“So, where did you go to school?”

Many Louisville natives face this question time and time again, even decades after graduating.

To outsiders, it’s a straightforward question. Many assume it’s asking where someone attended college; the school that shaped their future life and career.

But in Louisville, this question serves as a distinct custom, a subtle inquiry into someone’s socioeconomic background that always carries the same hidden meaning: where did you go to high school?

The answer, which may seem innocuous, provides a breeding ground for stereotypes and misconceptions: what separates the “good” schools from the “bad,” or the “sheltered” private schools from the “mediocre” public?

Stereotypes like these exemplify how Louisvillians create divisions within themselves.

In an informal questionnaire conducted in October, we asked 25 Louisville teenagers about any descriptions, words or schools that came to mind when they thought of “good,” “bad” and private schools. The respondents typically mentioned fights and low test scores to define a “bad” school.

“When I think of a bad school, I think nobody wants to be there, not the teachers or the students,” Jasmine Johnson, 16, said.

One student mentioned that certain neighborhoods may impact their perception of a school.

“Bad areas affect high schools a lot,” Alex DeLong, 16, said. “PRP’s in a pretty bad area so it’s usually considered a bad school.”

Pleasure Ridge Park High School (PRP) had a total of 32 reports of assault or violent events and 79 reports of harassment in the 2023-24 school year. The school also scored “Well Below Expectations” according to U.S. News’ school ranking data of PRP based on the 2020-23 academic years.

The most commonly used descriptors for “good” schools were statistics.

“I think a good high school has high test scores and has relatively few incidents of misbehavior,” one 15-year-old said.

Respondents often described private schools as “rich,” “sheltered” or “stuck-up.”

“I perceive them as rich schools. Nothing more, nothing less,” Kenneth Nwaogu, 15, said about private schools.

In Louisville, a student’s high school choice carries special meaning: it shapes their future, their identity and most significantly, how others perceive them.

However, due to JCPS’s recent decision to eliminate transportation for most magnet and traditional schools, many students have lost this choice.

According to data from a JCPS survey asking magnet and traditional school families whether they intended to stay or leave the next school year, Black students, multilingual learners and low-income students stated that they would be more likely to transfer schools than their peers following the transportation decision.

The street a student lives on or their family’s influence often determines where they go to high school, but does an institution — only present in a fraction of a person’s life — really carry that much weight in our city?

Graham Brown School, 7:55 a.m. 

Every school day, Ella Kozoll, 15, steps through the bright blue doors of the J. Graham Brown School on a bustling street in downtown Louisville. She walks through the weapons detection system alongside kindergarteners and high school seniors, following in the footsteps of the countless students before her.

“Many people, kindergarten until their senior year, they’re pretty much going through the same routine,” Kozoll said.

Brown is one of eight magnet schools in JCPS, and the only K-12 institution in the district. It currently has just around 700 students in total, and US News ranks it as the second-best Kentucky high school, with a 100% graduation rate.

For these reasons, as well as the school’s high test scores and strong record for college acceptance, Kozoll’s parents transferred her from Hawthorne Elementary to Brown in the fourth grade.

This transition brought its own set of changes. Brown’s environment, which was mostly comprised of students who’d been attending the school since kindergarten. However, students at Hawthorne switched to a different school for grades 6-8.

Kozoll’s decision to remain at Brown for middle and high school has provided her with numerous experiences that other students may not have. For example, the school offers opportunities to build close relationships with staff, take dual credit courses and participate in work-based learning.

But her decision to stay at Brown also has its downsides. For Kozoll, walking through the same blue doors every morning can cause a feeling of stagnancy.

“I haven’t processed that I’m in high school quite yet because we do move through the same cycle,” Kozoll said.

While the school’s small size fosters a family-like environment, Kozoll finds herself craving change.

“We’re all around the same group of people and have been for so many years,” Kozoll said. “I would just like to meet more people.”

JCPS initially created magnet schools like Brown to attract students from across the district and diversify the student population. However, according to US News’ school ranking data of Brown’s student body based on the 2020-23 academic years, 28% qualify for free or reduced lunch and 40% of students are a minority, compared to JCPS’s overall rates of 48.7% free or reduced lunch eligibility and 60% minority enrollment.

Higher family income is correlated with stronger educational outcomes for children, specifically concerning test scores and behavioral measures — the very standards that Louisville’s youth use to define a school as “good” or “bad.”

