Mumford High School
 
 
 

Mumford High School is close to the north-central border of Detroit. The neighborhood surrounding Mumford is an African American working- and lower-middle-class neighborhood, consisting of small single-family homes along the side streets. The main thoroughfare within the neighborhood, Wyoming Avenue, has a number of boarded-up storefronts and struggling small businesses. But despite the run-down appearance of the local commercial area, Mumford is described by one of the assistant principals not as an "inner inner city" school, but rather as an urban school in a neighborhood with families connected to the school and strong local organizations and institutions.

The school serves some 1,600 students in grades 9-12 and is described by the principal as a "comprehensive" high school. According to one student, "When parents or older people look at this school, they think it's good because we have computers and we're the number one Compact school," referring to the Detroit Compact program, a college preparatory partnership with area businesses designed to increase the number of college-bound students in Detroit through scholarships. It is the Compact program that was responsible for bringing the Tech Center to Mumford and making technology a key part of the school's identity. According to students and teachers across the district, Mumford and "technology" are synonymous.