H-B Woodlawn

The H-B Woodlawn Program, commonly referred to as H-B, is an alternative all-county public school located in Arlington County, Virginia, United States based on the liberal educational movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The school, which serves grades 6 through 12, is a part of the Arlington Public Schools district.The current program is a combination of two earlier programs, Hoffman-Boston, a 7th through 9th grade school founded in 1972 and Woodlawn, a 10th through 12th grade program founded in 1971 by Ray Anderson, Jeffrey Kallen, Bill Hale, and others who felt a pressing need to provide a more individualized, caring environment to students.HistoryThe Woodlawn Program BeginsWith the alternative education movement in full stride in the late 60s and 70s, there was growing demand for such a school in Arlington. In 1969 Experiments in Free-form Education (EFFE) were conducted at each of the Arlington high schools, in response to the dissatisfaction many students, parents, and teachers had expressed with the current policies. Ray Anderson and Mary McBride were two of the teachers at Wakefield to participate in this program. The following year there was a request from many students for a "student bill of rights," including Jeffrey Kallen, a highly involved student at Washington-Lee. When Ray Anderson announced a proposal to start an alternative school in one of the closing elementary schools, there was overwhelming support. Soon after the Citizen's Committee for the New School was established, and soon a more detailed memorandum was submitted to the school board. By the end of that May, the proposal had been further refined, endorsed by the superintendent, and accepted by the school board. The school was housed in what had been the Woodlawn Elementary School, and what is now the Hospice of Northern Virginia