Roosevelt School, Ypsilanti

Roosevelt School in Ypsilanti, Mi

The following information is credited to EMU's historical page....

“Don’t go up the secret stairway, ‘cause if the seniors catch you, they’ll make you scrub it with a toothbrush!” whispered Roosevelt School underclassmen. A tiny staircase ran through the center of Roosevelt school. It accommodated only one person at time and, because it was a convenient short cut, it was reserved for “seniors only.” At its opening in 1925, Roosevelt High School, the new laboratory school, housed grades 7-12 so there were lots of underclassmen to be warned.

The Normal College had opened its first laboratory classes for upper grades in 1900. That year the Normal High School Program started, with classes for 9th grade only. Student teachers taught in the South wing of the main college building. By the 1920s the high school laboratory program was over-crowded and the school began looking for other alternatives. In 1923, the state purchased the Owen property, at what was then the southeast end of campus, for the site of the new high school building. The following year, the state appropriated $708,421 for opening of Roosevelt High School.

The school was named after President Teddy Roosevelt. When the school opened in 1925 it provided instruction for grades 7-12. High school education was becoming ever more common in the United States. Speaking a conference culminating in the dedication of Roosevelt High School, Dr. Charles Judd stated that, “1890 one out of ten American young people were in high school. By 1926 there are one out of three boys and girls in secondary schools.” The enrollment in the laboratory school rose dramatically to 400 students by 1930. That year, elementary grades were included in the school. In 1930, name changed to Roosevelt School.

Roosevelt did not have an easy time remaining open. It was first threatened with closure in 1929, but it weathered the threat and continued to grow for the next two decades. During the 1950s, however, education trends began to shift away from university maintained laboratory schools. The first of these to close shut its doors in 1955, and in 1961, Roosevelt was again threatened with closure. Again, it survived, but time was running out. In 1966, the Educational Appropriation Act (Public Act 285) passed the state congress. It required that Roosevelt School be completely phased out by June 1969. Roosevelt School’s career had come to an end and so had the tradition of a university laboratory school, begun in 1853 with cramped classrooms in the Old Main building.

One student, saddened by the close of the school published this eulogy in the Rough Rider, Roosevelt School student newspaper:

“Since it must go
Let it go out in a style
Typical of Roosevelt…
With dignity…
The school is dead
Long live the school.”

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