Home to the largest high school in Missouri and the women’s basketball state champions, the Columbia school district has seen its share of awards at its three public high school.

Of these three, Frederick Douglass High School, an alternative learning school, is the oldest.

Originally named Cummings Academy, the school was built to educate black children in the mid to late 1860s. When the number of children enrolled began to increase in the early 1880s, the school started to look for a new location to expand its growing class size. The school, which started with 63 students on the corner of Third and Ash streets, moved to its new location at Park Avenue and Providence Road where a two-story building housed nearly 300 students. That same year, the school also changed its name to Excelsior School. In 1898, the name changed to the Frederick Douglass High School to commemorate the slave who became a famous abolitionist figure. Although the name changed to the Secondary Learning Center later, it returned to Frederick Douglass in 1992.

In the early 1900s, Columbia’s population was growing rapidly, and the public school system felt there was a need to build a comprehensive high school. They settled on a 40-acre site in the estate of David H. Hickman, who was one of Columbia’s first citizens. The new high school, named after Hickman, opened for classes in 1927.

Initially a school for white students only, Hickman High School, in conjunction with Douglass, became desegregated around 1955. The next year, Hickman facilities were expanded, which helped accommodate a student body of approximately 1,000. In addition, Hickman was designated as a vocational school a decade later in 1966.

The issue of integration resurfaced in 1973 with the addition of Rock Bridge High School.

When Rock Bridge opened, the school district drew attendance boundaries so that black students encompassed a minimum of five to 10 percent of the enrollment to ensure integration among the schools in the city. Named after the natural rock bridge located in a nearby state park, this school was meant to relieve nearby Hickman High School, which was growing rapidly.

According to Kathy Ritter, principal of Rock Bridge High School, the school opened with “a sense of innovation and openness.” The school’s block scheduling, along with its alternating unassigned times, help provide students with more freedom. An AUT, which was incorporated into the school schedule since 1973, is a free period where the student can choose to study, meet with teachers, or use the time to help best meet their needs.

“We give our students a lot of freedom, but we expect a lot from them,” said Ritter.

In addition, Rock Bridge’s block scheduling incorporates 95-minute class periods, which, Ritter said, help students study a subject, for example a science lab, more in depth rather than having to rush through it.

Unlike the other two public high schools, Douglass offers a different learning environment, which often integrates work experience in the school day.

With 178 students enrolled in 2007, the smallest of the three schools, Douglass, is a small four-year high school by application. As a transfer school option for the Columbia Public School system, students must apply in order to attend.

“Our courses are built on a block semester instead of year long,” said Brian Gaub, principal of Douglass High School.

Because courses are scheduled by semester, students can repeat courses or earn credits from two classes within the same subject in one year. For example, they are able to take algebra the first semester and geometry the second. In addition to a core curriculum, Douglass attempts to prepare students for life after school.

“We require all our students to complete a senior portfolio, which includes a resume, college visits, job shadowing, a mock job interview, and volunteer work,” said Gaub.

Douglass offers a number of programs to create different learning environments for its students, such as Between the Pages, where Schnucks grocery store and MBS Textbook Exchange partner with the school to create a delicatessen business for the students to operate, which feeds employees at MBS. Another program, Project Publish, allows 12 students to work with the Columbia Daily Tribune in addition to their core classes to create a newsletter for the high school.

Just half a mile north from Douglass’ small brick building sits Hickman’s sprawling campus.

With over 2,100 enrolled students in grades 10 through 12, Hickman seems to be bursting at the seams.
“We can’t even fit our student body into the gymnasium,” said Doug Mirts.

Mirts, as athletic and activities director for Hickman, said that although the student population is getting to be too large for the school’s facilities, the size brings “tremendous diversity,” which exposes students to different cultures.

Since Hickman is located in the central part of Columbia, many different socio-economic groups make up its student body, which, according to Mirts, is a “microcosm” of the diversity in the city.

However, with so many students, communication and maintaining consistency in its policies is an issue for Hickman. Getting the students to all be in the same place to receive the same information is a problem, Mirts said. Although Hickman communicates through their radio station, email, website, and announcements period, they cannot count on students using these resources to obtain important information.

While minorities make up only about 19 percent of Rock Bridge’s student population, Hickman boasts nearly 32 percent.

Mirts, who graduated from Hickman, enjoys the school’s strong diversity and tradition. The only difference since he was a student, he said jokingly, is that teenagers talk on cell phones now instead of using “Campbell’s soup cans tied together with string.”

“There’s a place for everyone to fit in,” said Mirts.

Hickman, as the largest high school in Missouri, offers over 30 honors or AP classes and also has 16 Presidential Scholars, the most out of any public school in the nation since May of last year. Earlier this year, two Hickman students received perfect scores of 36 on their ACT.

Rock Bridge, who is the women’s basketball state champion, was also a silver medal winner in U.S. News’s “Best High Schools in America 2007” report.

With a drop out rate of 2.9 percent in 2007, Rock Bridge has always has a lower rate than Hickman, which had 4.4 percent, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Both schools, however, have a lower drop out rate than Douglass, which, as an alternative school, saw 22.8 percent drop from their student body.

Since Douglass receives students from Rock Bridge and Hickman who may not have been able to thrive in a traditional school environment, the school makes special efforts to encourage its students to stay in school. According to Gaub, Douglass hopes to decrease student dropouts and increase the graduation rate among Columbia public schools.

Ritter also hopes to lower the dropout rate among students. The area where Rock Bridge should focus most of its time, according to Ritter, is what is being done to help struggling students. The achievement gap between the high and low performing students, she thinks, is what Rock Bridge needs to work on most.

According to Columbia Public School records, enrollment rates for all three high schools have stayed around the same numbers for the past three years, although, Hickman has been seeing a slight increase. Hickman’s enrollment, which dropped 108 students between the 2003 and 2004 school years, has been hovering around a population of 2,100. Rock Bridge, which gained more than 100 students in both 2004 and 2005, has stayed around 1,700 students since then. Douglass has had between 150 and 200 students enrolled every year.

To manage Columbia’s growing number of families, the school district is also planning on building a new comprehensive high school. The high school, which will be located off of St. Charles Road, will help alleviate the large 10 through 12 grade student populations at both Hickman and Rock Bridge. Although the total enrollment will not see much of a change, there will be fewer sophomore, junior and senior students to help balance the addition of a new freshman class.

As the Missourian previously reported, the 80-acre lot will house a 300,000 square foot building. Hickman and Rock Bridge, however, will have to wait another two years to see a change in their student bodies since the new school is not projected to be completed until summer of 2010.

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