While Kozoll agrees that Brown is well-regarded in the eyes of many Louisvillians, she believes whether a school is “good” or “bad” depends on an individual’s experiences and preferences.

“At Brown, some people have really fantastic experiences there. Some people love that school with their whole heart,” Kozoll said. “Some people really don’t like it there, it’s just a thing of taste.”

For Justin Leonard, Brown formed his identity and reputation. He met his wife there in second grade, worked as the athletic director for 13 years and now all three of his children attend. That, along with Brown’s small size, makes it a tight-knit environment for Leonard.

When he told people where he went to high school, he often heard a similar response: “Is that the weird school where people sit on couches?”

Leonard, however, believes that Brown’s quirks make it special.

One distinctive quality of Brown is its ability to serve students from every zip code in Louisville, which allowed him to learn from the perspectives of students from across the city.

“A West End student like myself, blending with people from St. Matthews or Middletown or the South End, it really taught me how to work together with a lot of people from different backgrounds,” Leonard said.

He was friends with all 48 of the people he graduated with, and felt that he and his classmates formed a close community.

“Sometimes you walk into schools and there’s certain groups that hang out with each other. You’ve got the athletes at one table, and you’ve got maybe the students that like to play video games at another table, and the drama kids at another table, where here, I’ve always felt like we blend well,” Leonard said.

He believes attending Brown gave him a reputation for being intelligent and accomplished, and that this perception might have been different had he attended the school closest to his home, Shawnee High School. However, Leonard thinks his high school wouldn’t have determined his success either way.

“There’s good and bad everywhere you go,” Leonard said. “Here, Manual, Valley, Iroquois, Ballard — it doesn’t really matter. High school’s going to be what you make of it.”

Seneca High School, 1:45 p.m. 

Irankunda Izabayo, 16, sits in his health science classroom on Sep. 24. He frantically takes notes about medical insurance, overwhelmed by the amount of information he has to copy from the board. He is thousands of miles away from his home country and trying to learn content taught in his third language. Still, he’s intently focused, eagerly learning and preparing for his future far beyond this room.

Seneca High School is a public school in the Hikes Point neighborhood that U.S. News ranks 170th in its list of best Kentucky high schools, with an 81% graduation rate. The school has a higher percentage of low-income students than Brown, with 64% qualifying for free and reduced lunch. Seneca is also a Title I school, meaning it receives additional funding to support socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

However, for Seneca students, their school is more than its statistics.

Seneca participates in the Academies of Louisville program, which aims to prepare students for their future careers. After one year in the Freshman Academy, students choose one of Seneca’s various programs, like agriscience, health and innovation. This program gave Seneca’s seniors the opportunity to receive an industry certification in the 2022-23 academic year, with 39.4% achieving this.

Izabayo chose to participate in the Health Science Academy because he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his uncle, a doctor who treated Izabayo’s family whenever they were sick.

Seneca also has a high population of multilingual learners, with around one-third of its students still learning English. Izabayo has met students from around the world who speak various languages like Spanish, Swahili or French.

“You can learn from others; you can make friends and learn their culture,” Izabayo said.

Izabayo’s home country is Rwanda. There, he mainly spoke Kinyarwanda, but he also picked up some Swahili from his parents, who are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Because of Seneca’s large multilingual population, Izabayo often serves as a peer mentor, interpreting during class for students who speak Kinyarwanda or Swahili.

“It’s really hard for them to understand others; they can’t do much for themselves because they cannot understand, so I just help translate and communicate with others,” Izabayo said.

However, Izabayo notices that the perceptions of his school differ from his experiences. At his middle school, his peers would say that Seneca was a dangerous school where violence was prevalent.

In the 2023-24 school year, Seneca tallied 20 total reports of assaults or violence and 96 reports of harassment.

While he acknowledges that too many fights happen, he still thinks that the school is the perfect place to focus on his education, explore his passions and meet students from around the world.

Freshman Academy assistant principal Rebecca Merkel, a Seneca graduate, also remembers hearing about negative stereotypes surrounding the school.

“I think some of the same myths and stereotypes about public school that existed a long time ago in the nineties still exist today,” Merkel said.

As a student at Seneca, Merkel loved her experience and received a quality education that helped her understand the importance of diversity. She now treasures the opportunity to lead and shape the future of the student body she once was part of.

