Collinwood High School’s first principal was so excited about the brand new school building in 1926 that he insisted on becoming its leader, even though it meant giving up his higher-paid deputy superintendent position with the Cleveland public schools.
Principal Frank P. Whitney envisioned a cosmopolitan school where boys destined to work in factories learned alongside boys heading to college.
“I want to see if in our polyglot society we can’t teach each group to respect the other…,” he told The Plain Dealer as the school opened.
Whitney couldn’t know it, but respecting “the other” would be a significant challenge for this high school as, in later years, the district’s racial integration program would bring Black students into this mostly white school.
Biggest junior high and high school in the state
Still, Whitney’s dream job came with a dream school. It was the biggest junior high and high school in the state, able to seat 4,000 students. It had more than 80 classrooms, a library of 2,000 books, and wood, machine and auto shops, according to Windows into The Past, a 1984 history pamphlet written by Collinwood’s Advanced Placement English class.
The auditorium was so grand that the Cleveland Orchestra played at its dedication.
And some of its graduates became well-known public servants. Those included the late U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the late George Voinovich, who served as U.S. senator, Ohio governor and Cleveland mayor, and current Cleveland City Council Member Michael Polensek.
The school was roiled by mob violence beginning in 1965 as Black students were bused into the primarily white high school as part of the school district’s desegregation plan. White students and neighborhood youths chased the new students, yelling slurs and threats. Violence surged at the school and in the neighborhood off and on for the next 10 years. Police patrols were a common sight, and, at one point, the Ohio National Guard was put on alert.
Over the years, racial issues eased as the student body became more integrated, though the neighborhood has struggled to keep families. When the district announced last fall that the Collinwood school would close, it said a new school for both Collinwood and Glenville High School would be built by 2031.
