Loudoun now has an elite science and technology academy of its own
In an expansive, light-filled building at the end of a winding driveway bracketed by trees, radiology students in red scrubs tried on lab coats. Ninth-grade honors students solved physics problems on floor-to-ceiling white boards. And, in a greenhouse that can simulate seven climates, Gabriella Frank watered potted mums.
Frank studied plants at Loudoun Valley High School last year, learning to identify flora and how they grow. But the experience was eclipsed by her first few weeks at the Academies of Loudoun, a $125 million school in Leesburg that opened in August.
“It’s amazing,” Frank, 17, said. “I’m just so happy we have all this to ourselves.”
School leaders predict the state-of-the-art specialty school will boost opportunities for Loudoun County Public Schools’ highest achievers. But it has also called into question Loudoun students’ future at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, an elite public school in Fairfax County that draws students from across the region.
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Academies of Loudoun students split their time between a base high school and the 119-acre campus that provides high-caliber science, technology, engineering and math programs.
There, they take specialty courses within one of three academies — the Academy of Science, the Academy of Engineering and Technology and the Monroe Advanced Technical Academy, which offers vocational training.
Placing the programs in one building fosters collaboration — a concept encouraged by the school’s design, Principal Tinell Priddy said. Communal learning spaces with moveable furniture are incorporated throughout the building. Classes have glass walls to “open it up and invite curiosity,” Priddy said.
Across from engineering classrooms, past bay doors, a room is equipped with 3-D printers, metalworking machines and laser cutters that slice wood and plastic.
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Josh Ajima, instructional facilitator for technology, expects that students from across the campus will benefit from the space — a place where students studying television production can build small-scale models of their sets, and where vinyl signs are created for a food truck operated by culinary arts students.
“Each tool you introduce introduces new opportunities for innovation,” Ajima said. “When you give kids access to a 3-D printer, suddenly they can design and build things that they wouldn’t be able to do by hand.”
Radiology students used to work in a cramped and borrowed space at a medical building. Terri Settle taught anatomy from diagrams and textbooks. Now, a lab with an X-ray table is attached to the radiology technology teacher’s class.
“They actually can see the images,” Settle said, adding that the machine works the same way many X-rays would.
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Planning for the Academies of Loudoun began 15 years ago in an effort to give gifted students in the fast-growing county more opportunities, said Jeff Morse, chairman of the Loudoun County School Board.
Even before the building opened, plans for the school stirred questions about Loudoun students’ place at Thomas Jefferson.
In October, Loudoun schools considered severing ties with Thomas Jefferson, with some school board members arguing that the program siphons Loudoun’s top young talent. The board rejected the proposal 6 to 3, but some board members left open the possibility of ending the arrangement in the future.
Tom Marshall, a school board member who has advocated for the district to stop sending rising ninth-graders to Thomas Jefferson, said Loudoun students who attend school in Fairfax don’t share a connection to their communities. He’s also worried about the impression that could be left by maintaining the relationship with Thomas Jefferson.
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“Are we saying our academies, no matter what we did, are second-best?” Marshall said.
But Morse, the school board chair, said the schools offer different opportunities.
“I consider it to be complementary, not a replacement,” he said. “The more opportunities we have available to children, the better we’re going to be.”
Fifty-three Loudoun students enrolled in Thomas Jefferson’s freshman class for the 2018-2019 school year, about a 30-student drop from last year. And as the Academies of Loudoun develops and expands — enrollment is expected to grow by 900 in coming years — some school district officials anticipate that more of the county’s students will stay in the system for high school.
Science supervisor Odette Scovel said she expects more interest as the school’s reputation grows.
“Who wouldn’t want to come to school here?” she said.
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