The Caroline County Board of Supervisors recently voted to appropriate $600,000 for architectural firms to determine the scope of work for six projects in the county, including five that will impact the school division.
The board voted 4-2 to explore construction of the Dawn Community Center in the southern part of the county as well as renovations to the school division central office building, the school bus maintenance facility, Lotus Academy, Bowling Green Elementary School and Caroline Middle School.
Supervisors Floyd Thomas (Mattaponi District), Reginald Underwood (Reedy Church), Jeff Sili (Bowling Green) and Chair Nancy Long (Port Royal) voted in favor of moving forward with those projects. Jeff Black of the Western Caroline District and Madison District Supervisor Clay Forehand voted against the proposal.
The vote ran counter to the input provided by Caroline County Public Schools Superintendent Sarah Calveric, who suggested that renovations to Lotus Academy and Bowling Green Elementary are costly and would create a negative ripple effect on other services.
For example, the supervisors want to explore transferring five Pre-K classrooms from Lewis and Clark Elementary School to Lotus Academy — the county’s alternative school — where Calveric explained there is no operational kitchen and no suitable playground. She estimated that the cost of renovating the building to become suitable for Pre-K students would be $10-11 million, or 86% of the cost of a new building.
“We cannot lift the five Lewis and Clark [Pre-K] classrooms over to Lotus Academy,” Calveric said. “There is no operational kitchen, and we’re already moving 25 breakfast and lunch meals from Lewis and Clark to serve Lotus Academy every day. We would not be equipped to add in an additional 100 meals in the morning and afternoon.”
Calveric also spoke out against renovating Bowling Green Elementary to add six classrooms. She noted that the school has a high percentage of “at-promise” youth (also known as at-risk) and that the population of 850 students is already exceedingly high. Enrollment at a typical elementary school is between 300 and 600 students, with some researchers suggesting that 300-400 is ideal.
“We do not believe that creating six classrooms [multiplied by] 25 students would be the right size for that population,” Calveric said.
Instead, Calveric and the school board would prefer to add “learning cottages” or trailers to ease overcrowding at Bowling Green and Lewis and Clark until a new elementary school can be built in the next few years.
The school board received approval from the Ladysmith Village Homeowners Association to establish the trailers on school grounds, which sit in the neighborhood. Calveric also made plans to tour Louisa County’s learning cottages, which she said were “created with architectural sensitivity.”
The school board has also engaged in discussions with Stafford County about potentially purchasing some of its trailers. The cost would be approximately $100,000 apiece.
Supervisors Thomas, Underwood, Sili and Long were not in favor of that option, with Thomas expressing confusion since trailers were once a non-starter for the school board.
“The word ‘trailer’ really threw me,” Long added.
Eventually, said Long, the county should use the 84 acres it owns in Milford near the high school and middle school to construct new school buildings. But Underwood said the plan put forth most recently will address overcrowding immediately and could be implemented before the 2025-26 school year.
“There is an urgent need that we do something and come up with a reasonable solution that we can afford to do right now,” Underwood said.
Black expressed concern that expanding classrooms at Bowling Green does nothing to alleviate the overcrowding at Lewis and Clark, which is in the fastest-growing part of the county.
Forehand urged the supervisors to add classrooms to the middle school, citing large fourth and fifth-grade enrollment in current elementary schools that will reach the facility in the coming years.
Black and Forehand were in favor of Calveric’s plan to add learning cottages rather than investing in renovating the older structures.
“Why would we do anything with Bowling Green and Lotus Academy if they’re ok with learning cottages until we get a new elementary school?” Black questioned.
If the Pre-K students at Bowling Green are moved into the administrative building as proposed by the supervisors, they would share the space with central office staff. A proposal to purchase the former Atlantic Union Bank headquarters in Carmel Church for county administrative staff is off the table since the building is being bought by Rappahannock Electric Cooperative.
“That blows up all the short-term options involving that building,” Forehand said. “If that building is no longer an option, we have to get creative.”
