Carver Vocational-Technical High School - fully George Washington Carver Vocational-Technical High School - also known as Carver Vo-Tech is a public vocational-technical high school located in the western part of Baltimore, Maryland and part of the Baltimore City Public Schools system.
Founded in 1925, it was the first African-American (then labeled the "Colored" or "Negro") vocational-technical public high school) then established in the State of Maryland. Carver Vo-Tech serves grades 9 through 12, (freshmen-sophomores-juniors-seniors). It was named for the famous African-American scientist / botanist and inventor George Washington Carver (1860s-1943).
The establishment of a "Colored Vocational High School" in 1925, then joined the recently renamed Frederick Douglass High School which had been previously founded in 1865 as the private Douglass Institute, located on East Lexington Street (between North Calvert and North Streets (now Guilford Avenue) across from the Battle Monument Square, then moved two blocks northwest to East Saratoga Street by St. Paul Street/Place at Preston Gardens", where it was finally absorbed into the newly established "Colored High School and Grammar School" by the then 54 year old city public schools system in 1883. After several other name changes, building locations and curriculum variations, the emergent alumni, faculty and concerned citizens, with the help of the local "Baltimore Afro-American" newspaper campaigned for the "Negro High School" to have its own new building which was constructed in 1924-1925, on a city block at Carey and Baker Streets, in West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. Built of red brick with stone trim in the English Tudor/Gothic architectural style with all the features of a modern high school. With its now new title being named for the famous abolitionist/writer/ editor/statesman/political activist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), the school moved from its older structure which although of beautiful heavy Romanesque/Renaissance Revival style brickwork which had originally been built a half-century earlier for the City's elite female Western High School, now it was to revert to the lower level of the newly established "junior high schools" system, which would be renamed for "Booker T. Washington" (1856-1915), for continued black students in the still segregated city schools system and would last another century almost with numerous renovations but noting its landmark architecture in the Druid Hill/Upton neighborhoods in old inner West Baltimore. new Dunbar High on the other east side of town also received an art deco style building by the early 1930s. At. the conclusion of the Great Depression of the '30s and World War II, a new building and name was also planned for the vocational school as the several other Vo-Tech high schools, like the older Boys and Samuel Gompers vocational high schools were reorganized, merged and realigned with the establishment of the two Vocational-Technical High Schools for the city with Carver Vo-Tech at Prestman Street on the west side and the newly merged old Boys and Samuel Gompers into a new Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School named for printer inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854-1899), being built two years later in 1955 on Hillen Road, in the northeast area of Baltimore opposite Lake Montebello and the large campus water filtration plant complex with its Spanish-style architecture of industrial buildings with dark red bricks and green tile roofs from 1915.
It serves as one of the two vocational-technical secondary schools in the City, with a citywide school population in addition with its companion school - "Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School" in northeast section of the City at 3500 Hillen Road, near Loch Raven Boulevard, 21218. Both of which have specialized extensive curriculums, programs, classes not easily available in other counties of the State.
However, in neighboring surrounding suburban Baltimore County, in which the Baltimore County Public Schools system in 1970, established first two geographically separated "technical high schools" - "Eastern Technical High School" (which remains with its original name and a 1980 building annex) at 1100 Mace Avenue, Essex, Maryland, 21221; and "Western School of Technology and Environmental Science", at 100 Kenwood Avenue, Catonsville, Maryland, 21228, which also has had an additional building added in 1997. Then in 1993, the County Schools System added Central Technical High School at 939 North York Road, Maryland Route 45, near the county seat at Towson, Maryland, 21204, (later renamed Central High School for Arts and Technology, then at a later date as the "Carver Center for Arts and Technology" and finally in 2008, as the "George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology", with a rebuilt campus in 2012.
The renaming of the arts and technology high school with the full name of the famous Afro-American scientist, inventor and educator George Washington Carver, (1864-1943), was made an exception to naming policy by the County's Board of Education was to remember the first established public high school in the County, when previously its black students had to end their education at around the sixth or eighth grades or travel into the City to attend first either the "Colored High and Training School", the first African-American secondary school established in the State in 1883 (with historical antecedents going back to 1865), later renamed after 1925 as Frederick Douglass High School (#454) in West Baltimore or to go to Paul Laurence Dunbar Community High School established first in 1918 as an elementary/grammar school, later elevated 1925 to a junior high school and finally a full-fledged high school by 1937, in East Baltimore at 1400 Orleans Street, by North Central Avenue and west of the Johns Hopkins Hospital campus. But by 1952, racial segregation barriers in Baltimore City's public schools had fallen first at the City's best and elite college prep schools, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1952, in a famous local court case and hearing, followed the next year at academic and athletic rival The Baltimore City College. Beginning in the Fall of 1954, following that May's Supreme Court decision of "Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas", Baltimore's "colored schools" system was dismantled gradually but increasingly year by year during the rest of the decade of the 1950s with small numbers of black students entering all the City's neighborhood/regional public high schools, with only demonstrations and some scuffles among angry white crowds around old Southern High School (now Digital Harbor High School) in the Federal Hill area of old South Baltimore and the old Patterson Park High School in East Baltimore's Patterson Park and the neighborhoods of Hampstead Hill, Baltimore-Highlandtown, Baltimore, and Canton areas, but generally went peacefully over the years, although occasional additional problems and situations cropped up in the mid-1960s and early to mid-1970s, compared to many other school systems across the nation and especially in The South of which Baltimore was still a sort of part of. Unfortunately, "de facto" segregation replaced the "de jure" official policies and some schools still mirrored their neighborhoods racial make-up. Especially at Carver and Merganthaler Vo-Techs, where despite their advanced programs, opportunities and curriculums, Carver remained almost exclusively all-black, while "Mervo" gradually increased its integration all through the next few decades and remains racially split / somewhat integrated today (2013) The student body is approximately 1000 students, and the student to teacher ratio is about 14:1.
In 2010, Carver Voc-Tech made AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress), which is accomplished when the school has met minimum improvements in student progress and other accountability measures set by Maryland State under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Video Carver Vocational-Technical High School
Heroes
Army PFC Jonathan V. Hamm - Hero and Patriot: 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Lewis KIA during Iraq War on May 17, 2007 by indirect fire.
Maps Carver Vocational-Technical High School
References
External links
- Official website
- Carver Vocational-Technical High School - Maryland Report Card
Source of article : Wikipedia
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