Family ties highlight traditions at York Elementary School

Tierney McBride was setting up her classroom at J.W. York Elementary School with her mother when they found a label bearing the name of McBride’s younger brother, Keegan, on a student cubby.

It had probably been there 15 years.

“We were just laughing and laughing,” recalled McBride, 24, who teaches first grade at the North Raleigh school.

The McBride family has a long history at York Elementary, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week. Tierney and her two siblings attended the school, and their mother, Jennifer McBride, used to work as a substitute teacher there.

As part of the anniversary on Thursday, school leaders will undoubtedly celebrate what keeps families like the McBrides coming back to York.

The school opened near Glenwood Avenue and Creedmoor Road in 1965, when Raleigh was seeing a wave of growth from families moving to the area to work at Research Triangle Park, especially IBM.

New neighborhoods were creeping northward, away from downtown Raleigh to areas considered suburbia. This was before Crabtree Valley Mall opened on Glenwood in 1972 and years before development and the Raleigh city limits pushed several miles north and west toward the Durham County line.

York Elementary is likely one of the oldest suburban schools in Raleigh, said Smedes York, who served as mayor from 1979 to 1983. The school is named for his father, James Wesley “Willie” York.

The elder York served on the Raleigh school board when schools integrated in 1960, and local leaders named the school after him to honor the work he did, York said.

The York family developed several neighborhoods near downtown, including the popular Cameron Village shopping center.

York Elementary is located in the Brookhaven neighborhood and enrolls many students who live nearby. Last school year, 66 percent of York students passed state exams, just below the Wake County average.

About 45 percent of the school’s students received free or reduced-price lunch last year.

The McBride family moved to the neighborhood near York Elementary in 1994. Tierney’s older sister was the first to attend York, and Jennifer McBride became a parent volunteer.

By the time Keegan started school, Jennifer McBride had become a substitute teacher. She rarely taught at other schools besides York.

“York has a nice, small, family feel,” Jennifer McBride said. “It was a true neighborhood school.”

Tierney McBride said she enjoyed her time as a student at York.

“I loved being in school; I loved to learn,” she said. “It was a really warm and welcoming environment.”

After graduating from Broughton High School, Tierney McBride earned a degree in elementary education from N.C. State University. She knew she wanted to teach in Wake County and first accepted a job at Kingswood Elementary in Cary.

After a year, she learned of an opening for a first-grade teacher position at York. She said being back at her old school has been fun. Some things are the same, she said – the carpool line, the fundraisers, the nature walks.

“We’ve done all those things when I was in elementary school,” she said.

Some things have changed, of course. Classrooms are equipped with televisions and iPads now. The playground is newer, and tablets have replaced some books.

Jennifer McBride now works as a teacher’s assistant at Sycamore Creek Elementary in northwest Raleigh, although she helps out in her daughter’s classroom sometimes.

But what mostly remains is a love for a school that has spanned half a century, a school that has seen Raleigh grow all around it.

Thursday’s celebration will include “A Fabric Time Capsule,” a woven tapestry that features items picked by students.

Smedes York said he plans to attend the celebration, along with his son. It meant a lot to his father when the school took on the York name, he said.

“It was a big honor,” Smedes York said.

Over the years, York Elementary and the community have worked together to make the school wonderful, said principal Keith Richardson.

“There’s something about York that brings people back,” he said. “It’s always a great thing when you see past York students come back because they saw something great when they attended.”

This story was originally published October 12, 2015 at 1:21 PM with the headline "Family ties highlight traditions at York Elementary School."