From afar, you might think the only thing happening inside this 120-year-old house is a quilting bee or a Harry Potter cosplaying game.
But if you got closer to the door at 15101 Washington Street in Haymarket, they would hear the sounds of blues riffs, rhythmic drumming, and powerful vocals, all of which make up the sounds of rock and roll. Once they passed through the doorway, you knew that you'd entered the School of Rock.
The School of Rock opened in Haymarket in July 2017 as part of a franchise first founded in Philadelphia in 1998. Since its founding, the school boasts over 350 locations worldwide with over 40,000 students.
According to manager Mary Hitchcock, the school currently has 12 teachers and is growing and seeking to hire more.
The school goes beyond the typical one-on-one lessons between student and teacher with the instrument of choice. They also teach from their eponymously named School of Rock method. This method not only includes one-on-one instruction but group instruction, stage performance, learning music theory methods, and learning one song at a time.
This method struggled under the Coronavirus pandemic and, like many other businesses, had to adapt to the situation at hand.
"Like it was for everyone else, the pandemic was a tough transition," says Hitchcock. " We did switch to online lessons and continued our group rehearsals online. We explored many new ways to approach teaching and convey concepts that we now use in person!"
With the pandemic winding down, the school has been able to return not just to in-person teaching but to live performances by its students. According to Hitchcock, the school's house band has four shows in May. The school is offering summer instruction not just in instrument instruction but also in songwriting and recording.
"Currently, we are offering many summer camps which are filling up quickly, one of which is a songwriting camp and recording camp, " says Hitchcock. "Many of our teachers have a music technology background and have taught production and mixing."
School of Rock is currently preparing its performance groups for two shows in May, focusing on popular rock groups The Beatles and AC/DC and hair metal bands like Motley Crue, Poison, and others.
School of Rock will perform at 90 Grados located at 8509 Rixlew Lane in Manassas at 11 a.m. on Saturday, May 14, and then at the Craftworx Taproom located at 5615 Wellington Drive in Gainesville at 11 a.m. on Saturday, May 21.
A new partnership between Virginia Tech and Northern Virginia Community College offers students in the Washington, D.C. area a path to a degree in cybersecurity.
Originally launched by Virginia Tech in the fall of 2019, the joint program known as BIT-Cyber is a work-based course of study in cybersecurity and analytics within the university's Business Information Technology major. The work-based method of teaching allows students to put what they learn in the classroom into practice with real-life experiences.
NVCC has been expanding its footprint in the tech field. The community college announced in March 2022 that a $5.1 million data center lab would be constructed at its Woodbridge campus as part of the school's Workforce Development Center.
The goal of the program seeks to fill some of the 64,000 openings in the cybersecurity field in the Greater Washington D.C. area, including Northern Virginia.
Because of the program's online accessibility, many who would not have been able to take such classes without physically attending the university's Blacksburg campus have benefited from the program.
According to an impact study by Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business, 80 percent of those beneficiaries have been born outside of the U.S. The majority of the students, about 95 percent, are citizens of the United States while the remaining students hold green cards.
"It is my privilege to help serve a population that would not normally have an opportunity to access a Virginia Tech undergraduate degree," said Program Director Svetlana Filiatreau in a comment on the Virginia Tech website. "BIT-Cyber has positioned Virginia Tech to reach a very diverse student population, who are often unable to come to our Blacksburg campus due to their unique circumstances."
Since the coronavirus pandemic, educational institutions such as Virginia Tech and NVCC have further adapted their online class offerings in order to accommodate students. Many of these offerings have benefited students across the social-economic spectrum giving them access they may not have gotten prior to the pandemic.
Potomac Local News recently reported on Germanna Community College's College Everywhere program which has shown high success rates among male students, particularly African-American male students. The number of male students graduating from educational institutions like Virginia Tech and Germanna had been on the decline for several decades.
The Fredericksburg City Council is finalizing plans to reduce the speed in the downtown business district from 25 mph to 20 mph.
If passed, this change would affect roads going through the downtown business district which includes Caroline, Sophia, William streets, and Lafayette Boulevard. Those streets are among the most well-traveled in the city and have a high volume of pedestrians.
Before the speed reduction's passage, Ward 2 Councilmember Jonathan Gerlach expressed concerns he'd received from constituents about traffic safety and what other solutions Fredericksburg would be exploring in near future. Gerlach was in favor of the speed reduction and voted for its passage.
