Kankakee, Kee, Ka, Kan.
Who can? We can.
Kankakee can!
Sound familiar? If it does, you probably attended Kankakee High School or at least heard those words shouted by cheerleaders at a Kays sporting event. That cheer has a long history, dating all the way to 1903, when it was performed at the cornerstone-laying ceremony for Kankakee’s first dedicated high school building.
“A feature of the cornerstone laying of the new High School building will be the songs and yells of the students,” reported the Kankakee Daily Times on May 5, 1903. “The pupils are now in active training on the … yells, in the giving of which every school student in the city is expected to participate.”
The ceremonies, held May 11, 1903, drew hundreds of spectators to the northeast corner of Indiana Avenue and Station Street, where the new school would occupy a one-quarter block site. When completed, it would be the first strictly high school building in the city’s history. Since 1878, the “high school department” had occupied rooms on the third floor of Central School, located one-half block to the north. Although few details are available, high school classes reportedly first were held in 1866 in a building at Chestnut Street and Indiana Avenue and from 1867-78 in a former church building at Dearborn Avenue and Merchant Street.
The May 11 ceremonies “were a gala event for the students of the High School,” wrote the Times, “who marched from the present building with their different class pennants gayly waving in the breeze, while the class colors were conspicuously worn.”
Dr. C. F. Smith, president of the board of education, told the crowd, “Many Kankakee people believed that a High School was an unnecessary luxury and that if any students desired to secure a higher education than a graduation from the eighth or common school grades, they should be ‘sent away’ to school. But considered from a cold, financial standpoint, even then the erection of a High School would be much cheaper than sending the children out of the city.” Smith noted the city’s 170 high school students were being educated at a cost per pupil of $60 per year.
Another speaker, former U.S. Representative Hamilton K. Wheeler, addressed the cost of education. “While the school taxes appear to be high,” he said, “they are the cheapest money paid out by an American citizen. ... The age demands better teachers and better equipment. Appliances must be in our schools for the teaching of electricity, engineering, chemistry and all the branches that this commercial age demands.”
In addition to better educational facilities, the new high school also saw improvement in the athletic area — in 1907, the first KHS basketball team took the floor (although not at the school, which had no gymnasium; games were played at the YMCA facilities in the Babst building on Court Street west of Dearborn Avenue). In that same year, the Kankakee High football team recorded its first undefeated season.
Within 25 years, the high school outgrew its quarters at Indiana and Station. In 1927, students reported for classes at a new location, 240 Warren Ave. on Kankakee’s East side. The three-story red brick building covered half of its 1-square-block site bounded by Warren Avenue, Merchant Street, Nelson Avenue and Maple Street. The building at Station and Indiana became Departmental School, giving seventh and eighth grade pupils the opportunity to experience changing classrooms for different subjects, just as they later would in high school.
In 1950, a new term — junior high school — became part of Kankakee’s educational vocabulary and changed the composition of the high school population. Sophomores, juniors and seniors attended Kankakee High, and seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders were assigned to West Junior High, at Calista Street and Curtis Avenue, and East Junior High, across Merchant Street from the high school. An important benefit to the high school was the opening of a large, modern gymnasium in the East Junior High building.
The high school on Warren Avenue took a bit longer to outgrow than its predecessor: 39 years. In 1966, Kankakee became a two high school city with the opening of Eastridge and Westview High Schools to serve a growing community. The two buildings were identical (other than their school colors and team nicknames), allowing School District 111 to save costs by using the same plans. (Today, the former high school is the Lincoln Cultural Center.)
After only 17 years, Kankakee once again became a one-high school town. The Westview building, on Jeffery Street at Curtis Avenue, became Kankakee High School, while Eastridge, located south of Court Street and east of Interstate 57, was repurposed as Kankakee Junior High.
In early 2018, work began on a $21 million project that would result in, as reported in the Kankakee Daily Journal, “a ‘virtually new’ high school … [that]will enable the school to develop a more modern approach to education that embraces technology and collaboration.”
Two buildings that served as the earliest homes to Kankakee High School have disappeared from the city’s landscape. What happened to Central School and Departmental School?
Answer: Central School, erected in 1869, lasted about 100 years before being demolished in the 1960s. Departmental School was destroyed by a spectacular fire in 1946.