Places29-North group gets updates on High School Center II, new elementary school 

Members of Albemarle County’s Places29-North Community Advisory Committee got an update earlier this month on two school construction projects that will get underway in the next few months. (view the presentation)

One of them is the second alternative high school project that will be built at the Lambs Lane Campus off of Hydraulic Road.

“High School Center II is a new facility that will be approximately 60,000 square feet, two stories, and when it first opens it will serve 400 students per day,” said Matt Wertman, director of building services for Albemarle County Public Schools. 

Students from the other three high schools will alternate use of the school just as they do at the first existing  Center I which is located at Seminole Place on Seminole Trail.  Wertman said the space at Center II will be flexible and can be increased to accommodate as many as 600 students a day. 

“It’s being designed in a way to where the space can be adaptable to changing curriculum as time goes by but to start the initial programs there will be a hospitality program which includes a culinary program,” Wertman said. “There will also be advanced STEM courses, so science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The third program that will be housed there will be a business, entrepreneurship and innovation program.” 

The Albemarle School Board chose the pathway toward the Center model several years ago because they are cheaper to build and allow more flexibility. A decision has not been made yet whether to proceed with a third center or to move forward with a full-fledged high school. 

Another project moving forward is a new elementary school to be built near Mountain View Elementary School on land donated to the county as part of a rezoning for the Galaxie Farm subdivision. 

“This is a 500-student elementary school,” Wertman said. “It’s approximately 73,500 square feet and will be a really good benefit for that part of the county.” 

Wertman said locating the school so close to Mountain View Elementary will mean students will have to attend two different facilities before moving on to middle school. 

“The existing Mountain View Elementary School will serve grades pre-K through 2nd grade and the new elementary school will serve grades 3 through 5,” Wertman said.

Wertman added that will allow students to attend both the new school and the old school, satisfying an equity concern. 

Both projects will be advertised for construction in the early fall and Wertman said construction of both schools will get underway this winter with the goal of having both available for the beginning of the 2026 academic year. 

Design for a new elementary school for the northern feeder pattern is underway and construction is expected to begin in 2027 after a site has been finalized. The goal is to have this second new elementary school open by 2029. 

The firm VMDO has been hired to conduct a study to determine the future needs for a new middle school. A first step will be to enhance capacity at the existing Community Lab School that is within the city of Charlottesville. A second step would be to conduct a redistricting study to relocate some students to Walton Middle School after it goes through its own renovations.

“The third phase and there is no timeline to this, it’s really based on how enrollment progresses and it’s not even in the next ten year plan and probably somewhere in the ten to twenty year range, but phase three would be a new middle school,” Wertman said. “The exact location of that is up in the air based on where development may occur.” 

A fourth phase will be upgrading all of the existing middle schools that were built in the mid-20th century. 

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