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 sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...

, 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 The student–teacher ratio or student–faculty ratio refers to the number of students who attend a school or university divided by the number of teachers or staff in the institution. For example, a student–teacher ratio of 10:1 indicates that ...

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

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

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 principal federal agency responsible for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data on education in the United States. Established under , it operates within the Institute of Education S ...

. Accessed April 6, 2025. Metro is notable for being one of two

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

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. Normally, a student will attend an elementary school, and this also determines the middle school and high school they attend unless they mo ...

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 acting superintendent of the St. Louis Public Schools. Randall's replacement, Wilfred Doug Moore, was principal from 2003 to 2017, followed by Steven Lawler. In 2022, 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 news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

'' 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

Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting is a feminist scholar, comparative Europeanist, and Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Departments of African American and Diaspora Studies and French language, French and Italia ...

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 to 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