Little Rock School District history

Other Days column, Arkansas Gazette, 20 October 1875.If you have information about a Little Rock school or photographs that you would like to contribute to this project (we will return photographs if requested), please contact us!

By 1877 the Marshall Avenue School and the First Ward School had disappeared.

Stephens is the first African-American teacher in the Little Rock School District; she also is the first African-American woman in Arkansas to attend college (she went to Oberlin College in Ohio). The LRSD enrollment in 1878-79 was 2,142.

In 1880 Jacob R. Rightsell takes over as principal at Peabody.

In this year Richard H. Parham, Jr., is shown as a member of the district's Board of Visitors and Examiners; by the next year he is principal of the high school, a post he retains until 1893 when he becomes principal of Fort Steele School.

The school board set a teacher pay schedule for the first time in 1904 in an attempt to settle ongoing salary disputes and prevent future problems.

Hall High was opened in 1957 as the city’s second white high school.

The year 1973 brought about major changes to the district's elementary schools to further aid desegregation efforts: they were divided into primary schools (grades 1 to 3) and intermediate schools (grades 4 to 6). Most of the schools retained their kindergarten classes.

In the autumn of 1987 the Little Rock School District annexed 14 schools from the Pulaski County Special School District, the favorable result of a lawsuit that had been filed by the LRSD under the auspices of a long-running desegregation case involving all three school districts in Pulaski County.