In a lively December 3 joint meeting between Albemarle County’s Board of Supervisors and School Board, supervisors characterized the school division’s capital budget request as flatly unworkable. “I literally think what you are asking for is impossible,” said Scottsville District representative Mike Pruitt. “It does not seem like a possible proposal on the timeline that is presented.” School Board representatives were caught flat-footed as frustrated supervisors expressed grave concerns about the financial, strategic, and supporting data aspects of the plan.
The School Board discussed remedies for future school capacity issues over four meetings in the late summer and fall and produced a half-billion-dollar Capital Improvement Program (CIP) request headlined by a $230 million new high school plus a $54 million preschool center. Supervisors were taken aback by the plan’s abrupt about-face from the division’s “Center” model—where students travel from their home school to various academic centers to take classes in specialized tracks—to building a large comprehensive high school. The county’s first Center is housed in office space on Rt. 29 with a just-renewed 9-year lease for $6.2 million, and the second, with a price tag of $39 million, is currently under construction next to Albemarle High School.
“I have carried a lot of water for the school district’s Center model in my community,” said Pruitt. “[Specifically] the argument I heard from the division was that a new high school would come with complex and challenging redistricting efforts, and I told my constituents that plan was not moving forward. Now, having built a shared strategy around the Center model, at the eleventh hour we get this funding request, and it is hard not to look at what’s come to us today as a really significant failure in long-range planning.” Asked if he had a specific question, Pruitt said, “I mean, the question I think is, ‘What the hell?’
Data Driven
The School Board’s CIP request relied on county population projections that showed Albemarle County adding 40,000 residents by 2050, as well as a 10-year forecast prepared by Weldon Cooper Center consultants that estimated between 6% and 7% growth in school enrollment. Supervisor Diantha McKeel (Jack Jouett) said she had concerns about how the data presented by the division squared with recent actual trends in student enrollment.
“In 2018 you all had a total of 13,690 students,” said McKeel. “In 2025 you have 13,644. Let that sink in. I’m saying the landscape for everything has changed—school populations all over the state are down, birth rates are down, our community is changing, homeschooling is more popular than it used to be. The growth in Albemarle County over the last decade has been among people 55 to 65 years of age. Albemarle High School has fewer students this year than last year and the year before. I am concerned about the data that we’re hearing here [versus] what we see with our own eyes.”…