NHS Reunion

Northside High School (NHS), located in the northern area of Roanoke County, Virginia, first opened its doors to students in December 1960. Initially the student body consisted of grades seven through ten and pulled students from portions of those classes at William Byrd High School in Vinton and the former Andrew Lewis High School in Salem (currently, William Byrd High School is still in operation, but Andrew Lewis High School has been replaced by Salem High School). NHS had no junior or senior classes its first year, so as to allow those students to graduate with the peers with which they had spent their scholastic careers. Two years later, in 1962, the first graduating class began the school year, and the entire student body consisted of grades eight through twelve. The first seniors from NHS received their diplomas in the spring of 1963.
When Northside Intermediate School opened in 1970, the rising Northside eighth graders were sent there, leaving the high school with grades nine through twelve. In 1973, the rising ninth grade class remained at the intermediate school (forming Northside Junior High School), and NHS became a senior high school. In the fall of 1994, the junior high returned to the middle school paradigm, becoming Northside Middle School (NMS), and NHS switched back to its current format, containing grades nine through twelve.
In 1977, Roanoke City annexed a portion of North Roanoke County, which resulted in a reduction in NHS’s enrollment. Since then, as a result of natural fluctuations in population as well as building new schools and redistricting, the student population has remained fairly stable at each grade level, with a graduating class of around 240 to 270. Today students from Glen Cove, Burlington, and Mountain View elementary schools attend Northside Middle School prior to coming to NHS. In 2007, Northside began renovations, which completed in the summer of 2009, to bring it onto a par with Hidden Valley High School, the newest school in the school district. NHS is situated on a campus that also contains Northside Middle School, as well as a football stadium (Hickam Field in Viking Stadium), baseball stadium, softball complex, and new, modern gymnasium.