Mission Middle School and the History of Bellevue Public Schools

Mission Middle School is one of three middle schools in the Bellevue Public Schools District and is located at a site that has been home to public schools since 1869. This was also the site of the first high school in Bellevue.

The first public school in Bellevue was built near the present-day Mission Middle School in 1855 and 1856. These buildings were part of Bellevue School District #1 and were the first public schools in Nebraska. The two schools were built on land given to the Presbyterian Board of Missions by the Omaha people. Those two buildings would be replaced by a two-story brick building in 1869.⁴ The clay used to build these schools was found in Sarpy County and fired into bricks on the building site.⁵ It was around this time nationwide when debates about federally funded public education were occurring across the country.³ The benefits of primary education would become evident to people across the country, leading to further development of public school systems within the United States.⁶ Bellevue, Nebraska, would be no different.

In 1911, the building began being referred to as the Main School with the addition of a new building on the site. The name would stick until 1936 when the Works Progress Administration gave funds to build a High School onto the building, including an auditorium/gymnasium hybrid. The building was now referred to as Bellevue Senior High School.⁴ In 1945, more rooms were added to the school, including showers and locker rooms for the gymnasium. Further additions to the school would be made in 1949, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1977, and 1979. With the K-6 grades being moved to a new building in 1955, and a new high school being built in 1962, the school was now used for teaching grades 7-9 and became officially known as Bellevue Junior High School.^{1, 2, 7}

As the district continued to grow during the post-war economy and baby boom, the community built another school in 1966 and then changed the name of this building to Mission Junior High School, with the name finally becoming Mission Middle School in 1991, a reference to the history of community schools dating back to the Presbyterian Board of Missions who built the first schools back in the 1850s.⁴ In 1988, the original 1869 portion of the building and the 1911 addition had to be torn down due to a deteriorating foundation, and new additions were made to the building along with adding new classrooms, a library, and offices for administration and counseling.⁵ 

1.Bellevue Press. “Contract Let For 10 H.S. Rooms, Gym Building,” July 23, 1955. Sarpy County 

Museum.

2.Bellevue Press. “Six Room Addition for Main School,” August 8, 1958. Sarpy County Museum.

3.Justice, Benjamin. “Thomas Nast and the Public School of the 1870s.” History of Education 

Quarterly 45, no. 2 (2005): 171–206. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20461949.

4.Kaldahl, Phil. “Some Bellevue Schools History,” 2004. Sarpy County Museum.

5.Raddish, Janet. “Landmark School Razed for Mission’s Renovation.” Bellevue Leader, June 16, 

1990. Sarpy County Museum.

6.Stoddard, Christiana. “Why Did Education Become Publicly Funded? Evidence from the 

Nineteenth-Century Growth of Public Primary Schooling in the United States.” The 

Journal of Economic History 69, no. 1 (2009): 172–201.

7.Wulf, Theresa. “Mission Renovations Reveal History.” Bellevue Leader, July 13, 1988. Sarpy 

County Museum.