George Mason, school districts to launch data science lab school

George Mason University and several Shenandoah Valley school districts are partnering to launch a regional lab school in August 2025 that will focus on data literacy to provide students with training in this high-demand field.

The Shenandoah Valley Rural Regional College Partnership Laboratory School for Data Science, Computing and Applications will be located at the Dowell J. Howard Center, which provides vocational and alternative education in Frederick County.

It will “empower Virginia students with data literacy skills and data science education, which is very much needed for the 21st century workforce,” says Padmanabhan “Padhu” Seshaiyer, George Mason’s associate dean for the College of Science and a mathematical sciences professor.

Students will have opportunities to do research, apply for apprenticeships and internships, and earn certifications and micro-credentials in data analytics. They can also earn associate’s degrees and college credits.

Sixty Frederick 11th and 12th graders will attend classes at the center, while 40 students from the City of Winchester and Clarke, Fauquier, Page, Shenandoah and Warren counties will attend virtually next year, and 50 sophomores will be given the option to attend as juniors, Seshaiyer says.

Teachers will come from George Mason and the school districts, with the goal of having one teacher per core subject, plus a lab school coordinator. The target pupil-teacher ratio will be 20:1, says Frederick Superintendent George C. Hummer.

Approved in May by the Virginia Board of Education, the school will receive approximately $2.5 million in grant funding over its first four years. It is one of 14 lab schools in Virginia, partnerships between the state’s higher education institutions and school systems. They’re designed to introduce students to potential career paths after high school.

For the DSCA lab school, students will learn how to interpret and communicate with data, which can be used to detect new patterns and respond to changing customer behavior at businesses.

Funding for the school includes $907,000 in the first year for startup costs, followed by $679,000 in the second year and a little over $100,000 in years three and four. After the initial grant period, school districts will need to determine if they’ll continue supporting the lab school, because they’ll be funding it, says Hummer.

“We’re hopeful that there will be some [state] dollars left over after year four, so that we can continue to maybe do a split, which would be nice,” he says.