Obsessing About Minnie Howard
The Long Road to Alexandria's New High School Building
Teaching in a Secondary School Capacity Crisis
In the fall of 2007, I arrived at the newly rebuilt T.C. Williams High School when it opened. I was excited to begin my second year as a high school English teacher. My first year at Oakton High School in Vienna had gone reasonably well. I felt fortunate to be teaching near our home and in the high school that two of our children had graduated from and where the youngest one was then a junior.
By the fall of 2014, I was teaching English and Journalism and I was avoiding the halls, especially between periods, because they were packed with students. The 430,000-square foot building, which I had been extensively involved with during my last term (2003-2006) on the School Board, had been criticized as being overbuilt and too large. However, the high school’s enrollment had surged steadily and the school was becoming overcrowded.
In late 2015, a School Board at the end of its term approved a 30-classroom addition to the Minnie Howard 9th grade center which is about a mile from the King Street building. While the Board voted for the addition, some members called the plan a “band aid.” The approval of the proposed expansion of Minnie Howard seemed to include a resigned awareness that the additional classrooms were an inadequate solution to the rapidly-increasing enrollment in grades 9-12.
The Minnie Howard building on Braddock Road opened in 1954 as an elementary school.[1] Later, it was an administration building; it became Alexandria’s all-city 9th grade center 31 years ago.
I was in Minnie Howard often for back-to-school nights, meetings, and other events. Whenever I was there, I remembered my father, an architectural historian, saying, “A building never loses the essential character for which it was designed.” Minnie Howard’s scale and layout said, “elementary school,” even though it was populated with an ever-increasing number of high school students.
The Long Road to a Decision
I learned that many teachers are reluctant to take public positions on school issues like capacity. Other teachers were willing to advocate, as I was. In early 2016 I spoke about the capacity crisis at the School Board with other teachers and community members. Former School Board member Yvonne Folkerts and former School Board member Marc Williams, his wife, Nancy, and my wife, Brooksie, and I wrote letters to the editor proposing that the Minnie Howard building be rebuilt as a true high school.
Later that year, we organized a town hall at the Beatley Library on secondary school capacity. The town hall attendees included elected officials. Yet, there seemed to be almost no movement on a consensus solution for the capacity problem from the ACPS administration and the School Board, even as the high school enrollment kept growing.
During this period, a city-wide debate began over whether Alexandria should open a “second high school.” The discussion was heavily influenced by the city’s complicated racial past: T.C. Williams High School [2] was established in the Civil Rights era by combining the city’s high schools as an integration measure. The projection, or fear, was that a second high school would be inferior or a “dumping ground” for certain types of students.
The result is that the city has one high school, Alexandria City High School, with multiple campuses. As always, we carry the past with us.
In 2018, ACPS rolled out the High School Project which was described as “part of a larger national conversation” about how to expand secondary school capacity and learning opportunities. More information about the High School Project is available
ACPS went through an extensive planning and community engagement process. ACPS personnel and its consultants searched the city, without success, for a site for a second high school. ACPS officials sought to “think outside the box” to develop innovative solutions, including internships or Early College programs at, for example, Northern Virginia Community College, to alleviate the capacity crisis.[3]
I volunteered for every committee, and went to every meeting I could, that addressed possible ways to alleviate overcrowding. There were many proposals, included scattered sites throughout the city. The simplest and most direct path, a new Minnie Howard building on the existing 13-acre site, always seemed to be the most practical alternative. [4]
Ultimately, the School Board decided to construct a new five-story, 340,000 square foot Minnie Howard building. The school is so large that is impossible to photograph, except possibly from the air. Here are two views from across Braddock Road:
The New Minnie Howard Building
At the May 29 ribbon-cutting, Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson called the opening of the new Minnie Howard Campus “a big deal.” Wilson said, “I cannot think of a better testament, a better symbol of what we value as the City of Alexandria than this building.”
