Nearly 10 years after a rebuild reshaped Orlando's historically black Jones High, the school remains half-empty.

This past academic year, 763 students attended Jones, fewer than a third of the average enrollment at Orange County's other 18 traditional high schools. Jones was designed to hold 1,578 students.

School leaders hope that zoning changes, improvements to the school's medical-magnet program and a trend of increasing academic achievement will draw students to the now B-rated school, which also has an International Baccalaureate program.

"We've got to find a way to increase the population of the school," said Ron Rogers, a Jones alum and president of 100 Black Men, a group that mentors current Jones students. Jones, which has produced many distinguished alumni during more than a century, is still turning out "great shining stars," he said.

In the 2000s, a string of D and F grades hurt the school's population, despite the building's $47.5 million complete reconstruction. Top students transferred out, and too few returned.

The school zone now includes 1,300 public-high-school students, according to pupil-assignment director Sandy Simpson. But of those, about 550 students attend Orange charter schools or alternative programs. About 100 more attend other traditional high schools.

Though the school earned its second B grade in 2013, 40 percent of the most recent Jones freshman class had GPAs less than 2.0. Only 23 percent of the school's 10th-graders passed the state reading exam in 2014.

The school plans to encourage more students to attend tutoring year-round, participate in mentoring and character-education programs and will offer alternative classes and special-intervention groups, Principal Valeria Maxwell said in an email. She declined to be interviewed in person.

Jones is also introducing "unified attire" of school shirts and solid-colored or camouflage pants this fall.

With a history dating back to 1895, Jones was for most of its history the only high-school option for black students in Orlando, and it still has a powerful reputation in the black community. It is 92 percent black today.

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Orlando's Jones High struggles to fill its halls