Do you remember when students stood up to the SPS School Board back in 1979 to stop them from closing Cleveland?
In 1979, when the school board was considering closing Cleveland, students gave Ray Imus a standing ovation when he came to a board meeting to speak against closure. In the early 2000s, Cleveland remained the smallest comprehensive high school in the district. The City of Seattle gave the school funds for a new rose and vegetable garden, and a new aquaculture building was donated to the school so students could raise and sell fish, a program called Fish and Roses. This experimental program did not meet with success and the features were not incorporated into the new construction in 2007.
In 2000, Cleveland had a capacity of 783 students, and the 1999 Facilities Master Plan called for an expanded capacity to 1,000 students. Because of the landmark status established in 1981, construction needed to be a combination of modernization, historic renovation, and new construction. A summer 2001 building management plan selected an option that demolished part of the 1927 historic building and retained other parts through historic renovation to keep the significant facades but with modernized interiors. The design included new construction that replaced the demolished portions, including a gym/commons building and a new three-story classroom building. The design phase began in November 2002 and construction started in June 2005. During the renovation, Cleveland students were housed at Boren as their interim site.
In 2003, under a Gates Foundation grant, the district separated Cleveland into four small academies: the Infotech Academy, which had started up in a small way in 2000 before the grant; the Arts and Humanities Academy; the Health, Environment and Life Academy (HEAL); and the Global Studies Academy. The new school was designed by Mahlum Architects to follow the small-schools model and to accommodate these four distinct theme-based academies.
Source: https://www.historylink.org/File/10483
Further Reading:
