1. Norfolk Public Schools
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Education
Telephone: (757) 628-3830
Address: 800 East City Hall Ave.
Description: This large, urban school district has 36,000 students in 49 schools—35 elementary, 9 middle, and 5 high schools. It offers specialty programs in middle schools in world studies, technology, communications, arts, and languages and in high schools in military science, international baccalaureate, arts, medical, and engineering. Maury and Granby High Schools are consistently excellent, both ranking among the top 5 percent of schools in the nation in Newsweek’s ratings in 2008. Norview High won a national Bronze Medal in 2007 from U.S. News and World Report, and W.H. Taylor Elementary was the only public school in the region to be named a Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education in 2007.
2. Norfolk Academy
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Education
Telephone: (757) 461-6236
Address: 1585 Wesleyan Dr.
Description: This school was chartered when Virginia was still a colony. It began in 1728, making it the eighth oldest secondary school in the nation. It boasts a challenging academic program with morning chapel, family-style lunches, and Boy and Girl of the Day awards. There are 1,220-some students in kindergarten through 12th grades.
3. Norfolk Collegiate School
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Education
Telephone: (757) 480-1495
Address: 7336 Granby St.
Description: This is another of the area’s top academic preps, with classes for 1st through 12th graders.
4. Trinity Lutheran School
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Education
Telephone: (757) 489-2732
Address: 6001 Granby St.
Description: This school for pre-kindergarteners through fifth graders is affiliated with Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church.
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Education
Address: 700 Park Ave.
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Education
Address: 5155 Hampton Blvd.
7. Virginia Wesleyan College
City: Norfolk, VA
Category: Education
Address: 1584 Wesleyan Dr.
Description: This small, four-year liberal arts college sits on 300 wooded acres near the junction of Norfolk and Virginia Beach. There are 1,400 students, more than half living on campus, and 38 majors are offered here. There is a deliberate desire to remain small, a college rather than a university, to keep the education intimate and personal. The school has been designated the best Southeastern college by Princeton Review, and one of America’s Best Liberal Arts Colleges by U.S. News & World Report.