Chantilly through the ages

 

By Danielle Olson and Colleen Cook
April 25, 2008

 

Take a look at Chantilly High School right now. Walk around for just five minutes through the hallways, classrooms and even outdoors. It’s a fairly modern facility with thousands of diverse students attending every day. Has it always been this way?

 

Back when the school was opened, Chantilly was a rural community with houses lining Stringfellow Road, and Route 50 was little more than a four-lane country road. The building itself underwent a dramatic renovation in the late eighties and still has traces of the former model.

 

Imagine having a bland array of Friday night activities to choose from unless you wanted to drive miles away just to watch a movie on the big screen.

 

Phrases like “open classrooms” and “smoking courts” mean little to the students that fill the school today, but to many teachers who were former students, they mean much more.

 

Many surprises and memories reside in the history of the school we attend today. By learning more about its past, the social and structural features of the Chantilly known and enjoyed today can be better understood.

 

'70s

“At the time we had the newest of everything. It was sort of like Westfield; brand-new. Everything was new, people were excited. I think everyone was really proud of the school.”
Lisa Climo
Cosmetology teacher

 

 

 

 

'80s

“We still had farms around here. It was before they plowed everything up to be a subdivision. When I moved here, the geographic area was far bigger. The area was still rural.”
Mary Kay Downes
Yearbook adviser and English teacher

 

 

 

 

 

 

'90s

“I started teaching here back in the mid-’90s. There was no policeman when my son graduated in 1994. A small minority of the student population is less focused now. It’s still a good school; if it had changed too much I wouldn’t be here.”
Pardee Abadie
Substitute teacher

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now

“High school is still high school. You still worry about people liking you. The basic problem is still: Who am I and why don’t people like me?”
Ed Monk
Drama teacher

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Culture

 

Before the construction of many of the buildings and houses in place now, Chantilly was a large farmland.

 

“We were this little school in the country,” said Cosmetology teacher Lisa Climo, who graduated from Chantilly in 1978.

 

Because Chantilly was built in a hurry and as an experimental school in the country, other, permanent and long-standing schools regarded it as such.

 

“It was considered by others to be a redneck school,” said English teacher and yearbook adviser Mary Kay Downes, who started teaching at the school in 1987. “In fact, Oakton used to have ‘Redneck Chantilly Day’ and they’d all dress up like country hicks. The reason being we still had farms around here.”

 

Given the rural setting, a limited amount of opportunities for activity existed in the area for teenagers, besides the school.

 

“There was nothing to do here,” said drama teacher Ed Monk, who graduated from the school in 1978. “If you wanted to see a movie, you would go to Tysons Corner. Greenbriar shopping center was much smaller. There were three places. Where Popeye’s is, it was called Gino’s. There was a pizza place down in Brookfield, and there was a pizza place in Greenbriar Shopping Center. And that was it.”

 

Because of the lack of entertainment, such as movies and restaurants, many students used the school as a place to socialize.

 

“They had dances at the school,” Monk said. “After every home [football game] there was a dance and everybody went because there was nothing else to do, unless you wanted to drive to Tyson’s.”

 

The cultural and religious range is another main difference.

 

“We have far more diversity than we had before,” Downes said. “When I first came here, there wasn’t really even an Asian community.”

 

Though many school societal rules have changed since 1973, the basic principles of adolescence are the same.

 

Spirit

	'70's	'80's	'90's	now

PHOTOS CONTRIBUTED BY ODYSSEY

The evolution of school spirit has coincided with changes that have taken place in the school over the past three decades.

Though some traditions like parades and shed-painting have remained the same, others have changed.

“They had a donkey basketball game,” drama teacher Ed Monk said. “The principal fell off and broke his leg, and that was really funny. ‘Chantilly Lace’ was the theme song. That’s the same.”

Though the appearance of the school mascot has shifted dramatically over the years, the school pride that it stands for remains the same.

 

structure

 

When Chantilly was first created in 1973, poor construction caused it to crumble and fall into disrepair over time until the 1990’s renovation.

 

Yearbook adviser and English teacher Mary Kay Downes began teaching at Chantilly in 1987 and recalled the details of the renovation which began in the late eighties and ended in the early nineties.

 

“At one point my first year, I could see through the crack in the wall that snow was coming in,” Downes said. “So the renovation was something that took a couple of years to do.”

 

One of the many structural differences that changed since its opening was the “open-school” concept. At the beginning of the school’s life, the entire upstairs floor was open without walls, and partitions were put in shortly thereafter.

 

According to drama teacher Ed Monk, who attended as a student from 1978 to 1983 and came back to teach in 1990, the open classrooms caused inconveniences for many classes trying to learn. In order to watch a movie, he said, you had to turn off the lights in three other classrooms, disrupting teaching and distracting students.

 

Chantilly began as a secondary school, which means that the school included seventh and eighth graders. Subschools were divided up by grade, not alphabetically by last name, into red, blue, orange and yellow; each had its own color-coordinated lockers.

 

In addition to the school itself changing, Rocky Run Middle School opened in 1980 for seventh and eighth graders who attended Chantilly when it was deconsolidated from a secondary school.

 

The school has become far more modernized with updated construction. The institution of walls on the second floor, replacement of the library and addition of the Academy wing are some of the major improvements.