Stafford Supervisor Requests Public Apology from School Board Member for Comments About School Funding
School Board member's comments came "from a place of almost total despair" about the school division's budget situation.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
School funding in Stafford County has “in the past” reflected how members of the Board of Supervisors felt about how School Board members spoke to them. Bohmke, the longtime Falmouth District representative on the Board of Supervisors, communicated this sentiment to School Board Chair Maureen Siegmund in a phone call on April 7, shortly before a three-on-three meeting between supervisors and School Board members.
According to an email that Siegmund sent last week to superintendent Daniel Smith and Sandra Osborn, the division’s communications director, Bohmke called her to follow-up on a text message Bohmke sent to Siegmund and Deuntay Diggs, Chair of the Board of Supervisors.
“I received a text from Supervisor Bohmke where she requested that we both (as Chairs) clarify at the start of the 3 on 3 that everyone should be respectful with their comments and monitor their tone,” Siegmund wrote in the email, which the Advance received through a request under the Freedom of Information Act. “Immediately after it was sent, Supervisor Bohmke called to tell me about the text.”
During the phone call, Siegmund wrote, Bohmke explained that she felt “very offended/upset” by comments made by School Board member Alyssa Halstead during a joint work session of the two boards on April 3.
“She indicated that she expected Ms. Halstead to make a public apology during her Board Member comments at our Tuesday meeting (April 8th). If that apology did not occur, Supervisor Bohmke had already written her own comments that would be read at the BOS April 15th meeting,” Siegmund wrote. “She reminded me (as we've known each other for some time) that in years past, if a School Board member spoke to the funding body ‘like that,’ that it would have been reflected in the School Board's budget appropriation.”
Bohmke stressed that she did not make funding decisions that way, Siegmund wrote.
“It did make me concerned, however, that she was giving me a clue that someone else on her Board may not share her restraint,” Siegmund wrote.
During the April 3 joint meeting, Halstead, the Hartwood district School Board representative, said she was “quite clearly more frustrated than I’ve ever been in my three-and-a-half years on this School Board.”
“Every year, you know that the schools are growing. You know that we are facing more students. That our buildings are collapsing. It’s not a surprise to anybody,” Halstead said to supervisors. “Our staff works like little monkeys in a circus jumping through fiery hoops to get you all the information you need over and over, and no matter how many times we present it, it’s never good enough, it’s not enough information, and it still doesn’t justify for you that our kids are working and learning in untenable environments and it shouldn’t be that way.”
Thirty-seven pages of questions and answers
Halstead referred to a 37-page list of questions posed by supervisors about the schools’ budget, with answers from division staff and links to further information.
Supervisors asked about the dollar amount needed to get to a 2.5% pay raise for staff (each 1% salary raise costs $3.6 million); for information about the custodial contract; for a comparison of SOL test scores with state scores from pre-COVID years; for the amount of federal funding provided for military-connected families ($1.25 million); what is budgeted for salary lapse savings ($1.75 million); and for a list of “burdensome” state mandates.
In addition to these and other questions, there were 16 questions posed by Crystal Vanuch, the Rock Hill district supervisor. Vanuch asked how many enrolled students had birth certificate affidavits on file, rather than copies of original birth certificates; whether current school policies “allow transgender students in their non-biological sex bathroom, locker room and sports team;” and how many students are enrolled virtually.
Vanuch also asked, among other requests, for five years of school division budgets; what federal funds are spent on; what discretionary funds are built into the base budget (the only discretionary funds are for salaries, according to the school division); for five year histories of full and part-time positions and revenues; and for the amount of leave payouts for the last three years (between $714,000 and $790,000).
Halstead said that last year, School Board members sent a list of questions to supervisors, “to help us understand what you go through in your budget decision making time.” As the Advance reported last year, county staff answered three out of the 16 questions and added the following note to the remaining 13: “Staff cannot speak for the Board of Supervisors on this item.”
