Greenbrier Elementary School's official Web Siteclick here
Located in the heart of the northern half of the neighborhood
Current Enrollment - approximately 350
The school was built in 1962, with four additional classrooms added in 1963. The Kindergarten wing was added along with library renovation in 1968 and 1969.
It has won many awards over the years, including the national Blue Ribbon Award.
Grades -- kindergarten through 4th, as well as 3- and 4-year-old preschool for those who qualify.
The School has a wonderfully diverse and international population, serving not only our neighborhood but parts of other nearby neighborhoods.
Some parents in the neighborhood not only proudly sent their kids to the school but also "graduated" from it themselves.
Located just outside the neighborhood boundary, across the Route 250 Bypass on the Dairy Road bridge.
Grades 5 and 6 for the entire City. As a result, children in 5th grade get to start meeting and spending time with essentially all the kids who will be with them for the next 8 years of their secondary education.
Current Enrollment - about 550
Built in 1965, along with its twin, Buford Middle School, which is on the south side of town Walker and Buford were originally built as grades 7-9 "junior high schools," but when CHS was built in 1974, the 9th grade moved there and 6th grade moved from Jefferson School to Walker and Buford. In the mid-1980s, to address differences in poverty levels between the two schools, it was decided that it made sense to instead send all 5th and 6th graders to Walker, then have them all move on to Buford for 7th and 8th.
Walker provides a strong academic program in an environment that is a nurturing intermediate step between an elementary school setting and a middle school. All the students take either band, orchestra, or art, and there is also a wide array of after-school clubs.
It is worth noting that, although not in our neighborhood, Buford also has an excellent academic program, including new engineering and science labs and award-winning fine arts programs. Buford's official web siteclick here
Reconfiguration plans for Buford and Walker
Multiple times over the last few decades the School Board has discussed whether to reconfigure the physical location of the grades in the school system particularly given that it is unhelpful academically especially for disadvantaged students to have extra transitions (2 years at Walker, then 2 years at Buford). The middle school buildings themselves have also been in significant need of modernizing even though they are well maintained. In about 2008 the school system underwent a major efficiency review through a state program the School Board took advantage of using. When the report came out it suggested among many other smaller recommendations, that closing an elementary school would be beneficial to running the school system.
The School Board then held a large series of public discussions about how to move forward and the public outcry was overwhelmingly to keep our small neighborhood elementary schools and in fact to move the 5th grade back to the elementary schools from Walker (5th grade had originally been in the elementary schools until the change in the mid 1980s). This basic concept lead to recognizing other major potential benefits to a grade reconfiguration of the School system.
Indeed, in the end, the Board adopted a plan to create a standard middle school (6 - 8th grade) and after a lot of deliberation chose Buford as the site vs Walker. With 5th grade back in the elementary schools (under the plan) that would free up Walker to be a Pre-School Center. This would allow the school systems pre-school program to expand because of the added space and there would also be academic benefits to having the classrooms all in one location. High quality pre-school is one of the most long standing proven concepts in improving educational outcomes, particularly for students from disadvantage backgrounds. The School system has essentially had enough capacity to serve the City's disadvantage 4 year old population but has been wanting to do the same for the population of disadvantaged 3 year olds, but only has had space for 5 classrooms (This is 5 more locally funded 3 year old classrooms than virtually any other school system mind you).
It was also recognized that Walker has a large enough space to allow Central Office to consolidate its three offices (CO1 Located next to Walker; CO2 located in the bottom floor of CHS; and a small office in the Venable Annex). This consolidation, in turn would allow the freed up space downstairs at CHS to be potentially turned into an "alternative" high school program geared toward students with different learning styles (see e.g. Murray School in Albemarle).
Unfortunately, this adopted reconfiguration plan was not able to move forward due to the Great Recession and other even higher priority budget goals the City had. In 2019, however, City Council put up 3 million dollars to move forward with architectural plans and in the 2022 CIP budget the City adopted a plan to spend up to 75 million dollars over the next few years toward at least a first phase of modernizing i.e. -- turning Buford into a standard 6-8 middle school. (click here for more details and updates)
Charlottesville High School
Charlottesville High School's official Web Siteclick here
Located on the southern edge of our neighborhood off of Grove Road
Current Enrollment - approximately 1,200
Built in 1974 to replace Lane High School (now the County Office building, on McIntire Road) In the mid 1980s, CHS was upgraded with the addition of the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center, an auxiliary gym, the football stadium, and surrounding fields.
CHS has many award-winning programs, including its fine arts offerings and the fantastic new (2014) engineering science lab with maker space (Click here to learn more about the amazing science club "BACON") . CHS offers an outstanding array of AP and college prep courses and every year has students graduating and going on to the finest colleges in the US and even abroad.
Many CHS graduates have gone on to fame and fortune elsewhere, but a lot still live in the Charlottesville area and in our neighborhood.