Although I did not grow up in the Akron Public School District, both of my parents and my paternal grandmother  benefited from the education provided by the Akron Public Schools.

My late father, a January 1951 graduate of Buchtel High School, attended Hotchkiss Elementary School and East High School before his parents moved into the part of Akron served by Buchtel. My father told stories of when Buchtel High School had two sets of classes (one early morning until noon and the second from noon until early evening) in order to accommodate the number of students enrolled. The Akron Public Schools prepared my father well for John Carroll University, the military and his careers. (My father's mother, attended Miller School after immigrating to the United States in 1920 as a young girl, before her parents relocated out of the district.)

My mother began her education in the Akron Public Schools at Spicer School and ultimately graduated from  Manchester High School, due to her parents' move to Manchester in the early 1960s. She used the education she received in the Akron Public Schools in her undergraduate and law school education at the University of Akron and she was the driving force (to put it mildly) behind the Street Law and Street Law, Jr. civics-based programs being a part of the APS' curriculum beginning in the late 1990s.