Westmoreland County

Public Schools

Samantha McKenney was attending a class at the Northern Neck Chesapeake Bay Governor’s School when her name was announced as a 2023 College Board National Recognition Awardee. When she returned to Westmoreland High School later that morning, congratulations were coming from her friends and teachers. Samantha had been named a National Rural and Small Town awardee.

Janet Garland, the new principal of Montross Middle School, has two guiding principles that she follows in her educational career; ALL students CAN and TEACHERS do important work. The new MMS leader says these principles are at the forefront of all her decisions. A long time educator, Mrs. Garland worked in Chesterfield County as a Special Education teacher and Assistant Principal. More recently she was a principal in Essex County.

A contingent of interested science students and family members recently departed Montross Middle School on a brisk Saturday morning for high adventure. Their mission was to release baby trout into the cold waters of Graves Mountain Lodge in Syria, Virginia. For the past seven months, the students of Mrs. Debbie Travis’ Life Science classes raised baby trout from eggs to fingerling size. The trip to Graves Mountain was the final step, which was required of the funding grant, Trout in the Classroom. The school was awarded this grant in 2022. The grant was funded by the Friends of the Rappahannock and the Environmental Protection Agency. The purpose of the grant was to support Environmental Education in the Rappahannock River Watershed.

The Class of 2023, all 98 of them, stepped onto the Eagle football field and made history by becoming the first graduating class of Westmoreland High School. They were cheered on by a raucous crowd of parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends. Both the WHS principal, William Bowen and Westmoreland Pubic Schools’ Superintendent, Dr. Michael Perry, reminded the students of this historical moment.

Twelve Montross Middle School students had an out of the world experience on April 21, 2023. The students had been selected to participate in a chat with Astronaut Steve Bowen. The ARRIS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station) program allows for radio contact between an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and a local school. Montross Middle School was one of nine schools selected in the United States for this unique opportunity.

On Saturday, March 25, 2023, Westmoreland High School hosted a concert featuring the local area’s top-ranked middle school and high school band members. Samuel Heiger, WHS band director and audition host, Bruce Passaretti, Montross Middle School band director worked exceeding hard with coordinating the massive undertaking of gathering 160 students (86 middle school students and 74 high school) from 22 regional schools in the Northern Neck/Middle Peninsula for the occasion.

It took eight rounds before a winner was declared for the Westmoreland County Public Schools’ spelling bee district championship. At the end of the evening, seventh grade Montross Middle School student, Bri’Elle Hall sealed her victory by spelling correctly the final word of the night, “prophetically.”

2023 Westmoreland County District Teacher of the Year, Marshall Brown