Athletic teams compete in the Virginia High School League's AA Bay Rivers District in Region I.

Black students in Grades 1 - 12 attended the newly constructed James Weldon Johnson School.

This influx was largely due to white flight as families moved from the neighboring cities of Hampton and Newport News to the county following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the US Supreme Court that ordered racial integration of public schools.

Cold War era expansions at military installations and defense industries in the area also brought some families in from out of state.

As of 1964, racial integration of YCSD schools began and the fall of 1967 marked the end of segregation.

Several additions were added to York High School within its first few years as the building would need to provide space for more than a thousand students in grades 6 through 12.

In 1967 the student council association (SCA) advocated for a smoking area, and by 1968 the school administration approved of its establishment.

[3] The athletic field was named in honor of B. Herman Bailey, a locally prominent family physician, who was widely considered to be a hero within the county.