The first school in Fort McCoy was supposedly a log cabin that was built near the fort; and it is thought to have been abandoned during the Second Seminole War. When the Union Church was built near the Fort McCoy Cemetery, it was used as the school, with church services on the weekends. Sometime between the 1890s and the first decade of the 1900s, a wooden building was built to serve as the school. In 1935, this building was destroyed in a fire. A small new school (to serve the approximate 75 pupils at the time) was built on the land donated by Dr Percy F. Lisk, which was right in front of the old schools location. The new brick school opened in 1936. The earliest known student grade levels are from the 1940s, when the school was known as Fort McCoy High School.