“You can’t miss this place,” said Wilson, referring to the school’s prominent position on Braddock Road. Wilson called the new school a “generational investment—one we will see and realize the benefit of for generations to come.”
Here are ACPS and city officials, many of whom assumed their positions after the debate about how to address the secondary school capacity crisis began, at the ribbon-cutting:
The Evolution of the New Minnie Howard Campus
Minnie Howard’s “pinwheel” design integrating indoor and outdoor spaces was approved in April 2021. Ground breaking occurred in March 2022 and a topping off ceremony took place in April 2023. Notably, the project moved forward despite complications presented by the global pandemic. ACPS received a certificate of occupancy in April 2024, about a month earlier than scheduled.
The former Minnie Howard building will be demolished and the new school’s fields, tennis courts and other amenities are scheduled to be completed in 2025.
A Brief Look at What is Inside
The five-story $190 million school includes two gymnasiums, an early childhood center, a Teen Wellness Center, a family resource center, and an aquatics facility to be managed by the city’s Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities.
The new school contains neither a central cafeteria nor an auditorium. Students will eat in common areas spread throughout the building.
Staircases with seating areas wired for device-charging are examples of the building’s flexible interior spaces.
The interior of the school contains extensive graphics to enhance way-finding and organization.
Organizing Two Large High Schools
Students will be offered a choice of six content-based academies: Business and Government; General Studies; Global Studies; Visual, Performing and Applied Arts; Education, Liberal Arts and Human Services; and, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. More information about the ACHS academies is available
ACHS Lead Administrator for Operations and Student Support Michael Burch told me at the ribbon-cutting that the current enrollment is 3,000 at the King Street Campus and 1,582 at the Minnie Howard Campus.
The development of a master schedule for 4,500+ students on two campuses is a major administrative challenge. Burch said that the current draft of the 2024-2025 daily class schedule includes two 13-minute transition periods before and after lunch that will allow students to move between the King Street and Minnie Howard campuses in ACPS-provided transportation.
Burch said that the current version of the daily bell schedule has students seeing all their teachers on Mondays; the last four days of the week would be a rotating block schedule similar to that now in place at ACHS.
According to Burch, thus far, 54 teachers are scheduled to relocate from the King Street Campus to the Minnie Howard Campus and 17 will go the other way.
What I’ve Learned
I’ve been fortunate to be involved in the planning and construction of both of Alexandria’s high school buildings. I claim no credit for the outcomes: the development of a new high school is a long game with many moving parts.
Your comments are very welcome.
[1] For a description of who Minnie Howard was, see an August 3, 2023 About Alexandria column, Renaming Minnie Howard.
[2] The high school was renamed Alexandria City High School in July 2021 after news reports detailed the segregationist stance of Thomas Chambliss Williams, a former Alexandria Superintendent, for whom the high school was named in 1965. The 2000 Disney movie, Remember the Titans, told the story of the combining of the high schools with the usual Hollywood additions and flourishes:
[3] In one meeting an ACPS consultant told me that it was possible that so many internships for high school students could be created in Alexandria’s business community that this would solve the secondary school capacity crisis. I thought this was nonsense.
[4] I thought Occam's razor applied to the secondary school capacity shortage. Occam’s razor states that the simplest explanation is preferable to one that is more complex. Simple theories are easier to verify. Simple solutions are easier to execute.
This new building is a major investment in our future. If America is going to succeed as a country, Alexandria’s educational system and so many others like it need to succeed. We need to invest in the physical infrastructure as well as the personnel who make it happen on a daily basis. Thanks, Mark, for this update.
This article is a great summary of a complicated public issue about which I knew nothing. Alexandria should be proud of making it happen. It seems that the public school system is functioning at least reasonably well for its students, unlike other school systems--like Seattle. Seattle's school system is a mess, with horribly limited vision and foresight. The coherent planning Alexandria has embraced is totally lacking. Planning is a tough road, and rarely perfect--but it's essential.