Walking down the halls, painted murals and club fliers decorate the walls separating each classroom. Although the white walls may seem intentional, they were never planned to be there in the first place.

According to Education Next, the open classroom concept was introduced and popularized throughout the 1970s as a more beneficial way to have students interact with one another. Instead of the walls students see in the building today, hallways were blocked off by the subschool offices and large partitions. Desks fit the students into their “classrooms.”

“It was all partitioned off and we could move them around as we wanted classrooms to change,” cosmetology teacher Lisa Climo said. “As long as teachers were just talking at a regular pace, you could know people were there, but that didn’t really bother you because the partitions had material that absorbed sound; the minute anyone in class started cheering, it went all the way around.”

As a graduate of CHS class of ‘78, Climo has seen the school from its very beginnings to now. According to Climo, the lack of walls allowed more space for multiple lecture halls where teachers took to strategies of engaging students by doing different visualization exercises.

When the school opened in 1973, subschools one, two, three and four were divided by grade instead of last name and known as blue, red, orange and yellow. Subschool Five was introduced later and started out as a comprehensive student service office before expanding to include special education services.

“It was the same staircases coming up and down and the subschool offices,” Climo said. “They had lecture halls upstairs and I remember they had steps for seating. The steps were wide, and you could lay down on them and listen to your lecture while hanging out.”

According to English Teacher Michael Murphy, who graduated from CHS in 1988 and started teaching in ‘92, changes in the building began in the ’80s. Per the November 1979 issue of The Purple Tide, the school began the process of constructing walls after students’ complaints of distractions from other classrooms.

One of the newer and most noticeable changes to the school building is the addition of the trailers or modulars. According to Fairfax County Public Schools, CHS has a student population of over 2,900 with about 700 individual students in each grade level. In order to accommodate the growing number of students in the school, trailers and modulars—shortened to mods by students and staff—were built outside.

“My graduating class was the biggest class up till that point, like we had 660,” Murphy said. “I know the recent classes are a little over 700, so not much difference really. So [the school] has been this big that long. I had health in a trailer out there. I know kids complain that they have to go all the way to the mod but at least they get to go outside for a minute and get a breath of fresh air and walk around someplace.”

Over the course of its 50 years, CHS has witnessed a number of changes to its academic structure. However, since its start, the school has recognized the connections between students’ wellness and academic performance. 

When the school opened its doors, it had 50 teachers, a stark contrast from the 230 teachers that operate the school now. 

“All the teachers were very young because they really went out trying to get people with an open mind,” Climo said. 

To further create this open environment, the school started a teacher-advisor program back in ‘73. All teachers and administrators served as advisors, and met with a group of 20 to 25 students each morning for 15 minutes, with Wednesday’s session extending to 40 minutes. Suggested conversation ideas included smoking lots, traffic patterns and the new media center (which served as a library, dark room and recreation center). 

The teacher-advisor program eventually evolved into the Charger Mentoring Program (ChaMP) in ‘99, which was formed in response to student anxieties after the Columbine shooting. ChaMP formed student groups that met for ten minutes each day, in classrooms, hallways and extra spaces, to focus on tolerance, conflict resolution and peaceful and healthy living. 

“I really liked ChaMP, it was designed to be like a homeroom class, with time used to do the logistical things, like the impact aid forms,” history teacher Angie Rollet, who started at CHS in 1996, said. “ChaMP didn’t have lessons like Advisory. I loved Advisory, too, but there’s also something really nice about ‘today we’re just going to play some games and have unstructured time’.”

These initiatives were met with mixed student opinions, with some denoting the program as a chance to open up to new people and focus on student wellbeing, and others saying the program could have been used for another purpose, according to the October 1999 issue of The Purple Tide. 

These varied receptions draw a parallel to more recent initiatives, like Advisory, which ran from 2020 to 2022, alongside the current program aimed at connecting students to teachers, Charger Connect. 

Another large aspect of the academic scene is the Chantilly Academy. Originally called the Vocational and Technical Education School, it initially had a more primary focus on technical classes aimed at providing students alternatives to college, as opposed to the current, more diverse spread of courses that incorporate careers directly after high school.

The vocational center turned Governor’s Academy for STEM still provides career-based classes for students. In addition, current offerings have expanded to encompass careers requiring formal education, like cloud computing, criminal justice and Korean, as well as original classes like auto collision and cosmetology.

“[Right now] the Chantilly Academy works with the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority to look at workforce trends in our area,” Chantilly Academy administrator Scott Settar said. “That’s where we start when we look at our classes. We offer students industry certification so they can go directly into the workforce if they want to.”

According to the school’s beliefs, the administration strives  to provide a comprehensive program that stimulates academic excellence in the arts and sciences, business, technology, and vocational studies. In line with this belief, the school currently offers an array of foreign language and electives classes to complement core classes.

“[When I was a student,] Chantilly told everyone they were going to try and cater educational needs for the students,” Climo said. “My sister was super brainy, and the math department challenged her. We all found our niche, and Chantilly really helped us cater to that.”

The school’s cultural scene has been anything but static over decades of structural and academic change. After some deliberation, representatives of the original incoming classes decided that the school’s colors would be orange, white and brown and that the sports teams would be known as the Crusaders.

It was not until just before the academic year started that backlash from the rest of the students prompted a special vote by the Fairfax County School Board and the school accordingly adopted its current colors and mascot. Since then, students have showcased their school pride by organizing dances, staging “Celebrate Chantilly” weeks and introducing customs like senior privileges.