This historic Wake County school campus could once again serve high school students
A historic campus that served high school students in Fuquay-Varina from the 1920s to the 1970s could become a high school again in the 21st century.
Fuquay Springs High School opened in the 1920s in the heart of the southwest Wake community as a whites-only high school before the campus later became the home of Fuquay-Varina Middle School. Wake County school leaders are considering permanently relocating Fuquay-Varina Middle to a different location while coming up with a new use — such as a specialized high school — for the current campus.
“This has been a community center, and a lot of eyes are going to be following how we handle this,” Betty Parker, the school system’s senior director of real estate services, told school board members last week. “It’s very important that we get this right.”
Parker briefed the Fuquay-Varina Board of Commissioners on the proposal Tuesday.
“The whole area is growing and changing, and it’s important for towns to work with school systems to achieve common goals,” Fuquay-Varina Mayor John Byrne said in an interview.
Site of Fuquay Springs High School
Fuquay Springs High opened on North Ennis Street in the 1920s. The campus is now on the National Register of Historic Places. More buildings were added over the years as the high school grew.
It was later renamed Fuquay-Varina High School, integrated with the all-black Fuquay Consolidated High School and moved to a new campus in 1975. The old campus became the home for the middle school.
The town’s population has boomed, resulting in Fuquay-Varina Middle becoming overcrowded with more than 1,100 students on the small, aging campus.
The plan has been to temporarily relocate students and staff for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years to the new Herbert Akins Middle School that will be built in the northern part of town. While gone, the campus would be renovated, with students and staff returning in 2024.
But school officials say there are reasons to drop that plan, including how area middle schools are so crowded that they want Herbert Akins Middle to be open in 2022 serving its own students.
School officials also say that Fuquay-Varina Middle’s campus is so small, at less than 15 acres, that even after the renovation it still wouldn’t be able to offer all the programs provided at other Wake middle schools.
“You’ve got a middle school that’s already knocking on the door of 1,100 in a space that’s wholly inadequate for that,” Superintendent Cathy Moore said at last week’s school board facilities committee meeting.
Move Fuquay-Varina Middle to new bigger campus
The new proposal would keep Fuquay-Varina Middle students and staff on campus until 2024, when they’d permanently move to a new middle school being built two miles south on Bowling Road. The new location, purchased by the school system in 2017, will also be home to a future elementary school.
On Tuesday, the school board agreed to pay the town $771,921 to purchase 19.59 acres to expand the Bowling Road site.
The school’s PTSA is backing the new plan. PTSA leaders say they like how the new bigger campus will lessen the need to reassign as many students.
“The PTSA as well as many parents agree FVMS needs a new school with adequate student seats and facilities,” said Melissa Dodd, Fuquay-Varina Middle’s PTSA president. “The plan should include long term stability for our kids. We do not agree with the plan to renovate the current location, and splitting up FVMS students for two years.”
Education options for historic campus
There’s the question of what to do with the current middle school site. Seven options have been proposed including:
▪ Pre-K Center focused on serving low-income and special education students.
▪ Elementary school.
▪ Affordable intersession track out program for students at year-round schools when they’re on break.
▪ Affordable before/after-school care for families.
▪ SCORE program site for providing instruction for middle school and high school students who’ve received long-term suspensions.
▪ Regional ready-to-learn center providing services for families.
▪ Creating a Southern Wake College and Career Academy, which would be similar to the North Wake College and Career Academy and the Vernon Malone College and Career Academy.
In that model, Wake would partner with Wake Technical Community College to operate a high school where students could graduate with a diploma and college credit. The college credit would be for career and technical education courses that can help students get a job after graduation, such as in automobile repair and culinary arts.
Moore said that they may be able to do more than one of the options on the site.
No decision has been made yet to use the new relocation plan or which option to use at the downtown site. But many in the town will be watching.
“The site has been an educational center for a hundred years,” Byrne, the mayor, said. “That builds toward the importance for the site and its location.
“It’s in the heart of the town. I think it’s important what Wake County does with that site, and I’m sure they will make a good decision.”
News researcher David Raynor contributed.
This story was originally published November 22, 2019 at 11:14 AM.
