Rosalind Cobb Scott’s son Isaiah was set to start his final year at G.L.H. Johnson Elementary School in Danville when she heard about Activ8 STEM Academy.
Activ8 was launched in 2023 to offer hands-on learning in science, technology, engineering and math. The program is available for students in grades three through seven under the city’s School Choice initiative.
School Choice provides programming options for pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade students. Choices are tailored to specific interests, like science, performing arts, foreign languages and trade skills.
Activ8 sounded like a good option, Cobb Scott said. The school district’s low test scores had remained a concern for her, and she wanted Isaiah to be pushed to his full potential.
“He wasn’t being challenged,” Cobb Scott said. “He got a little disruptive sometimes after finishing his work. … It was a breeze for him.”
A seventh grader, Isaiah is in his last year at Activ8. Next school year, he’ll attend Westwood Middle School.
Read more: Why did Danville’s test scores drop?
Tuesday’s story: The closure of Danville’s textile mill almost 20 years ago was followed by a drop in student test scores. The city is still working on a comeback.
Cobb Scott, who is PTA treasurer at Activ8, said she has both academic and social concerns about her son leaving the program. At Activ8, class sizes are much smaller and the curriculum is more rigorous, she said.
“When he started [at Activ8] we got our first C,” she said. “We haven’t gotten any more of those, and he knows how to study now. … But I know next year, his class sizes are going to go up.”
Still, the district’s School Choice programs have been expanding, with other programming introduced in recent years around chronic absenteeism and tutoring, and a focus on increasing accreditation and launching capital improvement projects.
These are all efforts within the school division to improve student achievement, which has been well below state averages for many years and is only recently starting to gradually improve.
However, the most significant change to a school system must start on a community level, said Brendan Bartanen, a professor of education at the University of Virginia.
There’s been “a concentrated effort” to improve education in Danville in recent years, said City Manager Ken Larking.
For many years, education has been one of the three top priorities of the city council, Larking said, alongside economic development and reducing crime.
“Lately, the mayor keeps saying it’s the number one priority,” he said.
But it’s not easy. Improving education is a big lift, Larking said.
“It’s easy to get discouraged early on in the effort,” he said. “You have to be focused and you have to be persistent.”
A big lift: How to improve student achievement
The Stanford Education Data Archive measured student test score levels and socioeconomic status in localities across the country over nearly 20 years.
In Virginia, Danville and Petersburg ranked lowest in socioeconomic status for students, according to this data set. Both localities also historically rank below national averages for test scores, according to the data.
Localities with above-average socioeconomic status also tended to have above-average test scores, according to this data set.
Larking believes that efforts to boost the economy in Danville will help its school system.
“If we’re, as a community, creating economic opportunities for people who live here, where they can get a good job that pays a decent salary, and that financial worry goes away, parents can focus more on their children and make sure they have opportunities to be successful,” he said.
The city has experienced a rate of economic growth in recent years unlike it has ever seen before, even during the years when the tobacco and textile industries were flourishing. It has attracted major industry and opened a full-scale casino resort, boosting both employment and revenue for the city.
Population has rebounded slightly, up from an all-time low of about 40,000 in 2019 to about 42,000 in 2024.
Growth means more resources for city initiatives like public education, Larking said. The casino resort is expected to bring in about $35 million in gaming tax revenue for the city, and about $4 million of that is earmarked for public education in the city’s budget.
That $4 million is part of a total $34.3 million that the city is contributing toward public education this year. The casino funds going toward education are earmarked for bonuses, school bus aides, elementary school security, early tuition costs, utility and transportation expenses and security enhancements.
“A lot of localities in high-poverty areas don’t have the funds to continue to invest in their school systems,” he said. “The fact that Danville not only has the ability to do it, but is actually doing it, that gives me hope that over time, we’ll see results.”
Because improving the school system is part of Danville’s revitalization goals, the city’s local contribution to the school district’s budget has risen significantly since revitalization efforts began.
From 2000 to 2016, the city contributed about the same amount to the school system just about every year — between $17 million and $18.5 million. This was consistently around a third of the district’s total budget amount, with the rest coming from state, federal and other miscellaneous funds, according to the school system.
Beginning during the 2016-2017 school year, when revitalization efforts were in full swing and the city had more money to spend, that amount started to increase gradually. By the 2024-2025 school year, the local contribution had grown to $28 million.
For the current school year, Danville’s school board requested $32.4 million from the city council for school operational costs — a $4.6 million increase over the previous year and more in local funding than ever before. The city council unanimously approved the budget.
The state also will also be contributing $4.7 million more than last year, totaling a $9.3 million increase overall. The school board’s total budget is $121.9 million, which includes federal, state and local dollars.
“One might look at that and say, ‘Wow that’s a lot of money to add to the school system,’” Larking said. “The reason for that is we really need to have quality teachers and a good student-to-teacher ratio.”
There are also capital improvement projects underway, financed by a 1% increase in sales tax that was approved by voters through a referendum in 2021.
