[2] Birmingham City Schools serve a student population that is approximately 95% African-American, 4% Hispanic, and 1% White.
Despite its name, the trustees found it necessary to charge a nominal fee to students for a number of years in order to meet their budgets.
Numerous surrounding suburbs and unincorporated areas, most poorly-served with public schools, were annexed into Greater Birmingham in 1910.
The city issued $200,000 in bonds in 1915, and an additional $100,000 after Central High School was lost to fire in 1918.
Those funds fueled a major campaign to construct new schools, which was interrupted by U.S. involvement in World War I.
The city approved an additional $500,000 in bonds and Superintendent Charles Glenn and board chairman Erskine Ramsay charted a building campaign which replaced existing frame structures and temporary rented facilities with massive red-brick school buildings, many of which were designed by noted architects David O. Whilldin and Warren, Knight & Davis.
By then, Birmingham's segregation laws had been enacted, creating numerous discrete neighborhoods that soon had their own schools.
The study suggested several new schools be built to accommodate the "baby boom" generation.
Badly beaten, Shuttlesworth himself spoke that same night to urge continued non-violence on the part of black protesters, even in the face of klan and police brutality.
A lawsuit filed on June 17, 1960 by barber James Armstrong set the stage for court-ordered desegregation of Birmingham City Schools.
A bomb which exploded that night at the home of Civil Rights activist Arthur Shores provoked the school system to close temporarily.
The system's flagship, Phillips High School, finally admitted its first African American students, (Lillie Mae Jones, Minnie Lee Moore, and Patricia Patton) on September 3, 1964.
Armstrong's suit was finally dismissed in 1983 by U. S. District Court judge Junius Foy Guin Jr.
Despite the drop in enrollment and a shortage of revenues for school operations, the system has significant resources for capital projects.
The Board voted on January 23, 2007 to contract with Volkert & Associates of Mobile to oversee construction management for all capital projects planned using those funds.
At the time, the system was facing a $23 million deficit which he hoped to address with early retirements, cuts to central office staff, and additional school closures.
At the same time, he planned to increase participation in Advanced Placement courses; pursue an International Baccalaureate program in the system; and establish career academies with special training in engineering, finance, information technology and teaching.