It’s been more than 40 year since students last walked the halls of David T. Howard High School.
The school played a role in educating a young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Atlanta’s former mayor, Maynard Jackson, and NBA Legend Walt Frazier permanently closed its doors in 1976.
Now, it’s getting a second chance to influence young minds in Atlanta. The city’s Board of Education approved Atlanta Public Schools’ plans to re-open the historic high school in Old Fourth Ward in the fall of 2020.
Except this time, it will be a middle school. Its role is helping reduce overcrowding at Inman Middle School, which has a capacity of 875 students but an enrollment of more than 1,000.
Superintendent Meria Carstarphen said there were a number of factors her and her staff had to consider in the decision to re-open the school.
“How do you save a historic building?” Carstarphen said. “How do we respect an amazing legacy of people that attended this little primary school that later became a high school? Then, how do you invest in a community that is trying to turn itself around?”
She said that starts by making investments that effect more than the building and the students attending. Carstarphen said the plan is to create a green space, plant more trees, and connect the building to trails on Atlanta’s BeltLine.
Modernizing the building didn’t reduce the importance of its legacy. The Board of Education approved the plan to renovate and re-open the building on the same day hundreds of people gathered to celebrate MLK’s life and the 50th anniversary of his assassination.
“It is the most respectful thing we can do from where we sit as a public school system,” Carstarphen said. “It is a tribute to all the leaders and the greatness that has always come from Atlanta.”
According to the Center for Civil and Human Rights the school opened in 1923, during the height of the Jim Crow Era. It was named after Atlanta resident David Howard who was a former slave and took the name of his slave owner. He donated the building before he died.
Allen Lee, the Center’s programs and educations manager, said it is very possible Howard will witness its first integrated class. He said it’s important for people to realize it’s the teaching at Howard that inspired some of the city’s leaders, like King and Jackson.
“They had their formative years in these halls,” Lee said. “The instilling in them the ability of possibility and that is what we’re all hoping in the city of Atlanta will be re-ignited.”
Renovations to the school are projected to cost $52 million and will be partially funded with a special purpose local option sales tax.
The plan is for Howard to be the home to 1,375 students. A thousand more opportunities for Atlanta students to sit in the shadows of legends.
