Hampton Roads Academy


Hampton Roads Academy is a private independent, co-educational, day school in Newport News, Virginia serving 644 students in grades Pre-K through twelve, and part of the Tidewater Conference of Independent Schools. HRA is accredited through the Virginia Association of Independent Schools, and is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools. The average class size is 16, and there are 65 students in the Class of 2017. The school was founded in 1959, in the context of massive resistance, as a segregation academy.

Diversity

During a recent academic year, the student body was 78.2% White, 9.6% African-American, 6.7% Asian, 5.1% Hispanic, and 0.3% Pacific Islander.

History

Hampton Roads Academy was founded in 1959 as a segregation academy with a student body of sixty all white students in grades seven through eleven. The school's founder, Hampton physician Russell von Lehn Buxton, who became the first chairman of the Board of Trustees, explained that the school was established to avoid the "limitations and constraints imposed on the public school system." Buxton, a graduate of Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School remained on the board until 1988.
The school admitted its first black student around 1970.