This election cycle, voters in Stafford’s Falmouth District will pick between a two-term incumbent and a county school employee and parent when they choose their School Board representative.
Sarah Breedin Chase, who was first elected in 2017, faces Fawn Chergosky, a routing specialist for Stafford County schools transportation and a former bus driver.
Chase, who is endorsed by the Stafford Democratic Committee, is a recently-retired psychology professor and mother of three children, all of whom graduated from Stafford High School.
At a Stafford candidates forum the Free Press held last month, she said she initially decided to run for School Board because she noticed that teachers kept leaving the division for jobs elsewhere.
“What I realized was we were not compensating our teachers well enough, and that if we can’t pay our staff to stay around, we’re going to have problems,” Chase said. “And so, in the eight years that I have been on the board, I have really focused a lot on trying to improve student achievement through having excellent teachers in the classroom.”
Chergosky, a North Stafford High School graduate, serves as secretary for the School Board’s Transportation Advisory Committee and has two daughters in county schools.
At the Free Press forum, she said she decided to run for office to be more involved in her children’s educational experience. As a bus driver, she said, she could positively influence students’ lives every day, and, as a router, her work impacts thousands of kids and their families daily.
“I want to be able to continue to help and support as many families as possible,” Chergosky said.
One issue in Stafford schools is the challenge of educating a diverse population of students, and Chase said that means the division must have a diverse employee base.
“Our teachers need to look like our students,” she said. “Our bus drivers need to look like our students.”
Chergosky said that it’s important to provide English classes for speakers of other languages. As a bus driver, she saw families who, for example, had to use a kindergartener as an interpreter.
Fawn Chergosky
She also said holding events such as multicultural fairs is significant, as well as having media available in different languages and providing diverse cuisine in cafeterias.
“And it’s really awesome to see the diversity from when I first moved here in the ’90s to now,” she said.
The candidates also discussed the fact that soon Stafford will soon open three new schools.
Chergosky pointed out that redistricting students is always a challenge, including integrating new bus routes for them.
“So it’s hard, and I don’t know if they involved the community as much as they should have,” she said of the county school system.
Chase said the school division must simultaneously take care of the students in the new schools as well as continue to support existing schools that will be losing children to redistricting.
She said the fact that the new schools are opening is a testament to the School Board working with the Board of Supervisors, something she hopes continues.
The work will be tough, she said.
“But I think we can do it,” she said. “I think we have the staff on the school side, and I think hopefully we’re going to have supervisors who really want to partner with us to make this happen.”
Chase and Chergosky returned to the topic of money as they ended their time at the forum.
Chase reiterated the need for adequate funding for the school system, noting that it pays for the faculty and support staff who nurture important scholarly relationships with students.
“Students want to come to school because there’s somebody in that classroom who cares about them and whom they care about,” she said.
Chergosky agreed with her opponent on this point. She echoed the notion that it’s been difficult for Stafford to retain teachers, as well as mentioning the vital work of school principals.
“They’re very, very involved, and they spend a lot of their off time — if you can call it that — helping out families,” she said.
