District overview
Albemarle County Public Schools
How Albemarle County Public Schools is funded and governed, and the year it lost its superintendent.
Who decides, and what happened to the people deciding?
Albemarle County Public Schools is run by an elected School Board: six members chosen by magisterial district and one elected at large. The board hires and can dismiss the superintendent, adopts policy, and sends a funding request to the county Board of Supervisors, which holds the taxing power. In the year to September 2026 that governing structure was tested. In June the board asked Superintendent Dr. Matthew Haas to resign and named an acting superintendent, Dr. Chandra Hayes. In July it adopted a new policy on professional boundaries and sexual misconduct, and in August it voted unanimously to hire an outside law firm to investigate how the division responds to allegations of sexually inappropriate conduct by staff. The board chair announced her own resignation at that same August meeting, and the at-large seat is currently vacant.
Six districts and one at-large seat
Members represent the Jack Jouett, Rio, Rivanna, Samuel Miller, Scottsville and White Hall districts, with one at-large seat that is currently vacant. Dr. Rebecca Berlin of White Hall chairs the board.
The county holds the purse
The board adopts a funding request that the county Board of Supervisors must fund. In April 2026 the county proposed holding $12.8 million in an undesignated capital reserve, which opened a hole in the board's balanced request the week before budget adoption.
Pay is now bargained, not simply budgeted
The board approved collective bargaining agreements with the Albemarle Education Association 7-0 in February 2026. The fiscal 2027 budget commits $7.8 million to compensation and $4 million to working conditions under that agreement before other choices are made.
Leadership is temporary while the review runs
An acting superintendent is making decisions while an outside firm investigates the division's policies and practices, with findings promised to the board in 60-day instalments.
None of this establishes that any particular allegation is true, or that the division's schools are unsafe. The board ordered a review precisely because it does not yet know where its systems failed, and it asked the firm to look at the systems rather than relitigate a single case.
Where the division stands
Context, not a current division count. A speaker in August 2026 referred to more than 14,000 ACPS students.
Plus $4 million for working conditions improvements, also under the agreement.
Made alongside $3.3 million of new proposals. A month earlier the gap presented to the board was $6.1 million.
The school fund is one fund within the division's finances, not the whole operating budget. An additional 0.25 percent salary increase was approved in July at a cost of about half a million dollars.
Context for the debate over whether to build a fourth high school, which speakers put at around a quarter of a billion dollars. No decision to build had been taken in the collected record.
A teacher-run survey reported to the board, not a division survey: 100 percent of responding high school teachers and 96.7 percent of middle school teachers said no.
Staff said the existing line had not kept pace with materials costs, leaving inconsistent access, and that Advanced Placement textbooks had gone unreplaced for several years.
Major projects
Independent investigation and the new professional boundaries policy
Under wayAfter asking the superintendent to resign in June 2026, the board adopted a policy on professional boundaries and sexual misconduct in July, amended it again in August, and voted 7-0 on August 4 to have the law firm Harmon Claytor investigate recent personnel matters and how the division responds to allegations of sexually inappropriate conduct by staff.
- Board directs a review of policies on student clubs and outside speakers
- Board asks the superintendent to resign; policy review announced
- Professional boundaries and sexual misconduct policy adopted
- Independent investigation ordered 7-0; board chair announces her resignation
- Policy AG adopted with redlined modifications
Funding
Division operating budget; the board directed the superintendent and chief legal officer to engage the firm
Mountain View Upper Elementary and ACE Academy at Lambs Lane
Opening for 2026-27Two new buildings open for 2026-27. Mountain View Upper Elementary School takes the older grades, and the existing Mountain View Elementary becomes Mountain View Primary. The ACE Academy campus at Lambs Lane includes a culinary lab that Albemarle High School students will also use.
- Storm water and utility work complete at Mountain View; ACE Academy progressing
- Christine Peterson approved as principal of Mountain View Primary School
- Operating costs of both buildings carried in the proposed budget
- ACE Academy described as a hub with new equipment and a culinary lab
Funding
Capital improvement programme; operating costs carried in the fiscal 2027 budget
Whether to build a fourth high school
UnresolvedThe board has repeatedly discussed a new high school, which speakers put at around a quarter of a billion dollars. Supporters point to 8,000 approved housing units in northern Albemarle; opponents point to the division's own projection of only about 146 students over capacity across the three existing high schools ten years out. No decision to build had been taken in the collected record.
- Speakers argue a new high school would fill within ten years if funded now
- Preliminary $53.7 million estimate for a preschool centre; land acquisition retained in the capital plan
- Board discusses the cost of a new high school and business partnerships
- Speakers challenge the capacity case for a 1,500-seat school
Funding
Would require capital improvement programme funding and county borrowing; unfunded
The five-year grading policy
Open, no decisionA grading policy adopted five years earlier came up for renewal. A teacher-run survey reported to the board found 301 of 304 responding secondary teachers opposed readopting it unchanged for another five years. Teachers returned to public comment on it repeatedly through the spring, and in August board members acknowledged it remained outstanding alongside the events of the spring.
- Teacher survey results presented; process criticised as rushed
- Teachers again address the board on the policy
- Further public comment on the grading policy
- Board acknowledges the grading policy remains an outstanding issue
Funding
No direct cost identified in the collected record
Recent news
Built from the division's official School Board Meetings YouTube playlist, refreshed weekly. Twenty-one board meeting recordings from September 11, 2025 to August 13, 2026 were reviewed.
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