CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – The second day of the 2025-26 school year was Day 2 for students of the new Charlottesville Middle School, and it was a ribbon-cutting day in the beautiful gym in a $90-plus-million school where one may see the city of Charlottesville can have nice things. The common areas and classrooms are full of natural light from windows and skylights.
The spacious commons areas are adjoined by spacious classrooms with large windows of natural light, and some of the new art classrooms with exit doors onto a patio to artwork outside. And works of art are striking on murals on walls all over the school, based on suggestions by students and staff.
The entry to the gym and arts areas of the school greets you with a beautiful mural of athletes and performers.
After going in that entrance, the doors open to a gym that Principal Rodney Jordan posted photos of on social media last month. “I started getting phone calls and emails because everybody wants to rent it and come in and practice, bring their groups into here and tournaments as people are telling me our gym looks better than most D-3 schools,” Jordan said.
One side of the gym is large window-lined where afternoon sun shines in, and outside is a mesh mural of athletics events. On the other side is painted “Charlottesville” in the orange-and-black school colors, the same as CHS where CMS is the Young Knights before they feed into the high school who are Black Knights.
8th-grader Jahmiya Washburg is excited to play games at home after last year there was no gym, and the team played all their home games at Walker. “I’m really happy about having our games here. Like we have a good school and I want everybody to know that.”
City leaders and school administration, along with architects from VMDO, led the ribbon cutting ceremony as the actual cutting was done by students. Superintendent Dr. Royal Gurley noted that the last new school ribbon cutting was over 50 years ago in Charlottesville with CHS in 1974.
“We will see that we not only created a new building, but we created a new era of schools in our community”, Gurley said.
Mayor JuanDiego Wade, who saw much of this project through from his days on the school board all the way now to City Council, gave his signature exclamation, “Hoo, doggy… this day is finally here.”
He introduced former fellow school board member and former interim City Councilor Leah Puryear as part of a board that started talking about some project like this when they became school board members in 2005.
Principal Rodney Jordan led the ceremony, as he has led the school through the construction and transition, “I’m grateful that I get to be the principal here, and I’m grateful that Dr. Gurley continues to hire me (chuckle), continues to bring me back the next year.”
Jordan said the school had just achieved accreditation when he arrived in 2021, and the academic opportunities these new spaces make possible will encourage students to excel that much more.
Right now, the school is housing 590 students in 7th and 8th grades, which will be more when 6th graders join the school next year. With Phase 1 complete, there are two learning wings, a visual arts wing with doors opening out from each classroom to an art terrace, the state-of-the-art gym, and new fitness rooms that open out onto an outdoor fitness terrace complete with climbing wall.
Phase 2 is expected to be complete by Fall 2026 with an additional learning wing so the school can accommodate the three grade levels, a newly modernized cafeteria and kitchen (which is expected to be complete this winter), an expanded performing arts center, a renovated media center with maker space and broadcast studio, and a 4-classroom science and engineering suite built at Buford in 2013.
