The Newport News School Board approved final design plans for Huntington Middle School on Tuesday night, paving the way for completion in the spring of the 2025-26 school year.
The finalized plans will see Huntington move several blocks south from its current location on 3401 Orcutt Ave. to 28th Street. A city community center will be built there, using Huntington’s historic façade.
Huntington opened in 1936 and was the city’s only high school for Black students for several years, before being turned into a middle school for students in southeast Newport News. It was closed in June 2018 because the building was deteriorating.
During the years of planning for the new school, many Huntington alumni spoke up against relocating the school, preferring that the new building remain at the same location.
On Tuesday, board members were told it would take a minimum of $2.5 million to re-start the planning process to flip the locations of the school and community center, and cause a delay of not less than 8-10 months.
Vice Chair Terri Best, who had opposed the plan to move the school location and had said that alumni and other community members were not heard as they should be, said it was time to move forward.
“At some point in this process, we have to get to a point where we have to make some movement,” Best said before voting for the plan.
She said the board could keep stalling and pushing the decision out, but it was too late to make changes.
“That train has already left the tracks,” she said.
Best and other board members said it would be students who pay the cost of continued displacement from their school if the project continues to stall.
Originally, Huntington was expected to re-open in fall 2024. But numerous delays in the process now place projected opening for spring 2026. Groundbreaking is expected to begin in April after the completion of the bidding process.
The plan was approved in a 6-1 vote.
Douglas Brown, who cast the dissenting vote, said since the beginning of the process the board has been given a plan that was not of its choosing, and told there were no alternatives. He said he promised the community that he would at least find out a figure for what it would cost to flip the plan and allow for Huntington to remain at its current location. Brown said he was not satisfied that the board received a complete answer to that question.
“We’re in a position as leaders and as elected officials, to actually be accountable to citizens to say, ‘Well, how much was it to keep the school where it was?’
“And in five years, I’ve not been able to get an answer to what I consider to be a simple question. That, I think, should be unacceptable to the entire board.”
Since the last update to the board in the spring, the architect added a four-lane, 330-meter track around the school’s multi-purpose athletic field.
Rusty Fairheart, the division’s chief operations officer, told the board that their questions regarding the size of the auditorium and the ability to re-establish a magnet program at the new school were also reviewed.
Fairheart said Huntington’s auditorium will be 5,700-square feet, including a 660-square-foot stage. He said Hines and Gildersleeve middle schools, which both serve more students than Huntington will serve, each have a 3,800-square-foot auditorium with a 500-square-foot stage.
“So we feel that the auditorium is adequate to meet the needs and the capacity of the school,” he said.
Fairheart said additional instructional space has been identified for the possible re-establishment of a magnet program in the building.
The new school is being built to hold 600 students. The design also allows room for expansion if needed in future, Fairheart said.
The revised design plans are expected to be complete by late November, with bid solicitation beginning in January.
Nour Habib, [email protected]