Four schools will see completed renovation projects, totaling $228 million, over the next few years.
“These projects would’ve been years out had we not had [the sales tax increase],” said Angela Hairston, who has been Danville’s schools superintendent since 2020, at the school system’s annual report presentation Oct. 7.
“This has changed the trajectory of our community relative to public education,” she said.
An $88 million renovation project at George Washington High School was completed in early August.
At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, senior Braelynn Adams said the renovations and new programming will give “future students opportunities that we haven’t always had in the past.”
Arnett Hills Elementary School, the first new school to be built in the district in 30 years, was also completed this summer. Students began attending the new school this fall.
Despite the low test scores, community support for Danville Public Schools hasn’t flagged, Larking said.
“Across the spectrum of demographics … there are a lot of reasons to be proud of Danville Public Schools, and there’s no reason why it can’t be back to where it was,” he said. “If we have the same type of strong economy that existed during the heyday of Dan River Mills, there should be no reason why we can’t be the school system of choice in the region again.”
School division efforts
While school systems can’t single-handedly remediate low test scores without other community-wide efforts, “we should never let schools off the hook,” Bartanen said.
There are efforts within the school division that are important to improving student achievement, too: hiring good teachers, offering competitive salaries, providing wraparound services like tutoring and additional educational resources for students. arn
The school division is also working to decrease dropout rates, which hovered around or below 10% over the past decade, but spiked to about 17% in 2023. Graduation rates remained roughly the same — 70% to 80% — between 2008 and 2024.
Some of these efforts, like Saturday school to address the effects of absenteeism, were launched during the 2023-2024 school year with funding from Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s “All In VA” program, which provided $418 million to public schools statewide to combat COVID-era learning loss.
Danville received $3.8 million to spend over three years.
Danville schools have seen a significant increase in attendance since this programming began.
About 88% of students attended school regularly during the 2024-2025 school year, according to the school district. That’s up from 71% during the 2021-2022 school year.
At five schools in the district, including Activ8, fewer than 10% of students were chronically absent.
All these things together are helping to gradually increase test scores, Hairston said. “We feel that, for the first time in many years, we are headed in the right direction.”
As the economy boosts student achievement, schools will also boost the economy, Larking said.
“Having a high-quality school system is very important to be able to attract talent and have families live in your community. … It drives the housing market in a lot of ways,” he said. “We’re looking at multiple ways to make it a good idea for folks to choose to live in Danville. That, of course, includes education.
“Then the downward spiral reverses and it becomes an upward spiral. But going from where we are to where we want to be is a big lift,” he said.
The uphill climb in Danville
The Danville school system entered into a corrective action plan with the Virginia Department of Education in 2020 after a majority of its schools lost accreditation. During the 2019-2020 school year, nine out of 11 schools in the district were not fully accredited.
The state evaluates factors including graduation rates, dropout rates and academic achievement to determine a school’s accreditation status. Low-performing schools will receive additional support from VDOE and may need to develop a corrective action plan.
Danville’s plan aimed to both increase accreditation and improve student achievement by emphasizing reading and math skills and working to increase graduation rates.
This involved redesigning curriculum, adding programming around workforce and college readiness and providing professional development opportunities for staff.
Accreditation in Danville Public Schools has increased under the Education Department support plan, which will remain in place until all schools are accredited for at least two years.
The 2024-2025 academic year was the first time in a decade that five of Danville’s schools were accredited at the same time.
Teacher salaries are a piece of the puzzle
The school district is working on a pay study to compare teacher wages with those in 10 other Virginia localities. After several postponements, the report is scheduled to be finished by this fall.
Larking’s budget for the city includes putting about $2.2 million of the local funding toward pay increases, informed by the ongoing pay study. Another $1.4 million will go toward funding other salary increases and bonuses.
“What’s going to be the most important factor for distinguishing high performing school systems is the quality of teachers,” Bartanen said. “Teachers are the ones in the classroom on a day-to-day basis, providing instruction to students.”
In Danville, as in most localities, a teacher’s salary is dependent on prior experience and degrees.
For example, a new teacher with a bachelor’s degree could make just under $51,000 during the first year in the classroom, according to the 2025-2026 teacher salary scale for city schools.
This amount increases with each year of experience and with higher levels of education, according to the teacher salary scale for city schools. The highest possible salary for a teacher in Danville is just under $88,000, an amount that requires 29 years of teaching experience, a doctoral degree and an annual contract that includes work during the summer months.
The teacher salary range in Pittsylvania County is similar, with a minimum salary of $47,500 and a maximum of about $82,000, according to the 2025-2026 teacher salary scales for county schools.
Danville’s teacher salaries are comparable to other similarly sized localities in the state, Bartanen said.
Danville Public Schools recently raised minimum teacher salaries in increments from $39,000 to $51,000.
Hairston said raising these minimums will lead to better classroom instruction and increased engagement from students and families.
“A community cannot undervalue the impact of a great teacher,” she said.