General School Information
Our School History
Information courtesy of the George W. Watkins Alumni Association
The present George W. Watkins Elementary School is the outgrowth of a movement that began over fifty years ago, under the direction of Mrs. S.A. Crutchfield, County Supervisor. By 1930, the community raised enough seed money to build a high school to educate black students in New Kent County. At that time, black students wishing to further their education had to leave the county. Mr. Noah D. Brown deeded four acres of land to the School Board for a building site. Despite economic and social setbacks, in 1931 Dr. George W. Watkins began teaching 8th grade subjects in what became known as “Aunt Edith’s Institute,” a small room in a home once owned by Mrs. Edith Davis. When it opened as a school, the building was located at Brown’s corner and Mr. Lafayette Brown owned the building.
Quickly outgrowing this environment, the school moved the following year to Cumberland Elementary. The need for a separate school continued, and in 1933 an abandoned four-room high school building was moved to the site donated by Mr. Noah Brown. The New Kent Training School graduated its first class of six students in 1935. In 1950, the New Kent Training School was renamed George W. Watkins School, housing grades P-11. The 1958-1959 school term marked the consolidation of all elementary schools serving black students in the county with the George W. Watkins School.
In 1969, as a result of the 1968 School Desegregation Order, the George W. Watkins School became New Kent Elementary School. The elementary school became New Kent Middle School in 1974, when a primary school was established at the desegregated New Kent High School. When the high school complex opened in the fall of 1989, the school was New Kent Elementary again, housing students in grades 3-5. The building was rededicated as George W. Watkins Elementary School on August 30, 1998.
George Watkins Elementary School strives to:
- Provide each child with an environment that is secure, comfortable, and stimulating
- Provide uninterrupted instructional time that meets the individual needs of students by providing differentiated instructional strategies that lead to the mastery of appropriate academic skills
- Provide opportunities for the development of each child's intellectual, social, aesthetic, personal, and physical growth
- Provide an environment that is conducive to a positive self-image
- Provide a model for positive human relations' skills that can be practiced at school, at home, and in the community
- Provide children with an appreciation of the need for continued education and life-long learning