After a long day cooped up inside, Ruth Haske’s 4-year-old daughter was ecstatic to get outdoors when the thunder subsided last week. She bounded down the steps to help her dad take a bag of garbage to the compost pit, and stopped to check the status of her beet seedlings in the family’s garden before [...]
Jody Lahendro has led a lot of curious locals up the 61′ of creaking scaffolding that has surrounded UVA’s Rotunda for a year. Most recently, it was a group that had won a private tour at an auction to raise money for the iconic structure’s ongoing renovation. Once the visitors emerged at the lip of [...]
Check c-ville.com daily and pick up a copy of the paper Tuesday to for the latest Charlottesville and Albemarle news briefs and stories. Here’s a quick look at some of what we’ve had an eye on for the past week. Manslaughter charge in Semester at Sea death Police in Dominica have arrested a man there [...]
05/20/2013 8:00 pm Jason Ring Blue Moon Diner, Charlottesville
After years of discussion, planning, and vigorous fundraising, construction of the new Crozet Library, a big step in the effort to expand the town’s downtown area, is nearing completion. The two-story building on Crozet Avenue still smells like sawdust, but the power tools and paint cans will [...]
Kathryn Durkee’s eighth graders at the Community Public Charter School got out of the classroom last Wednesday, and spent the morning splashing around the Rivanna River. The students were wrapping up a nine-week-long project, during which they collaborated with Youth-Nex, UVA’s Center to [...]
When 26-year-old Anastasiya Hvaleva was growing up in Kyrgyzstan, she and her friends used to set up pretend businesses for their dolls and toys, complete with managers, employees, and customers. But the game became very real when, in grade school, Hvaleva watched both her parents lose their [...]
Most of Brandon Isaiah’s students have no idea he was a professional football player. Teaching started out for him as an avenue to coaching high school football, but it quickly became a way to give back to the local community he’s loved for 12 years. Now the 30-year-old athlete is an advocate [...]
Virginia schools are about to get their grades. The state legislature passed a new measure at the end of its 2013 session last month instituting an A-through-F assessment system for public schools. Supporters of the new guidelines—particularly Governor Bob McDonnell, who was largely responsible [...]
The use of tablets and laptops in middle and high schools has created controversy in Charlottesville city schools, but St. Anne’s-Belfield School French teacher Karine Boulle has reason to rave about iPads. After 17 sessions of intense writing, translating, and coding, Boulle’s class of eighth [...]
Maria Rodriguez, a 25-year-old au pair from Panama, found herself wondering what the heck she was doing here when she arrived in Charlottesville last spring. She knew nobody, and with an English language background limited to written words and no verbal skills, she had to constantly ask her [...]
Self-proclaimed tree hugger Martha Orton said she’s had an interest in learning about trees and forest health since her son told her, while on a reforestation trip to India, that “trees all look different when you know their names.” A retired social worker, Orton enrolled in the Charlottesville [...]
The new Jefferson School City Center officially opened its doors to the public on Monday, January 7, kicking off a costly and hopeful experiment to preserve local history and provide services for underserved communities close to Downtown. After a year-and-a-half of renovations, the center is [...]
Most college students use the first half of January to hit the slopes or loaf around the house in sweatpants, blissfully unburdened by academia. But for about 900 UVA students, both on Grounds and abroad, the weeks leading up to spring semester are for intellectual experimentation. This is [...]
As the Albemarle County Public School District works to find a short-term fix to overcrowding at two local elementary schools, parents and officials are eyeing a capacity crunch down the line. The writing is on the wall: When the ever-growing classes of school kids across the county hit ninth [...]
Tucked away in a chilly corner room in Gilmer Hall are rows of plastic aquariums, each home to a rough-skinned newt with enough toxin in its skin to kill up to 12 grown men. The poisonous amphibians are just one example of research quietly moving forward on Grounds thanks to the work of young, [...]
During the weeks of turmoil following UVA President Teresa Sullivan’s ouster, Rector Helen Dragas promised the University of Virginia community that the Board of Visitors had not, and would not, play a role in directing academic courses to be eliminated or reduced. “These matters belong to the [...]
Whether your little one is just starting school or is about to transition into a new grade, you want to make sure he gets the very best schools in Charlottesville have to offer. Here are a few things to consider. How do I get involved? With the start of the school year, you’re likely getting [...]
I was always very nervous on the first day of school. I remember sitting on the front steps with my backpack, waiting for my carpool to pull up, and having butterflies in my stomach and a lump in my throat. I had the feeling that when I got to school, everything would be different, that [...]
A recent cost study by a county schools committee has reignited an argument over the value of keeping small rural schools open, and parents are outraged that the Albemarle County School Board might consider closing Yancey and Red Hill elementary schools, forcing kids to commute to Scottsville. [...]
Last week, UVA announced it was the latest university to partner with Coursera, an online learning company started last fall by a pair of Stanford professors. The deal is being presented as a win-win: since no money is exchanging hands, it’s a way for UVA to expand its brand for free, [...]
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National Honor Society member Joey Wright will study electrical engineering at Old Dominion University in the fall. (Photo by Nick Strocchia) If you saw Joey Wright on the Downtown Mall, you probably wouldn’t give him a second look. Just shy of 6′-tall, brown-haired, and wearing the [...]
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(Illustration by Dongyun Lee) Thirteen-year-old Alexis is a talented singer who reads at an 11th grade level. She says she wants to go to college and then law school, so she can become a lawyer and “defend people who can’t defend themselves.” Her mother, Samantha, makes sure she frequently [...]