The chickens and goats and rabbits all got loving attention at Frank H. Peterson Academies of Technology, but the Westside Jacksonville school has another draw now that Principal Jessica Mastromatto called “a game-changer.”
The new rabbit storage room was built with a drainage system that lets a human tender quickly hose down rows of off-white rabbit chambers and remove bunny poop whose odor can be distracting in a high school.
“Rabbits stink,” Mastromatto explained as she walked visitors through the magnet school’s new Agriscience and Veterinary Assistance Academy facilities, which were formally opened by a June 2 ribbon-cutting.
The new classrooms, a mock surgery suite and animal holding areas were installed through a $2.3 million state grant meant to help the career-focused magnet high school graduate young people trained for agriscience and animal-care jobs that are increasingly in demand.
Local hiring was mentioned as a consideration in March, when Tennessee-based Lincoln Memorial University opened a medical school in Orange Park and said it would be opening an adjacent veterinary school as well.
Mastromatto said a Peterson graduate is enrolling in Lincoln’s veterinary program, which already operates in other states, and that she expects Peterson will develop a connection with the Orange Park campus as that operation evolves.
More immediately, Peterson students can earn training certifications for work as veterinary assistants as well as in agriscience.
Student Abbygail Boom, a rising senior who is president of Peterson’s Future Farmers of America organization, said she wants to go to a vet school but likes that she can get assistant certification in high school and hands-on preparation for a paying job right now.
Boom, who grew up raising pigs on several acres her family owns in the city’s Northside, said she’d like to put what she learns to work in Jacksonville.
About 200 Peterson students are part of the academy for agriscience and vet assistance, but the program’s facilities just weren’t adequate before a makeover started in September 2025 at two buildings that had held workout equipment and locker rooms.
Construction crews replaced the buildings with 8,000 square feet of classrooms, labs and office space plus a pole barn, six animal stalls and a fenced, outdoor animal-training area.
In a room for anatomy lessons, an Anatomage table with 3-D representations of animals’ muscles, bones and organs uses the same technology medical school and nursing students use to learn the human body.
In another corner of the building, a room labeled “rabbit storage” houses caged areas where rabbits can be groomed before competitions and a hose (it hasn’t been installed yet) is supposed to be used to wash any waste into drains.
“I’ve never seen a sign that said ‘rabbit storage’,” Superintendent Christopher Bernier said as people cycled through a learning environment that’s just a little different.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: For hot careers, Duval high school opens space to train vet assistants
Reporting by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union | USA TODAY Network
