LoudounNow LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
[ Vol. 1, No. 41 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
[ Aug. 18 – 24, 2016 ]
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Visitors get early peek at Selma’s restoration
Engineering School Completes Magnet Academies Vision BY DANIELLE NADLER
Douglas Graham/Loudoun Now
Lavern Paige, class of ’61, gives Herbert Randolph, class of ’59, a big hug during Douglass School’s 75th anniversary celebration in Leesburg.
75 Years of Changing Lives Historic Douglass School Celebrated for Lasting Impact
BY NORMAN K. STYER
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n 1941, a small four-classroom school opened on the outskirts of Leesburg to provide educational opportunities to the county’s black teens. Seventy-five years later, the building continues to play an important role in helping students succeed. The diamond anniversary of Douglass School was celebrated Saturday with the gathering of alumni, current teachers and administrators, Superintendent Eric Williams and several elected representatives. Guthrie Ashton, a 1957 graduate and a member of the Loudoun/Douglass Alumni Association, recalled the history of the school—starting with the effort by the county’s black families, organized as
the County Wide League, to raise money to purchase land for the school when the Loudoun School Board refused to do so. They raised $4,000 to acquire the land and then sold it to the school system for $1. The school would serve Loudoun’s black students until court-ordered desegregation in 1968. Ashton noted it wasn’t the building that was so important to the students who walked though its doors, but the teachers who were devoted to supporting their success. He credited Principal Stephen Sydnor with helping him land $525 in scholarships that led to his college degree. “I know he changed my grades,” Ashton said to laughter. But after he graduated, Sydnor put the health and physical education major to work as a substitute math teacher. “For 27 school years, students from all
over the county rode those school buses past facilities that were more modern. But there is one thing that those buildings lacked, and that was dedicated teachers who made it their mission to see that when we left Douglass we were prepared for what the world had to offer.” Longtime Douglass English teacher George Kitchen recounted the school’s modern role, serving students who face difficulties in traditional classroom settings. “We keep working to help all students succeed in Loudoun County.” Loudoun County Chairwoman Phyllis Randall (D-At Large) highlighted the importance of a community effort in educating students. “If you all did not do what you did, I would not be where I am,” said Randall, the first black woman elected to Loudoun’s DOUGLASS SCHOOL >> 38
Loudoun County will mark a major milestone later this month when it opens the Academy of Engineering and Technology. The brand new magnet school will be the third piece of the Academies of Loudoun, and it’s already being talked about as a model for the future of education. When construction wraps up on the Academies of Loudoun’s Sycolin Road campus in 2018, AET will share the 315,000-square-foot building with expanded versions of two existing programs: the Academy of Science and C.S. Monroe Technology Center. But Loudoun’s School Board members did not want to wait until 2018 to get the engineering and technology program underway. So, on the first day of the school year Aug. 28, AET will open as the county’s newest magnet program. It will welcome 150 freshmen—chosen from a painstaking selection process that narrowed the field from 587 applications—and will operate out of Tuscarora High School in Leesburg for the next two years. Even with that many interested VISION >> 23
Danielle Nadler/Loudoun Now
Academies of Loudoun Principal Tinell Priddy is introduced at the Loudoun County School Board meeting Aug. 9.
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