HISTORY

School & Summerfield Community

Summerfield Elementary School is located in northwest Guilford County on approximately twenty acres of land that was once trod by the British and American soldiers.

The main school building, built originally in 1924, was replaced by the present building in 1983. The school faces east on Summerfield Road. In front of the school stands a monument in memory of Light Horse Harry Lee’s Bugler Boy, Gillis, who lost his life in the defense of our country during the Revolutionary War. The Greensboro Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed the monument here. As a memorial to the Bugler Boy, the high school named its first paper, “The Bugler”, and its first annual, “Bugle Notes”.

A good friend and ally of the school has been the Parent Teacher Association. In October 1925, the first Parent Teacher Association was organized with twenty-two members. Mrs. G. S. Miles was the first president. Since that time the Parent Teacher Association has grown and is active in school and community affairs, County Council, and workshops.

During the Depression days in the early thirties, construction of a gymnasium was started. The community, taking the lead, helped to raise the money. Mostly W.P.A. laborers built a beautiful structure of native stone. The stone for the building was donated by the late R. O. Gamble and came from his farm. The first boys’ basketball game was played in the new gymnasium in January 1941.

During 1947, a new agriculture building was erected. This building was used for classroom instruction until it was torn down in the summer of 2010 to prepare for the construction of the new media center and cafeteria. In 1953, a well-equipped cafeteria and home economics building was added. The home economics portion was used as a media center once the high school was changed to an elementary school in 1962-1963. This building was torn down in 2011.

The new cafeteria and media center was built in 2011. A modern eight-classroom building was built for the primary department during 1956. Because of the growing population, an additional four-classroom building was finished in 1958.

The county, in 1957, purchased six acres of land adjourning the school grounds for an athletic field. Since that time, the community has worked diligently to buy and install lights, fence, and bleachers for this facility.

The year 1962-1963 brought another change in Summerfield School. All schools in the twenty-third district (which includes Colfax, Oak Ridge, Stokesdale, and Summerfield) were consolidated into one beautiful high school named Northwest High. The consolidation left Summerfield School an elementary school housing grades one through eight.

Another consolidation came in 1969-1970. The junior high students, for the first time, attended Northwest Junior High adjacent to Northwest High School. We were left with grades one through six, an enrollment of approximately 640 students and a professional staff of twenty-six.

The first and second grades were transferred to Laughlin School for the 1970-1971 school year. Summerfield then had grades three through six with approximately 450 students.

In 1970, we began a team teaching, continuous-progress program that necessitated a renovation of the buildings. This project was completed in 1972 and multi-graded team teaching was used for the entire school. In 1978, we returned to a structured, self-contained classroom setting.

In the fall of 1983, another change took place as the old building was demolished and a modern facility was opened for use. The building housed fifth and sixth grades in eight classrooms, three exceptional children’s classes, a multi-purpose room, and an office area.

The year 1987-1988 brought another change when our sixth grades were moved to Northwest Middle School (formerly Northwest Junior High) and the second grades were assigned to Summerfield from Laughlin.

Having grown beyond the capacity of our existing structures, four mobile classroom units were set up in 1994, two more in 1995, totaling twelve by 1996. During the years following, we utilized ten mobile classrooms, having lost two when enrollment decreased by some 100 students with the opening of the new Jesse Wharton Elementary School in 1997. However, due to enrollment growth, two mobiles were added for the 2003-2004 school year, one added for the 2004-2005 school year and a 14th mobile unit added for the 2005-2006 school year.

In the fall of 2007, kindergarten and first grade students were assigned from Laughlin Primary. Summerfield Elementary currently serves approximately 660 students in grades kindergarten through five. We have been a North Carolina School of Excellence since the 1998-1999 school year, through the 2011-2012 school year, with the exception of one year. With the recent passage of the school bonds, Summerfield Elementary received approximately 16 million dollars in upgrades. We moved into the new and renovated buildings in August 2011.

_{ROCK GYM}

The Summerfield Rock Gym was part of the Works Project Administration (WPA). The “Rustic Revival” style building was built of locally quarried granite rubblestone from the Robert Gamble farm on Pleasant Ridge Road. Building the gym was a community effort. Locals transported the rock and helped with construction and school-aged children helped with fundraising efforts by selling flowers and even tobacco. The school made it a competition on which class could raise the most money. The building was complete in September 1939 and dedicated on September 29. Over 1,000 people came together to celebrate with music, dance, and food.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

The first high school building was erected in 1911 (not extant), then in 1924the consolidated Summerfield High School building and campus historically associated with the gymnasium was located near this site. The high school closed in 1962 and then became home to Summerfield Elementary School. The school buildings were demolished in 1983 and a new Summerfield Elementary School was built and then remodeled and expanded in 2011. The Rock Gym is still used by the elementary school today.