In 1841, he was elected a member and made chairman of the Board of School Managers. This body was merged into the Board of Education, and for several years he filled the office of president. For thirteen consecutive years he served as member of the Board of School Managers and of the Board of Education, during much of which time he had almost unaided control of the educational affairs of the city. Mr. Bradburn succeeded in getting through the Legislature a bill authorizing the establishment of a High School, the first institution of the kind, connected with the public schools, in the State of Ohio. A school of this character was started in June, 1846, and maintained in spite of fierce opposition. But there was no building to receive it, and its earlier years were spent in the basement of a church on Prospect street, the room being fitted up by Mr. Bradburn and rented by the city for fifty dollars per annum. Feeling strongly that he could render better service to the cause of popular education in the City Council than he could in the Board of Education, in 1853 he resigned his seat in the latter body and was elected to the City Council. When Ohio City was united with Cleveland, he was chosen president of the united Councils. Having, on taking his seat in the Council, been appointed to a position on the Committee on Schools, his first and continuous efforts were directed to bringing the Council to provide suitable buildings, not only for the High School, but for all the schools of the city. In consequence of his earnest and persistent labors an ordinance was passed authorizing a loan for school purposes of $30,000. The loan was negotiated at par without expense to the city. Mr. Bradburn, and the Building Committee, of which he was chairman, immediately made plans for the Central High School, and the Mayflower, Eagle and Alabama street Grammar schools, all of which were put under contract without delay, and finished under their supervision to the entire satisfaction of the Council and Board of Education. The teachers of the public schools in gratitude for his services in the cause of education, induced Mr. Bradburn to sit to Allen Smith, Jr., for his picture, which was then hung in the hall of the Central High School. At a subsequent date the High School teachers presented him with a massive gold-headed cane, engraved with a complimentary inscription, but this highly prized token was unfortunately lost, together with a number of other cherished mementoes and all the family pictures, in a fire which destroyed his residence in February, 1868. In the fire also perished a valuable library of over four hundred volumes, the result of a lifetime's collection, and Mr. Bradburn barely escaped with his own life from a third story window, being badly injured in the descent.