These three students are attending the new Fluvanna County High School as transfer students from as far away as California to as nearby as Albemarle County. Unfamiliar with the past years of local debate over the cost and the need for the new high school, they saw the building without bias and were unprepared for what they saw.
“I am very impressed, it’s awesome,” said tenth grader Ireland Camacho, who went to Albemarle High School last year, but recently moved to Lake Monticello. “This is way better than AHS.”
“It puts that school to shame,” said Ireland’s mother Charlene.
Eighth grader Cameron Coulter struggled to figure out her locker combination, as her mom coached her. “Yep, now go all the way past the first number, great! You got it!” and the locker opens. Coulter smiled broadly and closed the locker to try again.
Coulter just moved to Lake Monticello from California, the child of a military family.
“This is a fantastic school,” she said. “As much as we’ve moved, I’ve never seen anything nicer.”
Meanwhile, on the other end of the building Heather Snow checked out the new nursing classroom. Snow will be in the tenth grade, and moved back to Fluvanna after her family spent the last three years in North Carolina. She’s looking forward to being able to take an Intro to Health Sciences class, a new offering for Fluvanna County schools thanks to the hiring of Karen Grove, the first nursing instructor Fluvanna County schools has had since 2010.
“I want to be a vet or a nurse who works with babies,” said Snow.
“I’m just glad she can get started doing what she wants to do here, while she’s young,” said her mother.