City Manager Timothy Baroody responded to Gerlach that regular talks are being held about creating safe environments around Fredericksburg. Possibilities such as reversing one-way traffic into two-way traffic and creating additional bump-out structures to reduce speed not just downtown but throughout the city are on the table.
Baroody also informed the council that the Fredericksburg City Police Department has increased the number of speeding citations, issuing nearly 1,000 since October 2021.
Ward 1 Councilmember Jason Graham also spoke on the issue and offered other potential options that could be used on top of speed reductions that could improve public safety.
"The number of accidents and fatalities are increasing, not just in Fredericksburg but around the country," said Graham. "The citations are good, but they're not enough. I hope we take this as an intermediate step, there are other options we can pursue such as designing the streets for the speed we want. We've got a lot of options that are not just for safety but for economic development."
Economic development and public safety are key concerns of the city council that have intertwined with each other over the years as Fredericksburg continues to grow.
According to police spokeswoman Sarah Morris, the reduction in the speed limit has been a regular conversation over the last several years and was helped along by a grant that was gained by the city's Parks, Recreation, and Events Department which it received in 2018.
The grant was used in part to develop plans and shape policies to better manage public safety in the downtown area as a public venue that is quickly emerging. Morris says that the speed reduction falls in line with plans the city has had to improve safety as events such as the construction of Riverside Park and the rebuilding of the Chatham Bridge have proceeded.
"Fredericksburg's historic Downtown is buzzing with new investment and activity, and the City wishes to proactively maintain safety," says Morris. "This new initiative will be complementary to the study soon to be underway that will evaluate "one way" to "two way" street conversions. The City is also analyzing additional traffic calming measures in efforts to create multimodal harmony with the traveling public."
The Fredericksburg City Council will make its final decision on the matter at their meeting on May 1. If approved, the new ordinance would go into effect on July 1, 2022.
Yesli Vega, a Prince William Board of County Supervisors member, is running for office in the state's new 7th Congressional District.
Established by the Virginia Supreme Court in December 2021, the district includes eastern Prince William County (east of Hoadly Road), Stafford County, and Fredericksburg.
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The Rappahannock Area Office on Youth will receive funding from Stafford County to fund substance abuse treatment programs.
The Stafford County Board of Supervisors approved $88,623 to fund the creation of a substance abuse therapist position for one year. The cash infusion allows the youth services program to resume.
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The Stafford County Board of Supervisors has voted to hikes taxes on hotel stays and  and rates for sewer and water.
The county's Transient Occupancy Tax, a tax on hotel stays, will increase from five to seven percent on July 1. The increase is expected to provide an additional $766,250 in revenue for the county.
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[Updated] Stafford County Public Schools has received an offer from a solar-power company to install a solar array on a high school.
The county's School Board was briefed on the plan during a meeting on April 12 that Sun Tribe Solar, a solar company in Charlottesville, wants to install the array on the roof of North Stafford High School. The proposal from Sun Tribe would create an arrangement that would cover the financing, design, construction, and operation of the array. The government school division would pay for the electricity generated by the array but would not be responsible for its upkeep.
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Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) visited Fredericksburg as part of a week-long tour of Virginia to talk about a recently passed infrastructure bill. The Commonwealth will receive funds for transit projects.
Warner walked the recently rehabilitated Chatham Bridge to promote a bi-partisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act package, which contains $537 million to repair and replace bridges in Virginia over five years. Virginia will receive $232 million for projects to improve transit from the act's total $1.2 trillion in funds.
According to Warner,530 bridges in the Commonwealth need repair or replacement.
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Taylor began his tenure as county superintendent in December 2021, replacing Dr. Scott Kizner, who served stepped down in September 2021 after four years on the job.
In his presentation to the Stafford School Board on Tuesday, April 12, Taylor explained how he spent his first months as superintendent engaging with the community and listening to their concerns.
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Stafford County will use money proffered for elementary schools to pay for new turf fields at Colonial Forge and North Stafford high schools.
The county's Board of Supervisors voted 6-1 to use $3 million to pay for the new fields. Colonial Forge and North Stafford are the only two of five county high schools that don't have turf fields. The Stafford County School Board of Supervisors has approved a contract with FieldTurf USA, an American-Canadian company specializing in such fields, to install the fields.
