The original campus of Twain was a red brick building. Originally Twain's magnet program was focused on after-school programs. In the 1980s parents in the area considered Twain to be an undesirable school. In 1986 a group of parents at Bethany United Methodist Weekday School decided to organize the group Friends of Mark Twain to call for an improvement in Twain and lobbied on its behalf. The school's reputation improved and, according to former principal Joyce Dauber, by 1996 75% of the parents of students lived in the school's neighborhood.