09/29/2026
Did you know that the Kilby School can trace its beginnings back 141 years?
In 1885, a Model Training School is established along with the new Education Department by Dr. T.J. Mitchell, president of the university, during the 1885/1886 school year. It is made into a separate but related unit to State Normal College at Florence. As the 1890 Catalog for the school states, "This arrangement is mutually advantageous in that it affords the pupil teachers of the Normal College a field for observation and practice in teaching, while it secures to children in the Model Training School better instruction and a more perfect organization than they would otherwise be likely to have."
The training school consisted of grades one through sixth and was limited to 60 individual slots. A small tuition fee was charged. The school was held in Wesleyan Hall and the Annex.
A new training school was constructed just to the north of Wesleyan Hall in 1922 due to the growing population of the college. It was named for then governor of Alabama, Thomas E. Kilby (1919-1923), becoming the Kilby Training School. It was still composed of six grades; each grade being limited to 25 pupils.
Additions to the school soon followed, including a new auditorium, a library, and a playground. By 1925, a senior high school department was added to the institution, limited to 30 students.
A new school was constructed in 1964 located on Pine Street. The Kilby School, as the name changed once again, added a nursery and kindergarten class in 1975. Grades K-6 are taught here. It also has its own library, lunchroom, gymnasium/auditorium, and art room.
Today, the Kilby school is the last remaining laboratory school in the state of Alabama.
{The old Kilby Training School building began housing the Mathematics and Psychology departments in 1964. This building was demolished in 2021 and the new Computer Science and Mathematics building now stands where the old building once stood.}
Photo credits: UNA Archives and Special Collections, the University Collection, and UNA SmugMug
