The Kirkwood R-7 School District is a public school district headquartered in Kirkwood, Missouri.
History History of the district 1833–1866: The beginning The area that would become the city of Kirkwood was settled in 1833. The area's residents were educated by the state's public school system and not by a local school district. Public education took place under the State Constitution of 1820, which allowed for the education of the poor at public expense. Black children were not included, because an 1847 state law prohibited teaching African American or bi-racial people how to read and write.
State legislators approved the establishment of the Kirkwood School District on February 17, 1865, three days before approving the charter that established the city. The school district encompassed a larger tract of land than the city. Later, this difference would allow the district to educate all its Black children outside of city limits for a period of time.
The school district was established in the middle of a series of actions in the state legislature that affected the education of Black children. Earlier, in January 1865, Missouri had outlawed slavery and freed enslaved people. (The federal Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had not applied to Missouri.) In June of that year, the state constitution was revised to permit the establishment of separate public schools for children of African descent.
The topic of racial segregation in Missouri's public education system would arise repeatedly. An 1866 state law did not merely permit it but instead required such segregation. The requirement would become codified in the state's Constitution of 1875. In 1890, the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed that racial segregation in public schools is neither forbidden nor in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The practice was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the context of racially segregated separate but equal public facilities in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S. 537 (1896). The requirement was repeated in the state Constitution of 1945, which permitted racial integration if other laws required it. Despite the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that outlawed racial segregation in America's public schools, the provision requiring such racial segregation would not be removed from Missouri's Constitution until August 1976.
1866–1908: The first buildings The district's first school building—a temporary one—opened in the fall of 1866. For White students only, the building covered all grades. The district's African American children were educated in rented rooms. A.G. Edwards, founder of his namesake company, and A.S. Mermod had found the land and made the arrangements for erecting the temporary building.
In 1869, the district erected a more permanent schoolhouse for its White students. Called the Jefferson Avenue School, the building was designed by E.E. Halsey and was located on Jefferson Street between Clay and Harrison Streets.
Construction of the first permanent building for African American children was finished in 1870. Ultimately named the Booker T. Washington School, the school was located at 430 West Adams Avenue near what would become Geyer Road in an area whose residents included Edwards. The school educated children from the 11 Black enclaves within Kirkwood and its surrounds. Students—both Black and White—who lived in Meacham Park, an unincorporated area south of Kirkwood City proper, had to walk almost miles and cross train tracks to get to the school buildings.
1876, the year after the state constitution was changed to require racial segregation in public education and not merely permit it, two rooms costing $1,600 were added to the Jefferson school, and an addition costing $700 was added to the Booker T. Washington School.
In 1888, the district built a dedicated high school for White students. Called the Adams School, the new facility was located on Adams Avenue near the Jefferson School, which then became the Jefferson Elementary School. The high school offered a two-year course of study for students completing the elementary grades. In 1896, the district established the first four-year course of high school study in St. Louis County. Before then, White students who wanted to attend high school had go to Central High School in St. Louis City, first located at 15th Street and Olive Boulevard and then at Garrison and Natural Bridge. A high school education in Kirkwood was not available to children of color.
In 1908, the Katherine Tracy Kindergarten was opened; it was the first Kindergarten in the area. Tracy was a Kirkwood resident who taught in the public school system in St. Louis city and was instrumental in getting the facility established.
1908–1930: Racial advocacy and expansions In 1908, concerned families living south of the Frisco train tracks requested of the school board that a school be established in the Meacham Park area so that young children would not have to walk miles and cross train tracks to get to school. In response, the district established the Meacham Park Branch School District and the Meacham Park School–for the neighborhood's White students only. Located in a small rented house south of the entrance to Oak Hill Cemetery, the school opened in 1908. One source says its White students numbered 14, while another source says its White students numbered sixty-six as of 1911. The neighborhood's 52 Black children still had to walk the almost miles to the Booker T. Washington school.
African American parents living in the Meacham Park area approached the school board later in 1908 and again in 1909 and 1910, requesting that a school for their children be built closer to where they lived. The district declined to do so.
Overcrowding was occurring at the Jefferson Elementary School, so the district educated some students in a portable building on the school's grounds while two additional schools for White children were being designed and built. As of 1911, the district had a high school with an accredited four-year program, the grammar school, a portable building and a Kindergarten on the grounds of the grammar school, a school for children of color on Adams Avenue, and a one-room school in Meacham Park.
