Stafford-School Board Joint Meeting Charged with Accusations, Innuendo
Elementary School 19 has become a touch-point of contention in Stafford County. The School Board wants to place it at Brooke Point High School; the supervisors ask why not Embrey Mill?
by Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Stafford County supervisors will apparently not prevent the School Board from co-locating the 19th county elementary school with Brooke Point High School—but many are still unsatisfied with the School Board’s reasons for selecting that site over a proffered school site in the Embrey Mill neighborhood.
“I feel that Embrey Mill should have been the site,” said Meg Bohmke, Chair of the Board of Supervisors, at a joint meeting with the School Board Tuesday evening. “I don’t believe there was transparency to the public.”
Bohmke said the School Board hasn’t been transparent about the site selection or decisions to increase the size of the school and therefore the cost.
Supervisors asked for Tuesday’s joint meeting to seek answers to multiple questions that arose after a joint meeting held earlier this month to discuss the School Board’s capital improvement priorities.
That meeting was meant to be an opportunity for School Board members to advocate for their top priorities to be funded in the county’s next 10-year capital improvement plan, which is for fiscal years 2025 to 2034.
But the topic of where the School Board wants to put elementary school 19—which supervisors agreed to fund along with elementary school 18 in last fiscal year’s capital improvement plan—seemed to take up more oxygen.
Timeline to Elementary School 19
The School Board voted against locating elementary school 19 on a proffered school site in Embrey Mill two times this past spring, both by narrow 4-to-3 majorities. School Board members Maureen Siegmund, the current chair, and Patricia Healy, Alyssa Halstead and Susan Randall voted against the Embrey Mill site.
Siegmund explained her reasons for not supporting the Embrey Mill site in a Facebook post made last spring.
“I believe that if we build ES 19 on the Northeast side of the County (North of 17, East of Route 1) we can alleviate a lot of issues that our county struggles with” by keeping kids at schools closer to their homes, she wrote.
The board eventually approved the Brooke Point site in October by a 6-to-1 vote.
The School Board wants to open both elementary schools in August of 2026 to accommodate exploding growth in the county. This school year, 10 of the 17 elementary schools are over capacity, and six of these—Conway, Falmouth, Hartwood, Park Ridge, Rocky Run, and Stafford—are more than 105% over capacity, according to the school division’s enrollment accommodation report for 2023-24.
The division planned to bundle the design of both elementary schools, as well as the bidding and construction, in order to save money.
The School Board awarded the design contract for both schools in April of 2023. The initial bid was for design of a school to accommodate 964 students. In May of 2023, according to a timeline presented by staff on Tuesday, the design had to be updated to meet new Virginia Department of Education specifications for special education and resource space. The plans were enlarged to accommodate 1,070 students.
Staff said the prototype design for both elementary schools was modified in June to “reduce costs” and the division received an updated cost estimate in late August, which was communicated to the School Board and incorporated into the proposed new capital improvement plan in September. The School Board approved this plan in October.
Elementary school 18 will be located off Truslow Road in the Hartwood District. Division staff said the joint land acquisition committee—a collaboration between county and school division staff—reviewed and rated 20 potential sites for elementary school 19 between October of 2022 and May of 2023.
Staff provided a redacted list of the 20 sites considered. Of these, only one would allow for a potential August 2026 opening.
The Brooke Point site was not one of the 20 sites initially reviewed for elementary school 19, said Jason Towery, the division’s executive director of facilities and maintenance, on Tuesday.
But after the School Board indicated that it wanted staff to look for a site “east of I-95,” the Brooke Point High School site was identified as “a viable option to still deliver a school in 2026,” Towery said.
Constructing the new elementary school at Brooke Point will require demolishing and reconstructing the high school parking lot, bus loop and tennis courts. These and other “enabling costs” to build the elementary school at Brooke Point are estimated at $710,000.
“I do believe there has not been transparency”
After Towery presented all this information, Bohmke distributed handouts she prepared on her own, that included a timeline of all the closed meetings and work sessions held by the School Board to discuss elementary school 19.
She said she feels the process didn’t include sufficient public input and was obscure.
“We are here to work with the School Board, but I do believe there has not been transparency,” Bohmke said. “If this (elementary school) was being added to a high school in my district, I would be very upset because my community was not informed, and taxpayers were not given an opportunity to weigh in.”
