Middleton High School in Tampa, Florida

Middleton High School is a Hillsborough County public high school in East Tampa that the county dates to 1934 as Tampa's first public high school for African American students.

Hillsborough County describes Middleton as originally founded in 1934 as the first public high school for African American students in Tampa, and frames it as a school with more than 90 years of history that has overcome adversity, including two debilitating fires. The county's Black History in Hillsborough article carries a caption marking Middleton's celebration of 90 years in the community.

The record of the school falls into three chapters. From 1934 it served Black students in Tampa under segregation. In 1971 desegregation closed it as a high school. In 2002 Middleton reopened, and the county says it came back strong after being closed for 31 years. Today the East Tampa campus is a district magnet school focused on science, technology, engineering and math.

Middleton opened in 1934 as a segregated public high school for African American students in Tampa, the first of its kind in the city according to Hillsborough County.

The school's full name, George S. Middleton High School, appears on the county's Woolworth sit-in historical marker page, which names it alongside Howard W. Blake High School. The county's 2026 history article does not give the original campus address or describe the namesake, and the district's current school page covers only the reopened school.

The educators of the segregated era are documented in a university archive. The University of South Florida Libraries Otis R. Anthony African Americans in Florida Oral History Project holds a January 1978 interview with A.J. Ferrell, identified as the principal at several schools, including Middleton High School. In the interview, which runs 30 minutes and 54 seconds with an 11-page transcript, Ferrell discusses education and African Americans, focusing primarily on Tampa's former segregated schools, along with the sit-ins and the Florida teachers' strike of 1968. The USF Libraries put the recording online in 2009 with a downloadable transcript, catalogued with keywords that include African American schools, school integration and high school principals, and with Hillsborough County and Tampa as its geographic subjects.

Middleton students helped open Tampa's lunch counter sit-ins, joining Blake High students at the downtown Woolworth on Feb. 29, 1960.

The Hillsborough County historical marker page for the Woolworth sit-in records that a series of daily sit-ins started that day at F.W. Woolworth in downtown Tampa, and that about 40 students from George S. Middleton and Howard W. Blake High Schools, led by the NAACP Youth Council president and the NAACP state president, banded together to peacefully protest segregation at the lunch counter at 801 North Franklin Street.

The county page states that Tampa Mayor Julian Lane ordered police to escort the young protesters after the first day and then appointed a Bi-Racial Committee; one passage on the page says days later and the marker text says after about a week. By September 1960 a total of 18 department stores in Tampa had desegregated lunch counters, and the county notes that Tampa achieved this through nonviolent means, unlike many other Southern cities.

Middleton stopped operating as a high school in 1971 because of desegregation, according to Hillsborough County.

The Hillsborough County history states that in 1971, Middleton High closed due to desegregation only to reopen in 2002. That gap of 31 years is the one the county cites when it says the school came back strong. The county article does not say how the original Tampa building was used during those years, so this page does not either.

For the years before the closing, the A.J. Ferrell interview in the USF oral history collection, recorded in 1978, covers Tampa's former segregated schools from the point of view of a principal who led Middleton.

Middleton reopened as a high school in 2002 and now runs as a STEM magnet at 4801 North 22nd Street in East Tampa.

The district's Middleton High School page calls the campus the home of the Tigers and lists nationally recognized Magnet Academies in Engineering, Biomedical Sciences, Game Design and Computer Systems. The principal's message on that page says the school was named a Project Lead The Way Distinguished School, that over 75% of seniors graduated with college credit last year, and that 92% of CTE magnet students earned industry certifications. The page also lists FIRST Robotics Competition, FIRST Tech Challenge and VEX Robotics teams with summer camps for younger students, recognition by Magnet Schools of America, a free breakfast for every student each morning, and the Tampa school phone, (813) 233-3360.

Federal data describe the East Tampa student body. The National Center for Education Statistics lists Middleton High School at 4801 N 22nd St in Tampa as a regular public school serving grades 9 through 12 in the Hillsborough district. For the 2024-2025 school year, NCES counts 1,637 students and 66.14 full-time classroom teachers, a student to teacher ratio of 24.75, with 788 students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. By race and ethnicity NCES counts 746 Black, 355 Asian, 324 Hispanic, 144 white and 58 multiracial students, and by gender 971 male and 666 female students.

Hillsborough County reports that Middleton is nationally recognized for its focus on science, technology, engineering and math, known as STEM, with pathways built on rigorous academics and industry partnerships.

Florida graded Tampa's Middleton High a B for 2026, its first B since 2018, after a run of C grades from 2019 through 2025.

The Florida Department of Education's 2025-26 school grades workbook, dated September 1, 2026, gives Middleton a B with 60 percent of possible points (FDOE, Middleton row). The same row reports a 2024-25 graduation rate component of 87 and lists the school as Title I, with 70.3 percent of students economically disadvantaged. On the state's scale for high schools a B is 60 to 64 percent of points, so the Tampa school reached the bottom of the B band. Its strongest components were social studies achievement at 72 and science achievement at 70, and its weakest were mathematics learning gains at 38 and mathematics achievement at 39. In all, the Tampa school earned 596 points across 10 components, with 98 percent of eligible students tested and a college and career acceleration component of 65.

For comparison, Hillsborough High School, which the district page calls the first and oldest high school in the county, also earned a B with 60 percent of points in 2026 (FDOE, Hillsborough High row). The two Tampa schools reached the same total by different routes: Hillsborough High posted a graduation rate component of 94 and mathematics achievement of 45, against 87 and 39 at Middleton, while Middleton led in English language arts achievement, 68 to 56.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading Hillsborough County's Middleton history and Woolworth marker pages, the district school page, the NCES school record, the USF oral history entry and row 1596 of the state's 2026 school grades workbook.