Stafford Supervisors Agree to Fund Design of New Drew Middle School
School division also requested funding to purchase land for Drew's replacement, but supervisors deferred that part of division's request.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Stafford supervisors on Tuesday agreed to appropriate part of the school division’s request for funding to begin the process of replacing Drew Middle School, but not the full request.
The division asked to appropriate approximately $7 million to fund the purchase of land and planning and design work necessary to replace Drew Middle School. The amount included $2.5 million for land acquisition, $3.59 million for design, and $1 million for contingency.
After a lengthy discussion, supervisors approved a motion to appropriate $3.59 million for the design process only. Chair Meg Bohmke said school division staff could return in January or February to provide an update and the board could decide to fund the remainder at that time.
Jason Towery, chief facilities officer for the school division, said the request is based on the fact that the School Board no longer plans to rebuild Drew on the site of the current Rising Star Early Childhood Education Center.
“In the [fiscal year 2025-34] capital improvement plan, the schools had requested that Drew Middle School and Rising Star be constructed at the same time, swapping sites,” Towery told supervisors on Tuesday. “That was not the way the CIP was eventually approved, which led to land search [for the new Drew.]”
Andrea Light, the county’s budget director, said the county’s debt capacity would not have been able to accommodate rebuilding Drew and Rising Star at the same time. That meant the Rising Star replacement had to be pushed out to 2030, which would also delay the Drew project, Towery said.
The current Drew Middle School is among the county’s oldest facilities and faces significant maintenance problems. Recently, Towery said, a sewage main collapsed, leading to sewage backup in the playground of the Heather Empfield Day School, which serves children with autism and emotional disabilities.
In order to ensure that Drew can be rebuilt as soon as possible, the division has been looking for a new site for the school, but is constrained by the desire to keep the new Drew within the same attendance boundaries as the existing school, “because of historical needs in that area and to make sure we’re being fair to the population that’s waited a long time for that school,” Towery said.
The county and school division’s joint land acquisition team has identified what it believes is a suitable site, Towery said, and that comes with a purchase price of $2.5 million.
Details of the selected location aren’t public yet, but Towery said that “inked documents on a purchase agreement” are ready.
He said that because the timeline is tight to be able to open the new Drew in August of 2028, the division would like to be able to execute a full contract with an architecture firm as soon as possible, which is the reason behind requesting the appropriation of $3.59 million for design.
Supervisor Crystal Vanuch suggested that she would not support the full request because the total projected cost of rebuilding Drew at the new site is $16 million more than the amount included in the current capital improvement plan.
Towery said the increase is due to infrastructure improvements that will need to be made to the identified site and the school division’s desire to put 10% of funds in contingency, instead of the usual 5%, because of “question marks in terms of cultural resources.”
He said the division is doing due diligence work on the identified site now and that the design work will be transferable to another site if the identified one turns out to be unsuitable.
But Vanuch said she doesn’t like the idea of “frontloading” the design work.
Supervisors Monica Gary and Tinesha Allen brought up the poor condition of the current Drew Middle School and the fact that its HVAC system will require a $20 million renovation within four years.
“Drew has to be replaced,” Allen said. “The money we’re going to spend to make Drew functional will exceed the $16 million.”
Supervisor Darrell English said he’d like to defer the vote in order to better understand the effects on the county’s capital improvement plan and for the school division to determine that it has selected the right site.
But Bohmke said she doesn’t believe there is time to defer a vote on the school division’s request. She also said a vote on school funding should be unanimous.
In the end, the Board approved—by a vote of 6-to-1, with English dissenting—funding the design portion of the request only.
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