By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
The next capital project is officially in the pipeline for Rockingham County schools, as the school board approved a nearly $15.6 million contract to begin updating and expanding McGaheysville Elementary School.
What started as renovations when Superintendent Larry Shifflett presented the project to the school board last year has morphed into an expansion of the 56-year-old school. It could be poised to absorb more students as county leaders expect a population boom in the area southeast of Harrisonburg over the next few years.
Nearby Cub Run and Peak View elementary schools, just minutes away, are at the heart of those demographic shifts. Shifflett has suggested increasing enrollment at those schools, using mobile units to hold more students, increasing class sizes or redistricting as ways to spread out the impact.
The contract, awarded to Broadway-based Lantz Construction Company, brings the total cost of the McGaheysville expansion and renovations to $18 million. The oldest part, built in 1969, has a heating, venting and cooling system that’s more than 50 years old. It also needs asbestos abatement and fixes to the kitchen, windows and electric circuits. The school was last renovated and expanded in 1995.
The school board is weighing several other renovation and expansion projects, including at Elkton Middle School and Spotswood High School. They may also build a new school.
Discussion over course offerings
Family and consumer sciences (FCS) is the only area of career and technical education that won’t offer an eighth-grade course as a high-school credit – something board members are interested in fixing, but will have to wait to do so.
The class in question, “Foundations of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources,” is taught as an elective by an FCS teacher but counts as an agriculture credit.
Nicholas Zimmerman, an FCS teacher at Elkton Middle School, found it inequitable to offer opportunities for high-school-level instruction in middle school for some topic areas but not others.
“All CTE areas should have the opportunity for a high-school-level class in the eighth grade,” Zimmerman said, “or no CTE classes should provide an opportunity for students to receive high-school-level credit in the eighth grade.”
That will take planning and likely won’t happen in time for the 2026-27 school year, Shifflett said. He told the board he’d want to be “very thoughtful” about it. Offering too many high-school credits in middle school could usher the learning timeline and make it so more students would graduate a year early, he said.
“We’re going to have to work on some curriculum alignment to make that happen,” Shifflett said.
The board approved the course catalog as is for the 2026-27 school year.
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