NEW CAPE HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES FIRST CLASS

It's difficult today to imagine getting a high school and college education at the same time. However, in the early part of the 20th century, prospective teachers and high school students in Cape Girardeau did just that.

Until 1904, there was no public high school in Cape Girardeau. Students could attend Lorimier School through the eighth grade. If they wanted to further their education, they had to attend the Normal School, which combined a high school program with its curriculum for educaiton of teachers.

A number of community members began to express a desire for high school programming separate from the normal school. Their requests soon reached the Cape Girardeau Board of Educaiton, who began to consider a secondary curriculum.

Voters rejected a bond issue in 1908 to build a separate high school building. However, growth in high school enrollment convinced school board members that secondary education was not a passing phase, and plans were made to implement a high school program at Lorimier School.

The building, erected in 1871, was the first public school building in the city and had housed the first classes of the Normal School two years later. It became the city's first public high school in 1908 when 14 students enrolled in secondary classes.

In its first four years, the high school's enrollment quadrupled. The original class of 14 students dwindled to a mere four -- Cecil Lorenz, Mamie Pickens, Ethel Materson and Gladys Welborn -- by their graduation in 1912. However, in that four-year period, high school enrollment increased to 37 in the second year and 69 in the third year.

Despite a slight enrollment dip to 53 students in 1912, overcrowding had become a problem at Lorimier School. Growth in the local population necessitated more space for grade school students, and in 1913 voters approved a $125,000 bond issue to build Central High School on South Pacific.

Another bond issue was passed six years later in part to finance construction of an annex to the high school.