Almost 200 students attend Forest Hills Elementary in Danville, where they play in a gymnasium that’s only half the size of a basketball court and sometimes go to class in “learning cottages,” or trailers set up outside the building.
Most of the 40 or so staff members who work at Forest Hills share office space with at least one other employee, said school principal James Kirkpatrick.
The nurse, Debra Trench, has her office set up on the balcony of the auditorium, which she shared with a teacher until recently.
Trench has spaced out chairs as much as possible, and she sometimes puts students in the hallway if they are very contagious. There’s no sink on the auditorium balcony, so she has to walk down the hall to wash her hands.
“We have to be very creative with our space,” Kirkpatrick said. “In some way or another we have to use every space that we have available.”
Forest Hills is significantly smaller than any other school in the city. It’s also much older — the building was constructed in 1935 with New Deal dollars, which means it provided a livelihood for many Danvillians facing the Great Depression.
That makes Forest Hills the oldest continuously used school building in the Danville Public Schools system. Most of the other schools were built a few decades later, in the 1950s, said Lanie Davis, the division’s public information officer.
“It’s crazy the difference that 20 years can make,” Davis said, adding that the other schools don’t have the same challenges as the almost-century-old Forest Hills building.
Renovations will soon take place at the school to make some much needed changes while attempting to preserve the historical significance of the building.
Forest Hills is not Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant; stairs lead up a hill to the main entrance as well as into the gym, and there are no elevators at all. And parking is limited, which makes dismissal a challenge, Kirkpatrick said.
But the school also has a lot of charm and history that comes with its age.
There are large windows, original hardwood floors, an auditorium and a lofted space in the library — features that aren’t found in any other school in the city, Davis said. Large, picturesque columns stand out front, giving the main entrance a grand appearance.
“If you look, you basically can tell that everything is probably pretty much the way that it’s always been,” Kirkpatrick said.
New Deal funding for schools was ‘a saving grace’
Robin Marcato, executive director of the Danville Historical Society, wrote an article about the history of the school in Showcase, a monthly regional magazine.
Marcato emphasizes how important the construction of Forest Hills was to the survival of Danville.
“In the early ’30s, depression gripped Danville and the rest of our nation,” the article says. “Despite our local mills, many depended on the construction industry. … With unemployment rising by the second, Danville received a lifeline through the Public Works Administration.”
The PWA was a New Deal federal agency that began operating in 1933. It focused on larger construction projects to “pump prime” the economy, like electric power plants, hospitals, public housing and libraries, according to Encyclopedia Virginia. PWA also funded the Colonial, Blue Ridge and Skyline parkways.
Its initial grant in 1933 was around $3.2 billion, and it received more funding along the way, said Richard Walker, executive director of the Living New Deal, an online public archive of New Deal projects.
“That was a prodigious amount for the time,” Walker said, adding that the entire federal budget for the prior year was also $3.2 billion.
Local governments applied for PWA money, which was used to hire private contractors rather than fund construction projects directly, Walker said.
In Danville, PWA provided funding for two high schools: Forest Hills, which was changed to an elementary school before construction and never operated as a high school, and the Langston School, which no longer stands.
Thousands of local workers were hired for these projects, and the schools were “a saving grace” for families struggling through the Depression, Marcato wrote. Construction projects were lengthy, and more time on the job meant another paycheck.
“With Forest Hills, hundreds of construction workers laid brick, mixed concrete and erected pillars,” she wrote. “With every piece, it’s easy to imagine them instilled with a certain amount of emotion. Gratitude for the paycheck, love for the family they could feed. Relief and hope became part of the structure.”
On top of this sentimental value is the singularity of the Forest Hills project.
While PWA-funded schools were common throughout the country, there weren’t many in Southside Virginia. Most of the other New Deal buildings in the region are federal buildings, largely post offices, which were funded by the Treasury Department instead of the Public Works Administration.
The only other locality in Southside that saw a school built with New Deal funding was South Boston, where C.H. Friend High School was built in 1938. The next closest New Deal school is in Galax, according to the Living New Deal website.
In other Southside localities — including Altavista, Bassett, Chatham, Martinsville and Stuart — New Deal funding went to post office projects.
However, the Living New Deal website is not complete, Walker pointed out.
“There are thousands and thousands more projects done by these agencies that we don’t have on our map yet,” he said. “It will take years to document and map it at all.”
Updating the building while preserving history
Both renovations and an expansion are planned for Forest Hills. While this will be a costly endeavor, the city wanted to continue using the historic building as a school rather than tear it down and rebuild, or move students to one of the other five elementary schools in the division, Davis said.
The expansion’s primary goal is to add classroom space so that the trailers are no longer needed, said the school system’s chief academic officer, Tawiki Babalola. The expansion will also help accommodate an increasing student body, she said.
“We’re expanding our population there, so we need to have a full-size court gym, we need to have a full-size cafeteria, and more classroom spaces,” Babalola said.
One challenge is that the school is “landlocked,” Kirkpatrick said, surrounded on all sides by streets and other buildings.
“They’ve got to keep land for playgrounds and required outside areas, too,” he said. “So that’s a challenge.”
These plans are in very early stages, Babalola said, and an architect was just selected in December. There’s no concrete timeline or budget yet.
“We had our meeting with the principals, and then we’ll move forward with a community meeting and teachers as well,” Babalola said.
One focus of these conversations will be the historical significance of the Forest Hills building, and how best to preserve it.
Forest Hills is the only elementary school in the city with an auditorium, said Davis, and the space is more or less in its original condition. Right now, the school uses the auditorium for programming, occasionally has to hold class on the stage, and uses the balcony for the nurse’s office.
But the renovations will convert the auditorium into a media center and library space. Davis said there will be more conversations with residents, parents and community historians around these decisions as plans come together.
Other than the auditorium, much of the second floor will stay as-is, Babalola said. “We’re not demo-ing the second floor, we’re just updating it to keep that historic feel,” she said.
There were specific requests from community members that the hardwood floors stay, Davis said. The columns out front will be left untouched as well.
“The columns are very of the time period,” Davis said. “They look so much different than any other school we have, so that’s something that we want to preserve. And we also want to make sure that whatever we add is not too far away from that look.”
Funding is coming from a 1% sales tax increase in Danville, which voters approved in a referendum in 2021 to fund capital projects at city school buildings.
Danville is just one of nine localities to currently have permission from the General Assembly to raise its sales tax to fund school capital projects.
Some of these projects are already underway at other schools, Davis said.
“We’ve had a few different events where parents can come and see the design and see what we’re anticipating,” Babalola said. “The feedback was very exciting. They were very thankful.”
Babalola, Kirkpatrick and Davis all emphasized the significance of Forest Hills’ history, and the desire to keep that history alive.
“Forest Hills isn’t just a school,” Marcato wrote. “It’s a place that saved a community.”
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Update, 3:30 p.m. March 13: While Forest Hills initially was designed to be a high school, the plans were changed before construction and it never operated as a high school. The story has been updated to reflect that information.