[7] Charles C. Bolton, author of The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980, wrote that the suspicion against him made Bell an ineffective informer.

[10] The Cleveland School District made several failed attempts to encourage white students to enroll at East Side High.

In the 1990s the Cleveland School District established magnet programs to East Side High.

Some black parents sent their children to East Side because they feared they would not be treated well at Cleveland High.

[4] Some white students took select Advanced Placement (AP) courses at East Side High, but did not enroll there.

[12] Litigation in the district's desegregation suit, first started in 1965, was still pending, so consolidation with Cleveland High School was still a possibility.

The president of the district's school board, a black man named Maurice Lucas, stated in 2015 that he believed some black members of the Cleveland community would oppose consolidating the schools since they were alumni of East Side High and do not want to see it disestablished.

Muave Sanders, a 12th grade (senior) student who is black and who was a plaintiff against the school district in a desegregation lawsuit, stated that he did not receive ACT test preparation.