Atlanta Public Schools history

HISTORY OF APS Established by ordinance of the Atlanta City Council, Atlanta Public Schools (APS) opened three grammar schools and two high schools in 1872 to educate the youth of the city.

Originally called Peachtree Heights School, it opened its doors in 1917 as a two-grade schoolhouse on land that was donated for this specific purpose by Atlanta developer Eretus Rivers.

In 1926, the school was renamed for Mr.

In 1947, Lester Maddox, one of the Nation’s foremost segregationists, opened a fried chicken restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia called The Pickrick (1). The restaurant quickly became well known for its quality food, reasonable prices, and strict whites only policy.

When the new structure opened for classes in 1950, it received an architectural award for excellence in design and was featured in Time Magazine.

Like the Arter mansion in 1958, the Lion sculpture was a gift worth about $100,000.

There too one finds the monumental bronze Winston Churchill (1966), generally viewed as McVey’s most important sculpture.

In fact, when he ran against Jimmy Carter in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1970, Sanders was attacked by many Carter supporters for being too accommodating to integration, leading to Carter’s victory in the 1970 Democratic primary and eventual election as governor.

Kevin estimates that about 2,000 kids were introduced to the school system in 1973, roughly 600 of whom were sent to Sutton.

Or perhaps they knew that in 1975 McVey had created a very stylized Lion sculpture for Orange High School in Pepper Pike, again as an embodiment of a school mascot.

His death occurred on January 2, 1977, during open-heart surgery.

A new gymnasium, media center, classrooms and administrative offices were added in 1994.

A five hundred page charter petition, prepared by scores of volunteers, was formally voted on and passed by parents at a public meeting in September 2000.

In the Spring of 2001, the NCS petition was unanimously approved by both the Atlanta Board of Education and the Georgia State Board of Education, which termed it a model for all other charter petitions.

That dream came true with the opening of the Neighborhood Charter School (NCS) in August of 2002.

On Monday, February 10th, 2003, NCS reopened its doors in its temporary home at St Paul United Methodist Church, a community church just a few blocks from the school site.

On January 10th, 2005 the Atlanta Board of Education formally approved the charter application for the Atlanta Charter Middle School (ACMS), and three months later, on April 14th, 2005, the Georgia State Board of Education did the same.

The initial five-year charter expired in the summer of 2007.

In the fall of 2009, NCS and ACMS engaged an independent consultant to work with the schools’ governing boards on the development of a charter petition that would result in the official merger of these two separate schools into one single school.