Bloomfield's first organized school began in 1842 in a small log building that had served as a Methodist Episcopal church since 1837. In 1853, citizens formed the Bloomfield Education Society and bought two acres on the western edge of town, where by the fall of 1860 a two-story frame building was in use by 108 students and three teachers and was known locally as the academy or the seminary. Educational activity was curtailed during the Civil War, the school closed in 1861, and the building served at different times as a Confederate hospital and Union barracks; in 1864, bushwhackers burned the courthouse and business district but spared the school. After the war, educational efforts resumed, and in 1871 the building housed the community's first public school. A new school was built in 1886 two blocks southwest of the original site, and Bloomfield High School was established in 1898, first meeting for two years in the Buck and Boyd Building west of the business district; in its first year it was one of three schools south of St. Louis and east of Springfield recognized by the Missouri Office of Education as a First Class High School. In 1899, twelve acres were bought for a campus bounded by Missouri Street, Court Street, and the original town's eastern city limits, and a new high school opened there in 1900, followed by a grade school in 1914. Those twelve acres of the original high school campus have remained in continuous instructional use except during construction in 1899-1900 and repairs in 1906. In 1925, Bloomfield and seven neighboring communities formed Bloomfield Consolidated Dist. No. 2, and a new high school was built in 1927 while the old building continued as an elementary school until it burned during Christmas vacation in 1944. School life also expanded through a hot lunch program and free rural transportation begun in 1938 through local donations and volunteer support, yearbooks published from 1913, and student activities that included baseball, track, basketball, oratorical contests, debate, and music. Instrumental music had been taught as early as 1860, but the school's orchestras became especially well known in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Later athletic distinctions included notable boys' basketball teams in 1947, 1965, and 1966 and an undefeated Missouri State Champion girls' volleyball team in 1992. Over the century from 1898 to 1998, the district earned a reputation for strong leadership, outstanding teachers, and exceptional student achievement, and its graduates went on to important roles in many professions and in public service.