By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Stafford School Board members agreed at Tuesday evening’s work session that they need to be in conversation now with the Board of Supervisors about contingency plans for some of the county’s most vulnerable children.
The Heather Empfield Public Day School—a public separate day school for students with autism and emotional disabilities—is currently housed within Drew Middle School, which is in poor condition and is scheduled to be rebuilt and reopened at a different location in August of 2028. Plans for the new Drew Middle School do not include space for the day school.
Instead, the School Board has proposed housing the day school in the new Rising Star Early Childhood Education Center, which the board would like to open in August of 2030, according to the most recent 10-year capital improvement plan.
The current Rising Star Center is located in the division’s oldest building, which dates to the 1930s, and is nearing system failure, board members said Tuesday.
According to the capital improvement plan, the estimated cost of the new Rising Star Center with the day school is $90.9 million, with the day school component costing $17 million of that.
School Board Chair Maureen Siegmund said at the work session that she wants it to be “on the record and public that we intend to continue using” the Drew Middle School building for the Heather Empfield Day School until the new Rising Star is completed, provided space for it is included in the new building.
“Staff seem to think that’s the case, and they think everybody thinks it’s the case, but since it hasn’t been publicly discussed and it’s not on the record that this is the plan, I wanted us to say publicly, this is our plan for now,” Siegmund said.
History of the Day School
The Heather Empfield Day School, which has capacity for 24 students, was founded in 2009 as a way to both meet the needs of the county’s growing special education population and keep Drew and Stafford middle schools open at a time when these buildings had extra space.
“These are our neediest students,” said Chris R. Fulmer, deputy superintendent, on Tuesday. “We are educating them in-house because we feel it is the best environment for them and sending them to private day placement is not the best long-term solution for them.”
In 2012, Stafford County won an achievement award from the National Association of Counties for the Heather Empfield Day School, which represented a “successful and creative approach to addressing an educational issue in the community,” according to a press release issued at the time.
According to a memorandum of agreement between Stafford County government and the School Board, the day school is funded “in whole or in part solely through local funds provided by the [Stafford County Human Services Office].”
The county’s adopted budget shows the transfer to the public day school for fiscal year 2025, which ends June 30, is $1.15 million.
Children who are served by the Heather Empfield Day School—as well as by the school division’s other day school at Stafford High School, the alternative middle and high school programs, and in self-contained emotional and behavioral support classrooms—are “at risk for more restrictive settings.”
The memorandum of agreement notes that there are “tremendous cost savings” associated with educating special needs children in-house rather than in private settings. According to a presentation given to the School Board last year by Ann Bueche, the division’s chief student support services officer, it costs Stafford taxpayers approximately $21,000 per child to educate students in the public day school setting, compared to $77,000 per child to send them to a private day school.
Disagreement in Recent Years
There has been disagreement between the county and the schools in recent years regarding the memorandum of agreement for the day school. In January of 2023, then-superintendent Thomas Taylor sent a letter to then-county administrator Randall Vosburg, objecting to changes proposed to the memorandum of agreement that established an “oversight steering committee” for the public day school program.
The steering committee would be made up of two staff members each appointed by the superintendent and county administrator and would receive a mid-year update from the schools on the number of students placed in the public day school and in private programs and the “effectiveness of the comprehensive programming approach.”
Taylor asked that the memorandum of agreement stipulate that a member of both the School Board and Board of Supervisors serve on the steering committee, noting that “the School Board and I feel strongly that Board oversight is necessary for improved operations.” He also asked that the memorandum state that “private day and residential school programs shall also fall within the purview of the oversight steering committee,” so that these programs would also have elected board oversight.
These proposed changes were not incorporated into the final memorandum, which the School Board approved in April of 2023 by a vote of 5-to-2, with Maureen Siegmund, Garrisonville representative, and Alyssa Halstead, Hartwood representative, voting against it.
Contingency Plans Needed
At Tuesday’s work session, Falmouth representative Sarah Chase said that previous supervisors were enthusiastic about the Heather Empfield Day School and had advocated before the General Assembly to make it a statewide model.
“Most of those supervisors are no longer on the board,” she said. “It would be good to have that conversation [about the history and role of the school] with them.”
If the day school can continue operating in the Drew Middle School building, there is still the question of how long that building will be safely inhabitable. This is also true of the current Rising Star Center, which houses early childhood special education and therefore the county’s youngest and neediest students.
“What we need to do is ask [new superintendent Daniel Smith] to put together potential options contingent in the event that we need to find another placement for Heather Empfield after Drew is rebuilt for that several year time [until the new Rising Star Center opens],” said Patricia Healy, Rock Hill representative. “But also for [the current] Rising Star in the event that building becomes uninhabitable.”
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