This school year marked the opening of the future home of Woodward High School, playing host this year to Northwood High School. Woodward will be the solution to Walter Johnson’s consistent overcrowding issues. After years of delays, construction, boundary studies and now a different school setting up shop, the Walter Johnson community is left wondering what the future of the school is.
In 1987, Charles Woodward High School closed due to declining student enrollment. Students at that school were merged with WJ and the building was left unoccupied for four years. It was left that way until 1991 when it was taken over by Tilden Middle School, which occupied the building until 2020. After Tilden moved to their new building in 2021, it allowed for the old building to finally be demolished after years of delays and waiting.
After three years of construction, the school was finished and ready to host Northwood students as a holding school while their school undergoes renovations, costing $124 million. The move from Northwood to the holding school didn’t come without controversy. The Woodward building has only undergone phase one of its construction, which means the building lacks an auditorium and sports fields and has little parking for students and staff. This led to much frustration amongst the Northwood students, who led a walkout last April.
“We are fighting so that our auditorium will be built as scheduled and as promised,” Northwood High School student Khadijah Ndiaye said last school year in an interview with DC News Now.
The students at Northwood lost the fight and the building now remains without these parts of the school until after phase three construction, which MCPS approved in March 2024.
Northwood will be at the Woodward building for about three years, as their building gets renovated. According to The MoCo Show, construction of phases two and three at Woodward will take place between 2023-2025, which means the auditorium, football field and other missing parts will be constructed before the opening of the actual Woodward High School in 2027. Woodward was originally scheduled to open in 2026, but the Covid pandemic delayed construction and raised prices, pushing back the finish date.
Students, parents and teachers in the WJ cluster are still awaiting the results of MCPS’ boundary analysis which will move people who would be going to Walter Johnson to Woodward. This boundary analysis was originally requested in 2019 but was delayed in 2020 during the pandemic. MCPS is yet to find a company to conduct the study, and plans on starting the study late this year. The boundary study is now expected to be released in early 2026.
Some people in the WJ community are excited about the updated boundaries, which would lead to a complete makeover of the MCPS boundary map and many students needing to switch schools.
“Our Cluster has been advocating for additional capacity to relieve WJ’s extreme overcrowding for more than 10 years,” parent Dorigen Hofmann said in his testimony in front of the Board of Education in November 2023. “My daughter was in preschool when these discussions began, and she will be a senior when Woodward reopens. We know there are many moving parts, contracts, decisions and different offices involved in a new school, but 12 years is long enough.”
Overcrowding is a huge problem at Walter Johnson. This year, WJ’s enrollment is 3,028 students (as of Monday, Sept. 30), while its capacity is only 2,299 (as of the 2022-23 school year). This year’s freshman class has almost 100 more students than this year’s graduating class. To try to mediate this, more portables have been added to the school over the past summer. Although this may be a temporary switch, students and teachers are patiently awaiting the opening of Woodward to help alleviate the stress on the school.
“I feel like the portables maybe helped disperse some of the classes a little bit more, but it still feels as congested as last year,” English teacher Sarah Gayman said.
