[5] Although the concept was new to Ann Arbor, planners took inspiration from similar innovative programs then springing up in other cities, including the Chicago High School for Metropolitan Studies (est.

Reflecting the liberal educational philosophy of the period, other goals in the early CHS proposals were "to provide an opportunity for a heterogeneous group of students and faculty to learn and work together and to combat prejudices based on race, sex, age, lifestyle, and school achievement," and "to foster the development of identity and responsibility.

The first commencement, held at the nearby St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, banished caps and gowns, valedictorians and salutorians of traditional graduation ceremonies.

His insistence on fair treatment for minority students had also propelled him into national headlines when, in 1971, he was assaulted at gunpoint, then tarred and feathered, by members of the Michigan Ku Klux Klan following a Willow Run school-board meeting.

[14] In October 1973, The Wall Street Journal described Community High's efforts to overcome what CHS counselor Andrades Smith called "widespread and commonly practiced" sexism in the hiring of teachers, career counseling of students, and classroom curricula.

As the Journal reported, "Partly as a result of pressure brought by militant feminists both inside and outside the school system, training seminars for teachers were organized earlier this year to explore subtle and overt sex discrimination at Community High."

Largely student-driven, the 1971 Earthworks proposal declared that students must be equipped "to function creatively, contributively, responsibly and happily in a world whose central characteristic is radical change," a task at which traditional institutions were allegedly failing.

In addition to three full-time teachers and one administrator, they recruited about a dozen tutors from the University of Michigan, as well as fifty supporting resource people in the community.

[20] As the Huron Valley Advisor explained, subjects ranged "from geometry, algebra, and American history to Russian literature, organic gardening and parapsychology (witchcraft) – which is taught by a student.

[23] After its absorption, Earthworks became the name of a separate educational track at CHS,[24] and the program continued to run through the late 1990s as a multidisciplinary experiential-learning class emphasizing community activism.

During the 1991–92 academic year, CHS temporarily moved to alternate facilities at Stone School in eastern Ann Arbor while its downtown building was renovated and expanded.

In 1989, the school had its first-ever waiting list for students,[27] and through the mid- and late 1990s its growing popularity and unorthodox approach once again drew statewide media coverage.

CHS also began to attract attention in the municipal political arena, eventually becoming one of the main issues in Ann Arbor's contentious school-board election of June 1994.

Following the 1993 passage of a Michigan state referendum capping local property taxes, money for schools had grown tighter.

A liberal slate of candidates known as New Challenge took on the three CBE incumbents up for re-election, mobilizing heavy support from Community High parents and students.

The student PAC, according to state officials, was the first in Michigan formed by teenagers to influence a local race, and it garnered regional press coverage in the process.

[30] CBE incumbents criticized the CHS student group – one decrying it in the Detroit Free Press as "narrow-minded, with a narrow focus", another claiming that "Community High is not going to be the moving force in this town.

[32] In the end, New Challenge swept to victory, defeating all three CBE incumbents and assuring the continuance of Community High School in its existing format.

In 1995, the line formed three days ahead of time; in 1996, the method produced a two-week line-up outside the school district's administration building,[36] complete with mobile homes, portable toilets, roving television news crews, and sardonic editorial cartoons in the local press.

In May 1991, the school board had agreed that black students on the waiting list would receive priority, in order to boost CHS's relatively low numbers of African Americans.