Hazelwood Central High School is located at 15875 New Halls Ferry Road in unincorporated St. Louis County, Missouri, adjacent to the current northeast boundary of Florissant.

The first Hazelwood High School was completed in 1954, located at 1865 Dunn Road in Spanish Lake, an unincorporated community in north St. Louis County.

The rapid growth of the district proved too much even for a building of its size, so that year, the school was forced to split the student body into two shifts called "split sessions", with one shift attending from 6:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and one from 1:05 p.m. to 7:05 p.m. Later, overlapping shifts were used with a one-hour stating time change because they could not get all students in nor out of the building at one time.

By the 2000–2001 school year, Hazelwood Central's population was once again growing, this time in response to increasing subdivision development within the school district, land that had for decades been open farmland or otherwise vacant.

The net effect of this change on Central was expected to be a reduction in enrollment from nearly 3,000 to approximately 2,500 while increasing the population at Hazelwood West.