Overcrowding in Stafford County elementary schools has led to the School Board’s approval Tuesday of a resolution requesting $3.5 million from its capital reserve fund to purchase 24 new “modular classrooms.”
The division is proposing to put four modulars each at Kate Waller Barrett, Falmouth, Moncure, Park Ridge, Rocky Run and Stafford elementary schools, and two at Conway Elementary, starting next school year.
With this addition, there will be a total of 48 modular classrooms deployed across the division next year—the equivalent of one-and-a-half brick-and-mortar elementary schools, Garrisonville District Maureen Siegmund pointed out at Tuesday’s School Board meeting.
A typical elementary school has 48 classrooms, division superintendent Thomas Taylor told the board.
“So this would be equating to one-and-a-half elementary schools that will be filled next year,” Siegmund said. “We only have two new elementary schools opening the year after that. So elementary schools #18 and #19 are already full. We are so far behind.”
The resolution approved by the School Board on Tuesday asks the Board of Supervisors to appropriate the $3.5 million for the 24 modular classrooms from the school capital projects fund, which is reserved for one-time capital expenditures.
It also asks supervisors to appropriate an additional $1.1 million in “funds to be identified by the county” to purchase eight modular classrooms for North Star Early Childhood Education Center.
School Board members on Tuesday expressed extreme frustration with the situation and with what they described as Board of Supervisors’ continued failure to adequately fund the school division.
“This is a reflection of the fact that for a decade and a half, we have not built schools, and we are out of space. There is no room at the inn, and we cannot fix that quickly,” said Elizabeth Warner, Griffis-Widewater representative. “This $4.6 million (for modulars) is essentially money that we’re throwing away because we have to have space for students, and it should not have happened.”
The last new school built in Stafford was Shirley Heim Middle School in 2008.
Hartwood District representative Alyssa Halstead said Tuesday that she feels supervisors are not making time to hear School Board members.
A joint meeting between the School Board and Board of Supervisors to discuss capital improvement needs has been cancelled and rescheduled by supervisors twice since November, Warner told the Advance.
Most recently, a meeting was scheduled for December 14 and then canceled and rescheduled for January 4.
“I find it exceptionally frustrating that we can’t get to the table to discuss the urgency of the situation,” Halstead said Tuesday.
The School Board in September approved a list of capital improvement priorities that calls for opening the two new elementary schools in August of 2026 and replacing Hartwood Elementary School, Drew Middle School and the Rising Star Early Learning Center the following year.
The board rates these five priorities as “overdue.” It first asked for elementary school #18 in 2011 and first proposed a rebuild of Rising Star—the oldest building in the school division—in 2007.
Other School Board capital improvement priorities for the next 10 years include building a countywide public day school, rebuilding Falmouth, Grafton Village and Stafford elementary schools, and building elementary school #20.
by Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
