New Field, Same Pharaoh Pride as CMA Alumni Reflect on 25 Years

Communication and Media Arts High School (CMA) was only five years old when the Class of 2001 first walked through its doors in 1997.

CMA had been founded in 1992, with its first class graduating in 1996. The school was still building its identity when the students who would become the Class of 2001 arrived. It was smaller then, housed near St. Mary’s of Redford, and some of the opportunities students have today — including a football program and a home field — did not exist.

Twenty-five years after graduating, members of that class are celebrating their reunion while watching a new chapter unfold at their alma mater.

For the first time in CMA history, the Pharaohs now have a football field on their own campus.

The new athletic facility includes a state-of-the-art turf field, stadium lighting and bleacher seating for more than 1,000 fans, giving students a place to compete in front of their classmates, families and neighbors without leaving their school community.

For 2001 graduate Danielle Massey, who went on to become a Detroit Public Schools Community District teacher herself, seeing those additions carries particular meaning. There was no CMA football team when she was a student.

“I hope the feeling of royalty never leaves the spirit,” Massey said. “When I went to CMA, there was no football team. You had to be proud and carry yourself as a leader, a ruler, a king or queen, a true Pharaoh with your head held high.”

That Pharaoh pride, she said, followed her classmates well beyond high school.

“Many of my ’01 classmates are doing extremely well in life because we all carry that spirit,” Massey said.

The field reflects how much CMA has grown since its early years. At a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony, DPSCD Board President Latrice McClendon, Board Secretary Monique Bryant, Board Member Rev. Dr. Steve Bland, Superintendent Nikolai P. Vitti, student ambassadors and members of the CMA community gathered to celebrate the milestone.

The project is part of DPSCD’s broader Capital Projects initiative, which is investing in improvements across the District through new school construction, building additions, athletic facilities and HVAC and air conditioning installations.

But for alumni returning 25 years later, CMA’s story cannot be told through new facilities alone.

Long before the new turf, stadium lights and bleachers, there were teachers building relationships with students inside a relatively young Detroit high school.

Melanie Bowers, a 2001 CMA graduate and CEO of The Guru Agency, remembers a school where a graduating class of roughly 100 students meant classmates knew one another and teachers knew their students.

“The staff, the teachers, they really poured into the students,” Bowers said. “They cared. They checked on us. They even went to some of our outside school programming. They showed up at the games. They really were a part of our lives.”

Bowers remembers a curriculum that challenged students in ways she did not fully appreciate until she left CMA. Students studied foreign languages, including Spanish and Latin, and took courses such as law alongside their traditional subjects.

Writing was especially important at a school built around communication and media arts.

“They really pushed literacy, writing comprehension and the writing element because it’s a Communication and Media Arts high school,” Bowers said. “When I got to college, I didn’t struggle with writing.”

That foundation eventually became part of her profession.

Today, Bowers leads her own public relations agency. While people often associate public relations primarily with media, she said the profession depends heavily on the communication skills CMA began developing in her as a teenager.

“I really contribute that to my time, my four years at CMA because they really laid the foundation for that,” Bowers said. “I’m really appreciative that I went to CMA, graduated and was able to get that top-tier education.”

Among the educators Bowers remembers is Mark James, who taught law and history. James has spent 30 years at CMA and is preparing to retire after this school year — meaning his own tenure stretches across much of the school’s history.

For Massey, it was mathematics teacher Mr. Barnett who helped uncover an ability she had not fully recognized in herself.

“I’m a lover of mathematics and he challenged me with algebra — the reason I love polynomials to this day — and placed me in honors geometry, which was my first honors class,” Massey said.

Years later, pieces of his classroom remain in hers.

Even in an era when technology has changed how students learn, Massey still calls students to the board to work through problems and explain information to their classmates because that was expected of her.

Her path from DPS student to DPSCD educator also reflects something deeper about the impact a school can have. CMA prepared Massey academically for college, but it also shaped where she believed she belonged after earning her degree.

“I was educationally prepared for college, allowing me to feel confident in college,” she said. “Once I obtained my degree, I knew I had to work in an urban setting. I had to give back what was put into me.”

Now, some of Massey’s former elementary students are adults themselves. They return to tell her about college and remind her of things she taught them years earlier.

“I think any teacher that stays a part of a child’s memory made a true impact,” Massey said.

It is a lesson she understands from both sides of the classroom.

If she could speak to the CMA student she was 25 years ago, Massey said she would tell her to thank the educators who helped shape her — Mr. Barnett, Ms. Jackson, Mrs. Holiday, Mr. James, Ms. Maillioux and others. She would also tell her younger self that choosing a small, growing school would prove valuable because teachers had the opportunity to know her, understand what she needed and build relationships with her.

That history now meets a very different CMA.

The school that opened in 1992 and graduated its first class four years later has continued to expand its academic, extracurricular and athletic opportunities. Students can now create memories under Friday night stadium lights on their own campus — something the Class of 2001 never experienced.

For alumni like Bowers and Massey, the physical transformation is worth celebrating. But as their class marks 25 years since graduation, their stories also show what CMA was building before the field, the lights or the larger campus arrived.

It was building Pharaohs.