A history of Cleveland's school district and the three elementary schools in the proposed Promise Neighborhood

As early as the 1920s, Cleveland’s public schools were accused of segregating African American students into certain schools and of allowing those schools to deteriorate.

While Cleveland was one of the biggest cities in the country at the time, the more affluent residents were already leaving city’s neighborhoods by that time, moving into the adjoining suburbs that were established early and landlocked Cleveland’s expansion. The exodus sped up in the 1950s and got even faster by the 1970s.

Even so, the school district struggled with an overwhelming number of children in the 1950s and 1960s. The city’s overall population was declining, but the African American population nearly doubled by 1960 to more than 34 percent.

To curb overcrowding, especially in elementary schools, Cleveland schools instituted two half day programs. There weren’t enough buildings to house the kids, and schools were opened in libraries and community centers.

However this “relay” system was prevalent on the predominately African American east side of the city, with predominately white west side schools operating full-day sessions and many were under capacity. This led to protests in the early 1960s.

Even though African American students made up a majority of the schools children, the elected seven-member school board had only one African American member.

School district officials decided to bus African American students and their teachers into underutilized White schools, however the decision was altered to contain busing to the east side, saying it was impractical and costly to bus students all the way to west side schools..

So while African American students were bused to these schools, they stayed racially segregated with their teachers. The African American students were unable to see the school nurse, use the cafeteria, attend school assemblies and physical education classes. Bathroom breaks were scheduled.

In 1976, U.S. Federal Judge Frank Battisti found that the Cleveland schools were guilty of racial segregation. In 1979, “court-ordered busing” began. However, many say the order accelerated the “white flight” of residents out of the city. But the end result was actually a socio-economic flight out of the city, with the African American middle class also moving into inner rung suburbs.
“You have left behind the poorest of the poor- predominately minorities and females with children,” Cleveland City Council President Frank Jackson said in 2003 about the exodus in Cleveland. Jackson, a Central resident, is now mayor of Cleveland.

By the 1990s, new efforts were made to improve the schools and to ensure students get access to good schools including a voucher program that gave families the ability to enroll their children in private, often parochial schools in Cleveland. Charter schools also began opening. And in 1997, state lawmakers gave the Cleveland mayor control of the city schools. School board members were no longer elected by residents. Federal oversight resulting from the desegregation ruling ended in 2000.