Supervisor Pamela Yeung also had strong words for the School Board.
“You can’t tell me there was a problem with Embrey Mill when there were two parcels and there was one that was ready to go,” she said. “I am going to protect taxpayers’ money. Approving Brooke Point now, you have not taken into consideration what these kids will have to go through. You are putting cost where you want the cost and not telling us about the cost.”
Yeung and supervisor Deuntay Diggs both addressed another rumor in the community about the decision against siting the new school in Embrey Mill.
“People are saying this is based on racial issues,” Diggs said. “We’re hearing that, and that makes it more confusing.”
The Garrisonville District, where Embrey Mill is located, is the smallest but the most populous of Stafford County’s districts, and currently has four elementary schools within its boundaries—Park Ridge, Hampton Oaks, Winding Creek and Anthony Burns.
Of these, Anthony Burns is the only Title I school, and it also has the highest percentage of economically disadvantaged (47%) and Black students (34%) of the four, according to the VDOE’s school quality profile.
The attendance zones for all four schools extend beyond the borders of the Garrisonville districts. The attendance zone for Anthony Burns straddles Garrisonville and Aquia, which is the district where the Brooke Point elementary school site is located.
Supervisor Monica Gary, who represents the Aquia district, said on Tuesday that “if racism is a factor for anyone, I’m praying that would be made apparent to people and I’m praying that it doesn’t exist.”
“That’s not acceptable,” she said. “I hope that we’re not dealing with anything like that and if we are, I hope people find out.”
But Gary also said that she thinks supervisors have to support the selection of the Brooke Point site for elementary school 19, citing the estimated $5 to $8 million cost of moving the site and delaying construction and the division’s need for space.
“I’m trying to do the right thing right now with what we have,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense fiscally for me to move this. I am the district supervisor (for Aquia) and my children attend all of these schools and one of my kids is in a freaking trailer.”
School Board members on Tuesday said they felt attacked by supervisors.
“This feels like a slap on the hand and a temper tantrum when this Board did what we were elected to do when given the money to build a school for our kids,” said Halstead.
Susan Randall said she didn’t know that supervisors’ agreement to fund elementary schools 18 and 19 came with “some dangling thing that said, ‘only if you build it in Embrey Mill.’”
“We worked hard to find property, as you saw,” she said. “We are seven women working hard trying to figure it out. I had no idea that our decision was going to hit a piss off button. If I had known that I would have done it differently.”
“We need the seats”
School Board members Maya Guy and Elizabeth Warner said they didn’t agree with the vote against the Embrey Mill site, but that they agreed to the Brooke Point site because the division needs the seats.
“I’d vote for a school on Pluto because we need the seats,” Guy said.
Warner said there were two failed votes on Embrey Mill and “four board members who weren’t going to budge on that.”
“I decided to go along with the timeline to open a school in August of 2026,” she said. “The Garrisonville district is the heart of Stafford and it touches every single district with the exception of George Washington. Kids cross back and forth across boundaries all the time. At this point, I think the seats are more important.”
Healy asked supervisors to stay out of the “School Board’s lane.”
“I wish you would let us do our job,” she said. “Let us support the kids and we’ll be held accountable.”
Supervisor Tinesha Allen, who at the last joint meeting said she would have a hard time supporting elementary school 19 at Brooke Point, on Tuesday apologized for “question(ing) (the School Board’s) judgment as it relates to schools.”
“At the end of the day, you are a fully autonomous body,” Allen said. “Our citizens empowered you to make those decisions. The only thing they empowered me to do as it relates to you is fund you. I won’t delay school capacity any longer.”
The meeting ended with the consensus that construction of elementary school 19 at Brooke Point will move forward and the boards will attempt to communicate more closely to prevent future misunderstandings.
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I dunno.
The Supervisors asked hard, clear, legitimate questions; thereby providing due diligence regarding the use of limited taxpayer funds and county resources.
While also providing a forum for citizen concerns that had been raised about the issue.
The School Board answered them as best they could, while all agreed to work in the future toward minimizing similar conflicts as they kept their eyes on the primary goal - making sure space is available to teach the children as that need outpaces funding.
Looks to me like everyone did their duty under challenging circumstances.
As a Stafford taxpayer with family soon to attend one of those schools, thanks to all for your hard work.
It's appreciated.