After operating in Albemarle County for 17 years, the Field School of Charlottesville is finally moving closer to its namesake city with the help of a $1.5 million matching grant from an anonymous donor.
The private, all-boys middle school purchased a 25-acre lot off of Barracks Road in 2019 with plans to break ground on a “state-of-the-art facility” with outdoor athletic fields, biking and hiking trails as well as a 3-acre pond sometime next summer.
“We are excited to partner with the Field School on this relocation project, which we believe will provide greater access to an outstanding all-boys middle school educational experience in Charlottesville,” said the benefactor, who wished to remain anonymous, in a statement issued by the school.
The new home for the Field School fits well with its educational emphasis on incorporating physical activity into the school day and developing young boys’ academic, social and physical character.
“The matching grant represents a significant investment in our new campus project and we will support our mission of providing an unparalleled educational experience for local middle school boys,” Head of School Bo Perriello said in his own statement.
Todd Barnett founded the Field School in 2007 with only 22 students in the fifth and sixth grades. He was inspired by his work directing the history department at Landon School, a private all-boys school in Bethesda, Maryland, and running the Blue Ridge Field Camp in Crozet.
Today, the Field School supports 85 students between fifth and eighth grades.
For the first two years, the Field School operated out of the Activities Building at Claudius Crozet Park before moving to the 13,000-square-foot Old Crozet School — the former home of a combined elementary and high school fro 1924 until the completion of Albemarle High School in 1954 — where it plans to continue instruction until the Charlottesville campus is ready.
The Field School is not the only private institution in the Charlottesville area that has invested in recent growth. This past spring, the Miller School of Albemarle announced bold plans to expand not only its physical presence across its 1,600-acre property, but also add 60 students from kindergarten through seventh grade to its operations. Previously, the Miller School only functioned as an “upper school” for eighth through 12th graders.
These developments may not be exclusive to Central Virginia, but rather indicative of a broader trend in private education across the country.
Based on numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of American schoolchildren enrolled in private schools has steadily increased over the past few years. Part of that increase may be attributed to the pandemic, and parents’ dissatisfaction with how public school divisions handled it, given the number of students attending private schools grew by 5.9% from 2020 to 2021.
“We are thrilled to embark on this exciting new chapter in the Field School’s history, and we are deeply grateful for the generosity and vision of our local benefactor,” said Perriello.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com