Spotsylvania School Division's Plans for the Marshall Center
The building, which is being transferred back to the school division to the county, will house programs for some special education students.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Writer
At the moment, 99 Spotsylvania children with special needs are educated in separate private day schools, some as far away as Richmond, at significant cost to the county.
With ownership of the Marshall Center being transferred back to the school division from the county, superintendent Clint Mitchell’s plan is to use the building to educate these students closer to home.
“When I think about the fact that we have so many students receiving special education services and who are in our public separate day programs and being schooled outside of Spotsylvania, I think we can really do something with this center,” Mitchell told the Advance this week.
Mitchell said he petitioned the Board of Supervisors on several occasions since becoming superintendent in 2024 to have the Marshall Center, which used to belong to the division and housed a high school for white students, transferred back to the division.
“One of the things we learned through that [my first-year audit of the school division] was the fact that many of our schools are overcrowded,” he said. “And yet there is a building that was sitting there in the county that used to be part of the school district.”
The transfer process is moving forward and is expected to be complete by September or October, Assistant County Administrator Ben Loveday told the Board of Supervisors last week. Once the deed has been transferred, Mitchell said, the division will put out a request for proposals for architects to draw up plans for renovating the building to suit its new purpose—as a center for special education in Spotsylvania.
About 4,100 students this year are receiving special education services through the school division, according to presentation given by the division to the county’s Community Planning and Management Team. That number has increased every year since at least 2020.
Students with special needs are entitled to education in the “least-restrictive environment” possible—ideally, a general education classroom—per the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. When the needs require more support than can be provided in the general education setting, the student’s individual education plan team may determine that a change of placement is necessary, either to a self-contained classroom within the school, a separate public school program such as the Courthouse and Gateway Academies, or to a separate private day school.
According to the presentation, four more students are projected to transfer to private day schools next school year. The cost of these placements is covered by a mixture of local and state funding through the Children’s Services Act. In fiscal year 2024, the average daily cost of private day placement per child was $218, or $55,509 per year.
As well as bringing back some of the private day school placements, Mitchell said the Marshall Center will likely house the division’s Gateway Academy, a public separate program that serves students with autism and related developmental disabilities. That program, as well as Courthouse Academy, are located now in the John J. Wright Center.
“If we can get those programs out of John J. Wright, it will allow us to move some of the preschool programs there,” Mitchell said. “Right now, we have so many preschool programs being housed in classrooms across the school division. I have some high schools with 2-year-olds in them.”
Mitchell stressed that the plan is not to move all special education students to the Marshall Center.
“We’re going to continue to provide special education services in every single one of our schools, because it is appropriate for those students to be in those schools and places,” he said. “However, for the kids who have some of the greatest challenges and needs—those students we are looking at potentially providing services to at the Marshall Center.”
Mitchell said that the operational cost of the Marshall Center could be budget-neutral, since it involves moving existing programs and redirecting funds that currently go towards paying for private day school placements.
“We may have to [hire more teachers] if we are bringing kids back from private day school, but I believe it will be cost-neutral because we pay for those kids to go to placements across the region,” he said.
The Marshall Center will continue to house the Snow Library and some county activities.
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I am watching this issue very carefully. Thank you for writing on it. The messaging from SCPS on their plans for the Marshall Center has been less than clear.