Additionally, as she’s grown older, she’s noticed that someone’s high school doesn’t determine their future. She witnessed this firsthand as many of her peers from Seneca went on to a variety of successful careers.

“They’re doctors, they’re lawyers, they own businesses, they work with people like Michelle Obama and Brené Brown,” Merkel said.

Still, negative perceptions of schools like Seneca persist in the Louisville community. Whenever Merkel answers the question of where she went to school, she attempts to counter any preconceived notions that someone might have.

“Because I know what that perception is like, I try really hard to be very proud,” Merkel said. “I graduated from Seneca. It was awesome.”

As an Academy principal, she wants to foster a rigorous academic environment, but a joyful one as well. Each morning, Merkel plays music as students walk through the weapons detection line.

“Every kid at Seneca probably wants that ‘High School Musical’ experience. They want to go to cool dances. They want to have fun parties. They want to feel challenged in school. They want to meet their lifelong friends,” Merkel said.

She wants to give students an experience similar to her own and help them realize that, no matter the outside perception, students can succeed at any school.

Louisville Collegiate School, 3 p.m. 

The bell sounds. Lucy Donohue, 16, collects her phone from a locked closet and makes her way to soccer practice. The campus she walks through is neatly manicured, with white pillars marking the entryways and every departing student wearing the same navy blue and yellow colors.

Louisville Collegiate School is a coeducational independent school in the Highlands neighborhood that serves students from pre-K through 12th grade and has a population of about 800 students. Only 28% of these students identify as people of color.

Class sizes are typically very small, with most of Donohue’s classes containing only 10-12 people. Like Brown, Collegiate’s small size contributes to a tight-knit community.

“I feel like we all know who each other is, and I think it’s just a really friendly environment for the most part,” Donohue said.

While the school’s small size allows her to participate in more activities, the lack of student support is apparent.

“We have soccer but like 15 people at a game is our biggest crowd,” Donohue said.

Athletic and social events are far less popular at Collegiate than at public schools, where many of her friends experience sporting events with hundreds of attendees.

However, Collegiate’s strong alumni culture persists even into adulthood, with students who’ve attended Collegiate from kindergarten through high school earning their own nickname: lifers. Many graduates still attend pep rallies and school events, further cementing the importance of high school in the lives of Louisvillians.

When Donohue replies to the question of what high school she attends, she often hears incorrect assumptions about her financial situation.

“They’re usually like, ‘oh, so you got money,’ like, ‘you’re a rich kid,’” Donohue said.

Collegiate costs $28,600 annually for grades 6-12, but offers financial aid to qualifying families that drive this cost down.

“I am on a scholarship, and I have financial aid, and I’m not the only student that’s like that,” Donohue said.

Instead of jumping to conclusions when describing Collegiate, she wants people to think of the academic experiences she has access to.

“I also think how they transition and prepare you for college is really important,” Donohue said. “We have two college counselors and everyone gets one and we spend a lot of time discussing that throughout high school.”

Through this program and the many other opportunities Collegiate has to offer, Donohue is confident her school is successfully preparing her for the future.

Collegiate graduate Julie Evans agrees that the school’s rigorous academics were beneficial in her adult life, but what made the school most special to her were the personal relationships she fostered within the small community.

Evans attended Collegiate from first through 12th grade, following in the footsteps of her grandmother, mother and aunts who attended the school before her. There, she developed some of her most cherished friendships.

“My best friends in first grade are my best friends today,” Evans said.

Those connections were motivating factors in Evans’ decision to remain at Collegiate throughout high school.

“It really just felt like where I needed to be,” Evans said.

In On the Record’s survey, some respondents mentioned certain schools by name as “good” or “bad.”

To some, Saint Xavier, Central and Male were the “bad” schools. To others, these were the very definition of “good” schools.

This highlighted an important truth: there are no good or bad schools.

As Louisville high school students move on to adulthood, embarking on lives beyond their high school’s walls, they might face the same question as countless other Louisvillians before them.

When Ella Kozoll, Irankunda Izabayo and Lucy Donohue answer, they want others to see beyond stereotypes. Despite their different facades and reputations, continuities remain. Students are still passionate about learning, faculties build a positive environment and alumni feel pride whenever asked: “Where did you go to school?”

This story was originally published on On the Record on February 19, 2025.