The district ultimately heeded the requests of African American parents from Meacham Park, and on September 19, 1911, it opened the Meacham Park School of Negroes in a one-room house at the east end of New York Street. Conditions at the facility deteriorated and overcrowding occurred, and the school closed during World War I.
The district's John Pitman School, designed by architect William B. Ittner (a thirty-third degree Mason), opened in 1914. The Henry Hough School, with students from first through fourth grades, opened in 1915. The former was named after a physician who was also a president of the board of education, and the latter was named after a secretary and treasurer of the board. Pitman and Hough were friends with each other and with Hiram W. Leffingwell and Richard Smith Elliott, who had initiated the movement to establish the city. When the schools were established, both schools educated only White students.
The district had intended to move the portable building from the Jefferson Elementary School to Meacham Park once the two new schools were established, but after a fire damaged the Washington school in 1914, the district moved the portable there instead. Five years later, the damaged Washington School was still the only permanent school building for Black children; their education in the district ended at eighth grade. Black children of color had to attend high school out of town, if they could get there and could pay tuition.
In 1918, several families from Meacham Park appealed to the state legislature for help with getting Black children into high school. No action was taken. The local League of Women Voters became involved in August 1919 and protested such "inadequate educational opportunity" for the African American children of the area. On February 19, 1920, the League and concerned citizens met with the school board about the issue, making the argument that everyone benefits when everyone is well-educated, but the board stated that no funds were available. By July 19 of that year, the board relented and set aside $400 to fund tuition for Black students to attend high school in the public schools that would accept them, which at that time were Charles H. Sumner High School in St. Louis City and Douglass High School in Webster Groves. By November of that year, the board had authorized $40 to pay tuition for four Black students to attend the St. Louis public schools for one quarter. Families still needed to cover transportation costs, although the district later included transportation in its appropriations. The nearest streetcar stop was at Woodbine and Clay Streets, a ways away from Meacham Park. Parents had to rely on the district paying on time.
By early 1921, voters agreed to build a new school for African American students, and African American parents met with the school board in April to discuss a site. While debates about the site and age-range went on for four years, architect Ittner presented plans for the new school in March 1922.
In 1921, a new high school was built on Kirkwood Road, near the location of what was to become Nipher Middle School. The school opened for classes in 1922.
Contracts for the work for the new Meacham Park School to educate Black children were awarded February 7, 1924. The school board also agreed to improve the Booker T. Washington School. The former would educate the district's Black children in grades 1 through 6 who lived south of the municipality's southern border, and the latter would educate the district's Black children in grades 1 through 6 who lived north of the municipality's southern border; all Black children in the district would attend seventh and eighth grades at the Meacham Park School–outside of city limits. Two rooms of the Meacham Park School opened in September 1924, and the remainder opened in the spring of 1925. First-year enrollment numbered 230 children. The school graduated its first eighth grade class in the spring of 1925. Black graduates of the district's two Black elementary schools attended high school in St. Louis City, approximately 20 miles distant.
In 1927, the district purchased five lots of land surrounding the Meacham Park school in anticipation of an expansion. In 1929, a bond issue was passed through which $250,000 was raised to expand and improve the Meacham Park school; expand Henry Hough School; and construct a new junior high school and two new elementary schools. Nipher Junior High School (which later became Nipher Middle School) was built in 1929 just to the south of the high school location on Kirkwood Road. Designed by Ittner, it was for the education of White seventh and eighth graders. The school was named for Dr. Francis Eugene Nipher, an educator and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
In September 1930, Keysor Elementary School opened on land that had been purchased by the district for $9,000; it was also designed by Ittner. The school served eighty White students in first through fourth grade. The school was named for William Winchester Keysor, a retired judge and professor who was president of the board of education. The judge's wife, Jennie Ellis Keysor, was a writer of children's books and a proponent of adult education.
Keysor's "sister" school, the George R. Robinson Elementary School, also opened in 1930. Located at the corner of Couch and Rose Hill, Robinson was also designed by Ittner. The school's namesake was a businessperson who had co-founded the Robinson Danforth Commission Company with William H. Danforth and William Andrews in the 1890s. The company produced feed for farm animals and changed its name to Ralston Purina in 1902.