Stafford School Board Considering Five High School Redistricting Scenarios
There will be second public hearing on the plans on December 10. Also, the Board approves a calendar and program of studies for the 2025-26 school year.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Five high school redistricting scenarios are still on the table for the Stafford School Board to consider, but Board members on Tuesday indicated that there are several they would have a hard time supporting.
Division-wide redistricting at the high school level is necessary due to the opening of the county’s sixth high school in the fall of 2026 and to the overcrowded conditions at three of the existing five high schools.
Without the new high school and without new attendance zones, North Stafford and Brooke Point high schools will be operating at 108% of capacity in the fall of 2026, and Stafford High School will be at 105%.
Each of the five scenarios—known as E, F1, F2, G, and G2—are projected to significantly reduce overcrowding in the 2026-27 school year.
But by 2032, without construction of a seventh high school, Brooke Point will again be over capacity in four of the five scenarios and Colonial Forge High School will be at or over capacity in all of them, according to a presentation give to the School Board during a work session on Tuesday.
One of the scenarios, F2, has North Stafford High School at 114% of capacity by 2032.
School Board members on Tuesday balked at these projections.
“I think we can take F2 off the table,” said Elizabeth Warner, Griffis-Widewater district representative, while Susan Randall, George Washington district representative, said she would be “a no” on G2, which puts Brooke Point at 107% capacity by 2032.
School Board Chair and Garrisonville representative Maureen Siegmund reminded her colleagues that the redistricting scenarios have intentionally shifted the bulk of projected new enrollment to high schools in the north, because the Board plans to open high school #7 in the northeastern quadrant of the county.
According to the division’s current capital improvement plan, high school #7 is scheduled to open in August of 2033.
Enrollment in Stafford County schools, already at 31,436 this year, shows no sign of slowing down, according to enrollment projections shared by Lionel White, director of facilities planning, at Tuesday’s work session. By 2032, total enrollment is expected to be 3,568.
Projections are based on past enrollment and the anticipated student yield from future housing units. There are more than 5,100 active vacant lots, according to White’s presentation.
“Staff knew that at the out years of this process, we would have two high schools over capacity because will have more students than seats,” Siegmund said at the work session.
Concentrating enrollment in the northeast “would help to illustrate [the need for high school #7] and have less impact on future redistricting,” she continued. “That’s why these charts look the way they do.”
The Board held a public hearing on the redistricting scenarios at Tuesday’s regular meeting, at which only one person spoke. There will be a second public hearing on December 10 and the Board will vote on new high school attendance zones in January.
Also on Tuesday, the Board approved the academic calendar for the 2025-26 school year, which includes two new student days off—one on October 3, following the October 2 Yom Kippur holiday, and one on October 20 for the Diwali holiday.
October 3 will be a professional development day for staff, with training on the new Virginia Literacy Act.
The Board also approved the program of studies for 2025-26, which introduces the fourth specialty center—the Center for Business and Information Technology at Colonial Forge High School. The center will have five career pathways—Business Administration, Entrepreneurship, Cyber4+, Business Information Technology, and Data Analytics.
But before approving the program of studies, the Board voted unanimously to remove any language about bus transportation from it, except for language guaranteeing transportation for special education students as required by federal law.
Board members said they didn’t want language committing the division to a transportation plan before fully understanding why it’s been a struggle in the past several years to provide timely and reliable bus transportation.
“We had transportation issues this fall,” said Sarah Chase, Falmouth district representative. “We have an outside report coming to the Board and we hopefully have a new superintendent coming on board in the not-too-distant future, so we don’t know what kind of transportation we can or can’t provide, so we don’t want to overpromise or obligate ourselves when we don’t know what the situation is going to be.”
This story was updated on November 13 at 7:06 pm to correct the date High School #7 is supposed to open. The correct date is 2033.
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