Some schools have longer lives and more purposes than it appears. Once a simple one-room schoolhouse in a remote corner of Omaha, there’s a school near North 16th and Jaynes that has had a few different lives and continues serving the neighborhood more than 130 years after it opened. This is a history of the Sherman Elementary School in east Omaha.

The school opened in September 1888 in a one-room building for 21 students with one teacher and a janitor. The entire cost of building the school was donated by Henry S. Jaynes (1848-1921), a leader of the Omaha Road who is buried at Forest Lawn. The school operating costs were $500 the year it was open. Jaynes had speculated extensively in the surrounding neighborhood, and Jaynes Street was named for him. He knew opening a school would bring more homebuyers to help him sell more lots, and he greased the wheels to make that happen.

Named for Civil War leader US Army General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), the school shared its name with nearby Sherman Avenue, which today is called North 16th Street.

In 1891, Mr. Jaynes offered to sell several lots to OPS to build a permanent brick structure. That year, there were 60 students, a principal and 3 teachers, and the district bought eight lots between Hartman and Ellison Avenue from Mr. Jaynes. However, it took more than 30 years for a brick building to be constructed, and instead two two-room buildings were built just north of the original building. Each of them opened into a shared courtyard.

In 1924, a candidate for Omaha City Council threatened to take the Omaha School District to court of Sherman wasn’t improved. The buildings were 35 years old, the schoolyard flooded constantly, the buildings were packed with 250 students at 40 per room, and there was no indoor gym. The candidate was quoted saying, “The conditions at Sherman School are deplorable… It is high time that the school board of education took cognizance of the needs there… I do want to see all of the needs get fair treatment. The need at Sherman School is certainly greater than that of Central High School for a new auditorium.” Three years later his demands were met.

After intense citywide debates in 1926, the Omaha architecture firm of Clarke & Clarke designed Sherman School. It was a grand new building uniting older structures and estimated to cost $113,617 to build at 5618 North 14th Avenue. There were 281 students, nine teachers and the principal. The original schoolhouse continued to stand at its original location.

The school seems to have always been aware of its history. In 1939 they celebrated a fiftieth anniversary featuring old teachers, old students and lots of community members. There was a special event for the community, as well as activities put on for students. At the community celebration, a history of the school was read, a talk was given by the minister of the once-nearby Asbury Methodist Church, and speakers focused on education and the school specifically. Former teachers were acknowledged, too, as well as the 29 past principals who had served the school.

School District 49 once existed around the Sherman neighborhood to serve the kids who lived at the truck farms throughout the area. The district built its own one-room schoolhouse in the 1890s called Beechwood School. Originally located at East 14th and Fort Streets, it was moved to J.J. Pershing Drive and Read Street in the 1920s. After years of a deficit budget, it was merged into OPS in 1948 and the students were sent to Sherman School. The Beechwood School building was moved to Sherman to accommodate the larger student body, and stood into the 1970s.

The original wood frame one-room schoolhouse stood until 1953, when two brick additions to the main building were built for $342,000. Adding seven classrooms and a library to the north side, a new gym and cafeteria were built on the south side of the 1927 building. At the same time the old Beechwood building was moved to the grounds of Saratoga School for use as an annex there and the frame buildings, including the original 1888 structure, were auctioned to the public. Its unknown what ultimately happened to the 1888 building, including whether it is still standing. Dedicated in 1955, the Kiwanis Club specifically encouraged its members to attend because “our Club has taken increased interest in the personal welfare of numerous families in the area and especially for initiating the move for this fine, modern school building in a very needy suburban area.” The school population was 425 that year, with an estimated 600 the next year.

Sherman Junior High School

That year, in 1955 the school district proposed adding the Sherman Junior High School with a capacity of 400 students to the current school building. In 1957, an architecture firm called Steele, Sandham and Weinstein Company was awarded a contract to design the new junior high. The school district postponed building the addition though and in 1962, it was estimated that a $450,000 addition would house 300 students. It still wasn’t built. In 1967 overruns on the cost of building the new Burke High School pushed it further out. The junior high did open though. It didn’t last long though, and in 1974 there were plans announced to send the junior high students to Horace Mann Junior High.

At its peak in 1965, Sherman School served 560 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

In 1976, as part of the OPS school desegregation plan, seventh and eighth-grade students were transferred to McMillan Junior High School, and Sherman was paired with Miller Park Elementary School. The Sherman Junior High School was never mentioned again.

Sherman in Modern Times

That same year, students from the East Omaha District 61 building called Pershing School were permanently merged into OPS, with the youngest sent to Sherman.

