ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A popular school in South St. Pete is celebrating 100 years this week. Those who attended the school over the years say the history of the building is only part of the story.
For Joe McCoy, you can take a look at the yearbooks he has collected over the years and get a glimpse into his life’s work. The retired teacher said he spent almost 40 years with the best and brightest in Pinellas County, but it was his work as a teacher at Southside Fundamental Middle School that sticks with him to this day.
“I think people would say it’s cliché we were family. We were family. I mean we taught families that, that kid would leave and then another one of the kids would come in. I mean, I had some people for 10 years, I taught their family. Literally,” he said. “I was teaching the best students in the county at what I considered the best school in the county.”
He watched the district change over the years, beginning his teaching career just as schools were being desegregated, and then later there were the riots.
“I remember the riots they had down there after the car deal,” he said of the 1996 riots in the city after a Black teenager was shot by police during a traffic stop. “So, I actually went to school through burning houses next to me and all of the parents literally came in and went right back out. So that was a rough time. And it was sad because we were the shining star of that neighborhood.”
Another change McCoy witnessed was the school’s closure, reopening and eventual renaming.
“My sister in-law’s mother went there probably in the 30’s. that’s how long it had been around. And then it became fundamental, and after it became a fundamental, it became a charter, but it was not successful,” he said.
The school opened its doors in 1926 as Southside Junior High School. The one constant for McCoy throughout the years has always been the students.
St. Pete City Councilman Corey Givens counts himself lucky as being one of the students who attended Southside Fundamental Middle School.
“When you think of southside, you think of success,” Givens said. “Some of the best and the brightest graduated from Southside. Whether it was Southside Alternative or Southside Fundamental.”
He said what he learned here helped get him to where he is today.
“Regardless of what the zip code may have been, we were not products of this environment,” he said. “We were products of this school.”
The school is now Midtown Academy, and McCoy said it has that same excellence it had when he was here. And like many of his history lesson plans, it’s music to the ears of the retired teacher and proof that a lot off the success at the school is embedded in the walls and throughout the halls of what’s now Midtown Academy.
An official ceremony is planned for Thursday, June 4 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the campus located at 1701 10th Street South in St. Pete. Alumni, former staff and the community are encouraged to attend and bring in any old year books and memorabilia that would help tell the school’s 100-year-old history.