Metro Academic and Classical High School is a

magnet A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials, such as iron, steel, nickel, ...

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

, United States, that is part of the St. Louis Public Schools school district. As of the 2018–19 school year, the school had an enrollment of 377 students and 24 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a

student–teacher ratio Student–teacher ratio or student–faculty ratio is the number of students who attend a school or university divided by the number of teachers in the institution. For example, a student–teacher ratio of 10:1 indicates that there are 10 students ...

of 15.7:1. There were 374 students (99.2% of enrollment) eligible for

free lunch A free lunch is the providing of a meal at no cost, usually as a sales enticement to attract customers and increase revenues from other business. It was once a common tradition in saloons and taverns in many places in the United States, with th ...

and none eligible for reduced-cost lunch.School data for Metro High

National Center for Education Statistics The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the part of the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) that collects, analyzes, and publishes statistics on education and public school district finance ...

. Accessed August 23, 2020. Metro is notable for being one of two

International Baccalaureate The International Baccalaureate (IB), formerly known as the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the IB Dip ...

World Schools in Missouri. Their IB Diploma Programme is coordinated by Sharleta Williams.

History

Metro opened in 1972 in a five-room building at 2135 Chouteau Avenue as an alternative public high school. It became one of the first

magnet school In the U.S. education system, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities (usually school boards) as school ...

s in the St. Louis Public Schools district in 1981. In the early 1980s, the school moved to the Temple Israel building at 5017 Washington Place and in 1996, it moved to its current location in a purpose-built school building. In 1997, the school's founder and principal, Betty M. Wheeler, retired (and, in 2022, the former Kennard Junior Classical Academy was re-named the Betty Wheeler Classical Junior Academy, in her honor). Her replacement, Pamela Randall, served until 2003, when she entered district administration and later served as superintendent of the St. Louis Public Schools. Randall's replacement, Wilfred Doug Moore, was principal from 2003–2017. In 2022, Steven Lawler retired as the principal of Metro, and Dr. Tina Wallace-Hamilton became Metro's principal at the start of the 2022-23 school year. All Metro students are required to perform 200 hours of community service prior to graduation. Metro has been ranked among the top public high schools by ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...

'' and has won national and state-level awards for quality. For the 2003–2004 school year, Metro was named a Missouri Gold Star school and a national

Blue Ribbon school The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program is a United States Department of Education award program that recognizes exemplary public and non-public schools on a yearly basis. Using standards of excellence evidenced by student achievement measures, ...

. It was again named a Missouri Gold Star school and Blue Ribbon school in 2007–2008. In 2012, ''Newsweek'' ranked the school as 125 out of the top 1,000 public high schools in the United States. In 2016, the school earned the top scores for Missouri end-of-course exams in English, science, and social studies in the state. In May 2018, Metro earned the top ranking in the state. In May 2020, Metro was ranked #1 high school in state of Missouri and #114 nationally by ''U.S. News & World Report''. In May of 2021, Metro was again ranked #1 high school in the state of Missouri, by ''U.S. News & World Report'', and ranked #137 in National rankings.

Notable alumni

Sam Dotson Doyle Samuel Dotson III is the Chief of Police for the Amtrak Police Department. He was previously St Louis' Police Commissioner from 2013 to 2017. Early life and education Dotson is a 1987 graduate of Metro Academic and Classical High School. ...

, police commissioner 2012-2017 in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

* Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting is a feminist scholar and Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of French in the Department of French and Italian at the Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science. She is also the Chair of African American and Diaspora Studies as well as Director of the Callie House Research Center for the Study of Global Black Cultures and Politics. She served as Director of the William T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies from 2006-2012. She is editor of The Speech: Race and Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union", and editor of the academic journal Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International. She is also series co-editor of "Philosophy and Race" (SUNY Press) with philosopher Robert Bernasconi. Sharpley-Whiting was a member of the 1985 graduating class of Metro.

References

{{authority control High schools in St. Louis Magnet schools in St. Louis Educational institutions established in 1972 Public high schools in Missouri Buildings and structures in St. Louis 1972 establishments in Missouri