Christine is no longer the headmaster, and Vaughan Fitzgerald arrives at Waterloo Road with his complicated family including his new partner, Art teacher Allie Westbrook, her two children Floyd and Tiffany, and Vaughan's argumentative sons Justin and Leo. Besides his own family's internal tensions related to the relationship between Tiffany and Justin, Vaughan also has to struggle to stop the merger of this school with the nearby school Havelock High.