“Those weren’t just answers for us, those were answers for the community,” Halstead said. “Yet every time, we show up with a 40-page document” of answered questions.
“My heart felt right”
Siegmund wrote in her description of the phone call with Bohmke that she “told Supervisor Bohmke that I would pass her concerns and request on to Ms. Halstead but that I could not and would not issue a requirement [to apologize].”
During the April 8 School Board meeting, Halstead referred to Bohmke’s expectation that she apologize for her comments, and described the reminder of previous funding being tied to how School Board members address supervisors as a threat.
“I would never dictate to someone else” what they should say during their board comments, Halstead said. “What I find deeply troubling is that the same supervisor stated that if a member of the School Board had spoke up like I did, then the school budget would be negatively affected. That is not a political strategy—that is in fact a small threat, a large threat. Let’s be honest, this money is [the taxpayer’s] and she’s threatening to withhold it because I did my duty as a representative and stood up for the children of this county.”
In an interview with the Advance last week, Halstead said that after making her comments during the joint meeting, “my heart felt right.”
She said the comments came from a place of hopelessness.
“I feel like the School Board is very transparent about the budget. But every year for the last three-and-a-half years, we go into the budget cycle and it’s really frustrating to see that [some supervisors] always seem to drum up an issue with the School Board and bring the community into it,” she said. “It’s frustrating because they are always tying the taxes to the schools and to no other obligation to the community.”
Halstead said that for her, “it’s about the kids and always about the kids.”
“We’re adults. We already know life is troublesome and complicated and we can manage those complications, but the kids don’t know that yet, and it’s really frustrating that they would be the victims of this,” she said. “I feel very strongly about the kids in this county and their future and very strongly about what education should mean to a kid.”
The Advance reached out to Bohmke to ask about her response to Halstead’s comments, and did not receive an answer by press time.
Three supervisors commit to voting against any tax increase
Supervisors are also going into Tuesday’s budget decision in the context of a text message that went out on Friday from Vanuch, emphasizing her commitment to vote against any tax increase.
“I believe we can and should find ways to balance our budget without putting more strain on families,” Vanuch stated in the message, which was sent to citizens across the county’s voting districts. “Right now, only three Supervisors—myself, Supervisor Bohmke, and Supervisor [Darrell] English—have committed to voting against any increase. We need one more vote to stop it.”
According to the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, supervisors will consider a 5-cent increase to the real estate tax rate, bringing it from $0.89 to $0.94 per $100 of assessed value for this calendar year. There are no changes proposed to any other tax rates.
According to a summary of the proposed county budget, the 5-cent tax increase will bring in $7.5 million in new property tax revenues. The average annual tax bill would be $4,329, an increase of $229 over the 2024 average annual tax bill.
The county’s budget is also pressured this year by the state’s required tax relief program for disabled veterans, which is increasing by $11.8 million, according to County Administrator Bill Ashton’s March 4 budget proposal.
Other stressors are a $2.4 million increase in required funding for the Rappahannock Regional Jail, the juvenile detention center, the health department, and partner agencies; and another $2.4 million increase for “mandatory commitments” such as a transfer to the transportation fund and “contracts and inflation.”
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”
I am appalled that the Stafford County BOS would hold our children's educational welfare hostage for an apology. I am also struck at the incredible level of hypocrisy on display from former chair Bohmke who is demanding an apology. This is the same woman who refused to communicate for months with a constituent who she and her board falsely branded with misconduct, even as I reached out to her repeatedly.
Then, when forced into a corner by the Advance's fine reporting, she mustered a weak-kneed acknowledgement of the poorly executed process' by which I was removed. She lacked the courage to apologize to one of her own constituents, yet she demands this from a School Board member? For shame. Our children deserve better. Our county deserves better. I am glad Bohmke is not running for office again this year. https://www.fxbgadvance.com/p/stafford-supervisors-presented-citizen