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One of Kansas City’s oldest schools is about to be history.

Westport High School, which has been open at its current location for nearly 103 years, is one of 26 victims of the "right-sizing" plan the Kansas City School District is enacting to confront huge budget shortfalls.

But as June 3, the final day the school will be open, approaches, the school’s alumni throughout the decades promise that Westport’s legacy will live on forever.

Days before the school was scheduled to shut its doors, Carol Williams, who graduated more than 50 years ago, took one more walk up the stairs at Westport.

Photo Gallery

Westport High School

Yearbook entries, the cover of the student newspaper, The Westport Crier, and snapshots of Westport High School over the years.

“It was so emotional for me. I used to be able to run up and down those stairs,” said Williams, who graduated in 1957.

In the school’s last days, she found herself back in the classroom, speaking to a group of juniors and seniors about her experiences as a Westport student and listening to their stories.

“We just sat and talked to them openly and honestly,” she said. “I’m sure they were wondering, who are all these very old white people, and what could they possibly have to say to us?”

Williams attended to Westport in its heyday, when the district was on firmer footing, and the fond memories far outweigh the bad ones.

“People just don’t have any concept of what it once was,” she said.

Westport High School, one of the state’s oldest public schools, opened in 1891. The original building burnt down in 1907, and was replaced by the school’s current building, located at 39th and Locust, in 1908.

“It’s a stepping stone,” said Debbie Hargrove, who graduated in 1975. “A lot of students came out of Westport, graduated, and they really made something out of their lives.”

Not all recollections of Westport High are so pleasant. For some alumni, memories are clouded by years of racial conflict and the school’s declining performance.

Williams remembers watching Westport’s first black students walk through the halls.

“At the end of the day, we all walked out and television cameras were on the lawn,” Williams remembered. “We had the sense that [the media] fully expected there would be a riot after school, and there was nothing of the sort.”

The riots came later, in April 1968, following the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and the city’s continued struggle with racial segregation. During the riots, seven people were killed and more than 100 buildings in the city's core were burned to the ground.

Former Westport students say the riots changed the climate of the school entirely.

Alleene Dean, who graduated from Westport in 1972, remembers seeing the more than 1,700 National Guard troops that descended on Kansas City to calm the riots.

She said while other classes at Westport and other area schools are incredibly well connected, the riots damaged bonds between some of her classmates.

“There were so many years of turmoil and unrest,” said Dean. “Nobody really has the desire to get back together. It’s very, very sad.”

Westport once turned out some of Kansas City’s most prominent newsmakers, but since the school opened more than a century ago, the district has morphed.

More families have moved outside of the urban core and to the suburbs, leaving staggeringly low enrollment rates. About 17,000 students attend Kansas City’s public schools now, compared with 35,000 in during the 1999-2000 school year.

Closing Westport and other area schools will save the school district $50 million dollars, a significant figure as schools across the state grapple with less state funding.

“This is pretty dramatic, and I understand that,” said Bob Mills, who graduated from Westport in 1957. “But on the other hand, the district had years of opportunity to do it more gently, and they didn’t.”

David Alonzo, a 1972 Westport graduate who currently teaches in the Kansas City Kansas School district, agrees.

“This problem didn’t just start happening,” Alonzo said. “They should have started closing the schools and repositioning where students go 20 years ago.”

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