Amelia Earhart attended Hyde Park High School before she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic.

Nat King Cole went to Phillips Academy and DuSable High School before winning a Grammy and singing "The Christmas Song," co-written by Mel Torme, another city school graduate.

Dick Butkus graduated from Chicago Vocational School before crashing helmets in a Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacking career with the Chicago Bears.

The list of Chicago Public Schools alumni includes a long list of such people - one of many interesting bits of history being collected on a recently launched website.

"We're the first urban school district to try to connect with alumni on this scale," says Bradley J. Harbaugh, editor of CPSalumni.org.

The development and first two years of the website's operation are funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a New York-based philanthropic nonprofit group.

The website, launched April 24 following 2 ½ years of planning and development, will eventually include home web pages for each of the city's 1,200 schools, past and present.

There are about 600 schools in the city today. Six hundred more have closed, moved or changed identities.

The web site already has 3,500 registered users and about 23,000 visitors, Harbaugh says. According to CPS, there are 3 million alumni living.

"CPSalumni.org connects our alumni like never before," says Chicago Board of Education President Rufus Williams, a graduate of Orr High School on the West Side. "We hope that alumni visit the site and visit it often, adding content to it and being a part of this new online community."

According to Harbaugh, users are contributing old graduation and classroom photos and details like the posting that says eight Cook County judges graduated from the same high school.

The idea began in 2006 when the Chicago History Museum worked with CPS on a pilot website that included the history of Hyde Park High School and Altgeld Elementary. Later, CPS hired Duo Consulting to develop the website.

As the website grows, Harbaugh says, the historical record of the city's schools will grow.

"The record, as it exists on our website, is the most complete available, and it's improving every day," he says.

But the website is intended as more than an archive of who sat in the third row in third grade in 1952.

Harbaugh hopes to develop the site's use as a chat room for alumni and a place to post notices of class reunions or school needs.

The site also includes an honor roll of famous and high achieving CPS alumni from the governor to rock and roll legend Bo Diddley.

The list is long, but selective, dividing notables into three categories: "CPS leaders," "recognized achievement" and "other distinguished aluimni."

"Recognized achievement," the site says, is reserved for those "whose accomplishments are unassailable."

Simeon High School grad Derrick Rose, the No. 1 pick in this year's NBA Draft by the Chicago Bulls, isn't on the recognized achievement list and won't be, Harbaugh says, until "he wins the NBA MVP award or an NBA championship."

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