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CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Some 100 community members, staff, and local leaders turned out Friday morning for the ribbon cutting of the brand-new Mountain View Upper Elementary School, the first new school in Albemarle County in 24 years.
“I have a 24-year-old who was born in 2002, who went to Albemarle County Schools,” School Board Chair Rebecca Berlin told Cville Right Now. “So, he was born, he graduated from the county schools, he actually took a year off because of COVID, he went to college and graduated in four years. and just last week he celebrated his first-year anniversary with his first job. And so, the life of a student-plus is the amount of time we’ve had between opening the last school and this school.”
The last school that was built before Mountain View Upper Elementary was Baker-Butler Elementary in 2002.
There have been renovations of schools, she added, but this is the first new one in two decades.
This new school was designed by local VMDO Architects, with this being the sixth project the company said they’ve worked on with Albemarle. VMDO also worked with Charlottesville City School on Charlottesville Middle School, which opened last year.
Mountain View Upper shares some similarities with CMS including increases in natural light with large windows in classrooms, large multifunctional gymnasiums, generous cafeteria spaces, and spaces for smaller groups of students to be able to break off from larger classes and work.
“The school is designed not just for these students, but their ages, so it’s a 3rd, 4th, 5th grade school” Principal Seth Kennard told Cville Right Now. “So, it’s built with spaces where students can have a little bit more independence. It’s the way we designed our cafeteria, or all these extended learning spaces you see as you walk around, let’s students know they’re a little bit older. They have a little bit more freedom and the school is designed in a way they can feel it’s for them.”
The gymnasium is spacious and includes a climbing wall among amenities. It also has sound-absorbing panels on all the walls that prevent echoing and also keeps the noise in the space since it’s in the middle of the school, not far from classrooms.
The gym and all the classes for art, music, physical education, and other specialty learning are on the first floor.
General classrooms are on floors two and three.
Outside, the school includes all-inclusive playgrounds and a soccer field, which adds more space for the older kids to run around, Kennard said.
Looking to the east, the school looks out toward the Galaxie Farm neighborhood off Avon St. Extended and Scottsville Rd. which Kennard said has a direct walking path to the school.
On the west side will be a paved path that links Mountain View Upper to Mountain View.
“We want to have interaction between the schools with book clubs and all those things,” Kennard said. “It’s not a field trip. It’s just going to different buildings.”
School Board Chair Berlin said the fact that there’s a Mountain View and a Mountain View Upper is directly from community input.
“Originally we were going to open a second school here, it was going to be a second elementary school,” Berlin said. “And because of all the work (Kennard) did, and the architects did, and our facilities team did to get community input through face-to-face meetings, it was very clear from the community that they didn’t want a second elementary school.”
What they wanted was a school to cater pre-K to second grade, and a school to cater third to fifth grade, allowing families to keep all their children on the same campus.
The pathway is dirt right now because there’s still some construction finishing up on the exterior, but Kennard said they expect the paved path to open up this winter.
Though grades third through fifth get the new school, Kennard said that doesn’t mean Mountain View students won’t see improvements when they come back to school Aug. 12.
“That school, it’s not a new building, but there are substantial renovations where they’re adding preschool classrooms, widening hallways, changing the lighting, and re-creating classrooms for the students they serve,” Kennard said. “So, if you go there, you’ll notice the sinks are lower, the toilets are now lower, the drinking fountains are now lower, there’s more spaces for students to stretch out, we’ve made some of the classrooms bigger.
“We were trying to safely get as many students as possible in that building to serve our community, and now that half of those students are going to be here, they are able to expand and stretch out and do the things they need to do for the youngest learners.”
As for that stretching out, Kennard said he’s planning on adjusting to having plenty of room, with 440 students coming to school on the first day in Mountain View Upper, which has a capacity of 550.
Before becoming principal at Mountain View Upper, Kennard was principal at Mountain View where there were some 825 students last year in a building well over capacity.
Ultimately, he said both schools will greatly benefit from their new spaces.