Omaha Public Schools history

In 1870, the Nebraska School for the Deaf and Dumb was opened on a 23 acre campus at Bedford and 42nd streets.

When the Jefferson Square school was closed, the building was moved to the corner of North 14th and Cass Streets and reopened in 1872 as the Cass School.

Creighton University, founded in 1878, is the oldest.

The Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart was an all-women’s school opened in the Gifford Park neighborhood at 3601 Burt Street in 1881.

In 1882, the school board decided to build a school in the “northwest quarter” of the city near present-day North 35th and Franklin Street.

The first Omaha View School was built at North 32nd and Maple Streets in 1885.

Long School was opened in 1886 at 2520 Franklin Street.

In 1888, the first Walnut Hill School building.

It was red brick with dual arches either side of principals office “built 1893″…two stories.

The first mention of “junior high school” in the Omaha World Herald was in 1898.

For instance, Monmouth Park School was a public school located at 4508 North 33rd St, and was built in 1903.

In 1914, the Omaha School District opened the Fort Street Special School for Incorrigible Boys at the corner of North 30th and Browne Streets.

Clifton Hill School was built in 1917 at 2811 North 45th Street.

It was later called the Izard Street School, and stayed open into the 1920s.

In 1921, the school district changed the name of the Charleston Colored Industrial School to Burke Industrial School, in memory of the death of city board member James E. Burke.

In 1923, Technical High School opened in Omaha.

The current Minne Lusa School was built in 1924, and has been continuously added to since then.

Built in 1926, it was closed just 50 years later, and its remaining students were sent to Sherman.

Holy Family School was at 1715 Izard Street, and Omaha’s segregated Black Catholic school was St Benedict’s School, rebuilt at 2423 Grant Street in 1928.

In 1936, the newspaper announced that Monroe School would be the first junior high in Omaha.

Good article, but glaring by it's omission is Horace Mann Jr. It was built in the late 1950's, and is now referred to as the King Science Center.

Kellom School was opened in 1952 at 1311 North 24th Street.

In 1956, initial plans for a new building were drawn up as North Side Junior High.

Sherman Junior High, now Sherman Elementary, was opened in 1957.

He became the city’s first African American assistant superintendent in 1969.

Middle School was opened in 1975 at North 37th and Maple Streets.

They ordered the district to desegregate Omaha’s public schools, starting in September 1976.

Since the release of Omaha from the order by the US Supreme Court to become integrated in 1991, Omaha Public Schools have become re-segregating today.

Our district began a partnership with the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo in 1996 to create the Zoo Academy, which provides an additional opportunity for students to develop their STEM skills.

After an extensive renovation in 2001, it was renamed the King Science and Technology Magnet Center.

Luanne Nelson, then Communications Director for OPS, served as Executive Director until 2010.

Omaha Public Schools opened the first-of-its-kind Virtual School in Nebraska in 2017.

12, 2018, with the Investor in America Award, presented by Partners for Livable Communities (Partners), a Washington-based nonprofit.