Gainesville City Schools has a lot of new these days: New buildings, new students and teachers and new ways of providing instruction.

But a drive around town reveals a long history steeped in tradition but also stained by segregation. Several buildings still stand, but offices have long replaced many of the classrooms.

The Salvation Army now uses the old Miller Park School on Dorsey Street for a preschool and after-school program.

"It's very roomy," said Claire Rodriguez, the preschool director, of the old single-story brick school that now houses 90 infants through 5-year-olds. "It meets all of our needs and there's room if we ever need to expand."

The Salvation Army has renovated the old school, from painting walls to installing a new electrical system.

But the building has reminders of its time as a school dating from 1948-79, with its wide classrooms and tall windows. Plus, it features the original gymnasium with a wooden-beam ceiling and more than a spacious stage.

"Seventy-percent of our parents remember coming here, either for the elementary school or for Head Start," which occupied the building after the school closed, Rodriguez said.

Hall County Head Start now occupies the old Butler High School at 1300 Old Athens Highway.

The old brick high school stands a monument to the days of segregation, which ended in Gainesville in the 1969-70 school year. Butler opened in 1962 even as the city, along with school systems across the South, defied racial integration.

Joyce Rucker remembers life at the all-black school, where she reigned as Miss Butler High.

"I felt like I got a good education, even though we got the old books from (the all-white) Gainesville High," said Rucker, who now runs the city system's Parents Center.

The Parents Center is located in the old Fair Street High School, the all-black high school that closed when Butler opened. Rucker started her high school career at Fair Street and graduated from Butler in 1964.

The two schools are planning a reunion, their seventh since 1971, Aug. 29-31, Rucker said.

Fair Street Elementary, which dates to 1937 as an all-black school, has a white principal, Merrianne Dyer, who attended Gainesville High in 1969-70.

"I know firsthand the pain people went through when they closed Butler," she said. "Integration gave us equal resources and brought people together ... but the black community lost a lot. Schools were the center of their community."

And she remembers integration as done in the passage of one summer, a quick and even break from decades of tradition.

"There was a lot of resentment and still is among people of that generation," Dyer said.

Gainesville High also has a piece of its history standing at the corner of West Academy and Spring Street.

The Gym of '36, now an office building, served as the gymnasium for the old high school and was named that way because its construction took place in the year Gainesville was struck by a devastating tornado.

Another school still upright is the old Candler School, located on Candler Street.

Except for its dated architecture, the two-story brick building looks like it could accept students, with the lights on inside and a flagpole out front. But the building, which opened in 1909 and closed in 1978, contains several businesses.

Long gone is Main Street School, which stood where the Hall County Detention Center now stands. A community effort didn't save the building from the wrecking ball in 1978.

Shirley Whitaker, assistant superintendent of special activities, started her career at Candler more than 30 years ago and until she began working at Fair Street Elementary in 1972, never taught a black child.

Today, the school system's largest ethnic group is Latinos, who make up nearly half of the 4,600 students.

"I've seen a lot of things change. And as far as I'm concerned, it's all for the better," Whitaker said. "We are out for every child reaching his or her potential."