Site chosen for new High Point-area school

Pat Kimbrough, The High Point Enterprise, N.C.
·2 min read

Apr. 19—HIGH POINT — Guilford County Schools has chosen its preferred site for a new project designed to relieve overcrowding at two High Point schools.

An attorney has filed zoning and annexation applications with the city on behalf of the district to support construction of a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school on a 30-acre site at the southwest corner of S. Bunker Hill Road and Boylston Road.

The proposed 900-seat Katherine G. Johnson School for Science and Mathematics would address overcrowding at Southwest Guilford elementary and middle schools, according to the district.

It's one of the projects included in the district's $300 million bond package approved by Guilford County voters in 2020.

Planning is on schedule for the new school, which has an estimated completion date of April 2024, according to the district's bond projects webpage.

Guilford County Schools has the site under contract to purchase, according to a Jan. 23 letter sent to nearby property owners from Amanda Hodierne, a Greensboro attorney representing the district.

It consists of three undeveloped parcels owned by Ronald Perdue of High Point and Stack Family LLC of Colfax.

The site, which is just south of Interstate 40 in unincorporated Guilford County, is not contiguous to High Point's existing city limits but is within the city's future annexation area.

The district has petitioned the city to annex the properties in order to have access to municipal water and sewer service, and to rezone them from an agricultural district in the county's jurisdiction to a conditional zoning institutional district.

The High Point Planning and Zoning Commission is scheduled to consider the rezoning request May 23, according to Hodierne. The annexation request would go directly to the City Council.

The planned K-8 school, which is also designed to address overcrowding at Colfax Elementary School, will have a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) component.

The project has an estimated budget of $56.7 million and is currently in the design phase, according to the district.

The Board of Education in May 2022 approved naming the school for Johnson, a NASA mathematician whose work was the basis of the book and film "Hidden Figures."