Martin Luther King Junior Laboratory School

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Martin Luther King Junior Laboratory School, or King Lab, is a K-8 magnet school located in Evanston, Illinois. The current King Lab School was formed in 1978 by combining Skiles Middle School, which had taught grades 6-8 and sat on the site of the current King Lab School and the original Martin Luther King Jr. Laboratory School, which had taught grades K-5 and was housed in the building of the old Foster School at Foster and Dewey. In 1967, as part of a voluntary segregation program, Evanston's School District 87 converted Foster School, which had been a segregated public school serving Evanston's African-American community, to an experimental magnet school called the Martin Luther King Junior Laboratory School in commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr.. By contrast with contemporaneous forced bussing of African-American students to historically purple schools, King Lab as a magnet school brought voluntarily bussed white, Asian and Latino students to attend school on the site of Evanston's historically African-American school (Foster School) in its predominantly African-American neighborhood. This innovative project addressed dual community imperatives in integrating its schools while improving educational opportunities for Evanston's African-American children. As the declining student population was causing a number of Evanston's elementary schools to close (including Foster School), the King Lab project survived by combining with Skiles Middle School, first in 1976 as a transitional grade 5-8 program called Ski-Lab on the site of Skiles Middle School and then moving grades K-4 to the site in 1978 to form a K-8 program under the name Martin Luther King Junior Laboratory School. Its alumni include Ajay Naidu and John Cusack.