Adam’s Note: I was bussed to Sherman Elementary from the Miller Park neighborhood for fourth and fifth grade. Having lived in the Garden Court trailer park on North 16th earlier, I already had a sense of what the neighborhood was like and how it was different from where I lived. It was at Sherman where Mr. Lutz used corporal punishment against me, where I was suspended for talking during a tornado drill, and where my disdain for math was taught to me. It was not a positive learning experience in my academic career.

During the OPS US Supreme Court-ordered desegregation era from 1976 to 1999, students from the neighborhood surrounding Sherman attended Sherman for kindergarten and first grades, went to Miller Park for grades two through four, and then returned to Sherman for grades five and six. They were bussed to McMillan for junior high and then went to North High School.

Surrounded by low-income communities with a student body mostly made of low-income students, in 1995 Sherman became one of the first Title I schools in the Omaha Public Schools system, which meant 99% of the student body are eligible for free and reduced lunch along with additional support services to ensure their academic success. When OPS stopped integrating schools in 1999, they implemented a neighborhood schools plan. This ended most attendance for African American students at Sherman.

The school was the site of protests by Omaha’s Lao-Hmong immigrant community in 2002 after the Omaha Police Department and Omaha Public Schools was accused of floundering during a physical abuse investigation.

In 2024, the school says that it has approximately 200 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, with 50 staff members. They claim small class sizes of approximately 16-20 students school-wide.

As of 2024, the building has not been designated as an official Omaha Landmark or listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There is no historic marker at the school either to explain its longtime role in the surrounding community. However, its website features a long history of the building, and there are signs that its still well-loved in the neighborhood. Only time will show what the future holds…

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MY ARTICLES ABOUT THE HISTORY OF SCHOOLS IN NORTH OMAHA

GENERAL: Segregated Schools | Higher Education
PUBLIC GRADE SCHOOLS: Beechwood | Belvedere | Cass | Central Park | Dodge Street | Druid Hill | Florence | Fort Omaha School | Howard Kennedy | Kellom | Lake | Long | Miller Park | Minne Lusa | Monmouth Park | North Omaha (Izard) | Omaha View | Pershing | Ponca | Saratoga | Sherman | Walnut Hill | Webster
PUBLIC MIDDLE SCHOOLS: McMillan | Technical
PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS: North | Technical | Florence
CATHOLIC SCHOOLS: Creighton | Dominican | Holy Angels | Holy Family | Sacred Heart | St. Benedict | St. John | St. Therese
LUTHERAN SCHOOLS: Hope | St. Paul
HIGHER EDUCATION: Omaha University | Creighton University | Presbyterian Theological Seminary | Joslyn Hall | Jacobs Hall | Fort Omaha
EDUCATORS: Eugene Skinner | Lucinda Williams nee Lucy Gamble | Edmae Swain
COMMUNITY EDUCATORS: George McPherson | Florentine Pinkston | “Professor” PJ Waddle | Christine Althouse | Bertha Calloway | Beverly Blackburn
COMMUNITY EDUCATION ORGANIZERS: Edwin Overall | Lerlean N. Johnson | Nellie Mae Webb | Ernie Chambers | BANTU
MORE: Fort Street Special School for Incorrigible Boys | Nebraska School for the Deaf and Dumb

Listen to the North Omaha History Podcast on “The History of Schools in North Omaha” »

MY ARTICLES ABOUT THE HISTORY OF EAST OMAHA
SEE ALSO: East Omaha History Tour
AREAS: Town of East Omaha | Carter Lake | Winspear Triangle | North Omaha Bottoms | Sherman | Sulphur Springs | Edgewood Park | Bungalow City | Squatter’s Row | Lakewood Gardens | East Omaha Factory District
BUSINESSES: East Omaha Truck Farms | Spanggaard Dairy | Carter White Lead Company | Nite Hawkes Cafe | Railroads
CARTER LAKE, IOWA: Courtland Beach | Omaha Rod and Gun Club | Carter Lake Club | Sand Point Beach and Lakeview Amusement Park | Omaha Auto Speedway | Lakeside Raceway |
CARTER LAKE PARK: Municipal Beach | Bungalow City | Pleasure Pier and Kiddieland | CCC Camp
PEOPLE: Selina Carter Cornish | Levi Carter | Granny Weatherford
TRANSPORTATION: Ames Avenue Bridge | Eppley Airfield | 16th and Locust Streets | JJ Pershing Drive | North 16th Street | Paine Airfield | Locust Street Viaduct
SCHOOLS: Beechwood School | Pershing School | Sherman School | St. Therese Catholic School
OTHER: The Burning Lady | St. Therese Catholic Church | 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition

Listen to our podcast “A History of East Omaha” online now!

Elsewhere Online…

• “About Us” official Sherman Elementary School website