As the two most senior officials on the Caroline County School Board and board of supervisors, Calvin Taylor and Floyd Thomas were optimistic that a joint town hall would bridge the oftentimes contentious relationship between the two boards.
“I was hopeful,” Thomas said.
The idea was nixed, however, during a school board meeting Wednesday night after an item on town halls was added to the agenda and Taylor sought to explain his rationale for accepting Thomas’ invitation.
“Let me just say in the beginning, I never pass up an opportunity to talk to constituents about what we do,” Taylor said. “But I will also not participate in … any type of meeting unless the school board knows about it and we have talked about it.”
So, instead of Thomas and Taylor hosting a conversation with constituents, the school board and division staff will hold a town hall sometime during the week of April 6-10 and supervisors will be invited to listen with the option of joining the school board for a work session afterward to see if the boards “can gain additional momentum,” Superintendent Sarah Calveric said.
“We’ll make sure our supervisors are aware,” Calveric added. “If they would like to attend in the audience as attendees and hear what is being shared, we welcome them to do so.”
The boards are facing divides on various issues, specifically capacity concerns at Lewis and Clark Elementary School.
The supervisors voted to allow the school board to use $1 million in reversion funds in 2025 to add trailers to Bowling Green Elementary School to address capacity needs. The school board is exploring doing the same at Lewis and Clark.
The boards are also seeking to build another school, most likely an elementary school, but Thomas said the plans are light on specifics, and he was hoping the community would provide him and Taylor with valuable feedback. The joint town hall would’ve been at the end of March at the Caroline Community Services Center in Milford.
“Really, the goal was just to talk about the projects and listen to what the community had to say about the projects because there’s really no details,” Thomas said. “We want to build a new school. Where is that new school going to be? Where are the boundary lines going to be to determine who goes to that new school? What’s our five, 10, 20-year plan? … Basically, I want to hear ideas from the community. It wasn’t me telling them what was going on, but we were asking them their ideas.”
The school board stressed that any town hall its members are involved in should be a collaborative effort between the members and division staff. Division personnel would need to be actively involved in the town hall since they work on the day-to-day planning of any potential projects, Calveric said.
School board member JoWanda Rollins-Fells of the Reedy Church District said she’s thankful that the town hall the school division is scheduling will be a publicized event so more than two board members can participate.
“If we start the individual approach, it is campaigning; it’s not governance,” Rollins-Fells said.
In other business, the school board listened to a presentation from Matthew Luther, the transition and education services manager at the VCU Rehabilitation Research and Training Center. Luther informed the board about Project SEARCH, which is partnering with Kalahari Resorts and Conventions to provide employment for students with disabilities.
Caroline, Fredericksburg City Public Schools, and Spotsylvania County Public Schools are considering jointly participating in the program, which will provide employment for eight to 12 students with disabilities in administration, front desk, food and beverage, and housekeeping.
The program’s directors are hoping to identify the school divisions participating in the program by May and students can start working in August 2027. The cost is $18,000 total, which would be $6,000 apiece if Caroline, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania agrees to participate.
Luther said the program is a “win-win” for students, the school division and Kalahari.
“If you can have a business that employs people with disabilities and is disability-friendly, then I think it shows something to folks in the community that that’s a place they would like to go,” Luther said.
