After years of planning, New Horizons Regional Educations Centers broke ground on a new specialized education center at the organization’s Woodside Lane campus in Newport News Oct. 28.
The new center will provide services for up to 200 students from Peninsula schools who are enrolled in the New Horizons Center for Autism high school program and the Newport Academy program, which serves K-12 students with emotional disabilities.
The 50,000-square-foot building will house 29 classrooms, a gymnasium, cafeteria, media center, vocational labs and therapy rooms for the students enrolled in the program, which has expanded from about 100 students in 1993 to more than 250 at times. Students currently receive instruction in mobile trailers used as classrooms.
“It will be a phenomenal facility compared to the old facilities in the mobile trailers,” York County School Division School Board member R. Page Minter said. “It will mean a lot to the students of the six school divisions to have a modern facility.”
New Horizons is jointly owned and operated by Williamsburg-James City County Schools, YCSD, Poquoson, Newport News, Hampton and Gloucester public schools, and provides services for special education students from each school division. It was formed in 1962 and began offering vocational and technical education programs in 1965. In 1993, it began offering special education services.
Both Minter and York School Board Chair Mark Medford said the building is the culmination of an effort that has been ongoing for nearly 10 years.
“We’re very excited that we’re in a position where all the regions were able to fund this long-overdue project,” Medford said.
The NHREC Board of Trustees proposed a plan for a new 52,000 square foot special education building in June 2013 at a cost of nearly $10.3 million, to be funded in part through contributions from the school divisions and the state.
Construction is being funded through a 15-year $11 million loan orchestrated by New Opportunity LLC, an organization formed in August 2013 by the New Horizons Educational Foundation, a nonprofit organization consisting of local business interests to support the center.
New Horizons’s operating budget primarily comes from charging tuition to each participating school division for students enrolled in its programs. Under the June 2013 proposal, YCSD would have seen additional costs of $24,461 per year after state reimbursements for the cost of constructing the new building, while WJCC would have seen an additional cost of $34,098 per year.
Minter said he was unsure whether the construction of the new building would lead to increased tuition charges for the participating school divisions.
The building is being designed by RRMM Architects, and the general contractor is Blueridge General. It is scheduled to open in January 2016.
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