Hazelwood Central High School is located at 15875 New Halls Ferry Road in unincorporated St. Louis County, adjacent to the current northeast boundary of Florissant, Missouri. The school is one of three high schools in the district, the others being Hazelwood West High School and Hazelwood East High School.The school population is the second-largest in the state of Missouri with an enrollment of 2,365 according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.HistoryThe first Hazelwood High School was completed in 1954, located at 1865 Dunn Road in unincorporated North St. Louis County; this area is also known locally as Spanish Lake. The building is still in use as a school – Hazelwood East Middle School. During the early 1960s, as farmland became subdivisions, more students enrolled in the district and a new high school was needed; the second Hazelwood High School was established in 1966 to deal with the rapid growth of the Hazelwood School District during that time. The first year it held 2515 students who were in the 10th to 12th grades. It was the only high school in the district and it quickly became overcrowded as the "baby boomers" reached high school age. By the mid 1970s, the Central designator appeared in the school's name, followed by East and West, indicating from which portion of the district students lived. The rapid growth of the district proved too much even for a building of Hazelwood's size, however, and in 1974, the school was forced to split the student body into two shifts, 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 100% of the students in nor out of the building at one time. In 1977, with the opening of two more high schools Hazelwood East High School and Hazelwood West High School, Hazelwood Central returned to a conventional day schedule.
