McAuliffe International School first opened its doors in 1928. It wasn’t nearly the size it was today, with only 350 students compared to the whopping 1,500 today. It was originally named William H. Smiley Middle School, after the current DPS superintendent, a Harvard graduate who served on the school board from 1912-1914. Before this, he was a principal from 1892 up until 1912. 

In 2012, the school renamed itself to McAuliffe International School, after Christina McAuliffe, a New Hampshire school teacher who died on NASA’s Challenger. However, the premises remain to be called Smiley Campus to this day.

The school itself was designed by George H. Williamson, a Denver architect who lived from 1872 to 1936. He also designed East High School and Teller Elementary. It is considered a Tudor building and looks suspiciously like many prisons. The bricks were set in Manila and light Terracotta. The school has also sustained many updates in recent years. With money supplied in the 2012 bond, plumbing, flooring, and classroom projectors were upgraded significantly during the 2014 summer. The main doors were replaced in 2015 to bring more sunlight into the foyer. The courtyard is also a recent addition, with benches designed and built by the students.

Clearly, there is more to our school than meets the everyday eye, but most of it happened a few years ago, so it is not of any concern.