A Wake County middle school will be permanently relocated. Find out where it’s going.
Students and staff at Fuquay-Varina Middle School not only will get a new campus, but they’ll have a new address, too.
The Wake County school board approved a plan Tuesday to permanently relocate Fuquay-Varina Middle in 2024 to a new building that will be constructed on Bowling Road — about two miles south of the current campus.
It’s a change from an initial proposal to keep students and staff on their historic campus on Ennis Street after it undergoes an upcoming major renovation.
Leaders haven’t decided what will happen to the old campus after it’s vacated. Proposed options include creating a specialized high school, an elementary school, a pre-kindergarten center and a trackout program for year-round students when they’re on break.
The middle school is now on the campus of what used to be Fuquay Springs High School, which opened in the mid-1920s as a high school for white students.
It was later renamed Fuquay-Varina High School after integrating with the all-black Fuquay Consolidated High School. In 1975, the high school left the Ennis Road site for a new, larger campus. The middle school had been on Ennis Road since then.
The original plan for the middle school called for temporarily relocating students and staff for two years to the new Herbert Akins Middle School that will be built in the northern part of town. During the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, the campus would be renovated, with students and staff returning in 2024.
But school officials say area middle schools are so crowded, they want Herbert Akins Middle to open as soon as possible.
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.
The new location will allow the middle school to meet current Wake space standards. Wake also plans to build an elementary school at that site.
This story was originally published December 18, 2019 at 6:25 AM.
