On May 16th, 2024, a monumental event occurred for the students and staff of the Arlington Career Center. At 2 pm, students and teachers left their classrooms in order to watch the groundbreaking in the Montessori Public School of Arlington field on Highland St. The event unintentionally showcased the different opportunities our school offers. There were camera crews from TV Production, singers from the PEP Program, a color guard from JROTC, food prepared by Culinary students, and a shovel-delivering robot from the robotics team.

The groundbreaking was an event that will kick off the construction of the new building for all the programs housed inside the Arlington Career Center building, in addition to a brand new building for the Arlington Community High School. The building will open some time around 2026-27 with many new spaces and tools to improve learning, collaboration, and project-based learning. Project-based learning is something that many students at Arlington Tech are familiar with. For those who haven’t heard of it, Project-Based Learning (PBL) is when students learn through hands-on projects, such as creating a board game based on the storyline of the Odyssey in English or constructing hydroponics systems to learn about food waste in Engineering.

After feedback was collected from students, a team was formed with students and teachers to help finalize the choices. A couple hours after the groundbreaking, a school board meeting was held where the name would be decided for the new building. The school board held a vote in order to decide between the names Arlington Career and Technical Center, Campus at Columbia Pike, Freedman’s Academy, Grace Hopper Academy, The Pike Academy, and keeping Arlington Career Center. After a unanimous decision, the new building will now be called the Grace Hopper Center. 

During the groundbreaking, we went around and asked teachers and students their thoughts on what makes a ground name and how they feel about the new name.

Mr. Sall, a math teacher known for his words of wisdom, said, “The meaning behind the name is important because it shows how people feel.”

Eimi Tuttle, a 10th grader, said that “It was fine how it was before when it was just ACC, it was familiar.”

There were mixed opinions on the new name for the building, but people mostly thought it was fine before the change, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, thought that a change was nice.