STEM enthusiasts of all ages marveled as they wandered the halls of the new state-of-the art 46,000-square-foot facility.

Durham Academy's Board of Trustees has approved a multi-phased Middle School campus master plan that touches every building on the Academy Road campus. The plan creates new academic and community spaces, reorients the campus for cohesiveness and safety, and supports rather than inhibits the Middle School learning experience. When completed, this plan will transform the Middle School experience with a campus designed purposefully for the intellectual, developmental and physical needs of young adolescents.

The last time Durham Academy dreamed this big was more than 20 years ago. Then, as now, we were responding to high demand that was causing admissions constraints: the school was at capacity, we weren't able to serve as many deserving families as we wanted to, we were starting to lose the ability to keep families together, and we were being forced to balance those priorities with a long-standing commitment to increasing diversity.

Durham Academy opened the 2016-2017 school year with its largest-ever student body: 1,203 students. While the school's enrollment has risen incrementally for the past couple of decades, this year's growth — up from 1,184 in 2015-2016 — is greater than in recent years, and that's intentional.