Henrico School Board to discuss new specialty center at Henrico High, schools budget for 2025-2026
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Henrico School Board members will meet at 3 p.m. Thursday to review the new Henrico High School Center for Cybersecurity set to open for the 2026-2027 school year.
Henrico Schools currently hosts 2,578 students at 15 high school specialty centers, which rising ninth-graders from any part of the county can apply to each year. Recently, HCPS staff said they have seen a growing demand for information technology programming; Deep Run High School’s Center for Information Technology saw almost 400 applicants last year.
The new specialty center at Henrico High, like all other high school specialty centers, will offer a special curriculum to center students from ninth grade through 12th grade.
HCPS staff members also will present an update about expanding specialty centers at the meeting, with future goals including increasing the number of seats at the centers and ensuring that student enrollment reflects the diversity of the district.
HCPS Superintendent Amy Cashwell will also present the school board with her recommended budget for the 2025-2026 school year. Cashwell and Vithoulkas both have said that a large amount of Henrico County’s revenue from the data center industry this past year would go towards school initiatives such as raising staff salaries, expanding the “Opportunity Schools” initiative, and completing capital improvement projects on school buildings.
The school board will hold a public hearing on the recommended budget on Feb. 13 before they are set to vote on it Feb 27.
School board members also will hear an update about the process of drafting a new strategic plan for the district, which is set to be launched this June. HCPS has already set up a steering committee of 28 community members to help draft the new plan, which will be presented to the board in April.
Members of the public will have the opportunity to comment in-person or online at Thursday’s 6:30 p.m. monthly meeting.
Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.
