The scene at Lewis & Clark Elementary School is a familiar one for Caroline County Public Schools officials.
With 1,024 students attending the school, occupational and physical therapy sessions for students were moved to a stage. The division was forced to double the amount of physical education and library instructors, and those staff members teach classes in the same space at the same time.
“Despite these adjustments, the building remains over capacity,” CCPS Chief Operations Officer Marcia Stevens told the two dozen or so people who gathered to discuss capacity concerns Thursday evening at a town hall held at Bowling Green Elementary School.
The sights are familiar to Stevens because just last year at BGE, counselors were working with small groups in the hallways where behavioral interventions, English Language Learner sessions and other activities were also taking place because of overcrowding.
The school board, however, was able to convince the county’s board of supervisors to reappropriate nearly $1 million in unspent funds from Fiscal Year 2024, so that the division could construct trailers to install at BGE.
There is growing concern in the school division that the board of supervisors has not shown any signs of releasing $1 million in FY25 reversion funds for the construction of trailers at Lewis & Clark.
The process to install the trailers at BGE took just 92 days, but Stevens said that’s not an accomplishment the division aims to repeat; 10 months for site preparation, building and construction is more appropriate.
“Unfortunately, the [school board’s] request for the re-appropriation of the Fiscal Year ‘25 funds has gone unacknowledged by supervisors, rendering the timeline no longer feasible for a June 30, 2026, completion,” Stevens said.
Board of Supervisors Chair Clay Forehand told the Free Press Friday that the completion of a county financial audit could lead to the release of the funds. Forehand said he and at least one other supervisor will vote in favor of releasing the funds — but “whether we can get four votes, I don’t know.”
Forehand also said that while the school division is pushing for a fourth elementary school to ease overcrowding, the supervisors are thinking differently. Forehand said the board plans to propose “modest” additions to BGE, Caroline Middle School and Caroline High School, and a dramatic expansion of Madison Elementary School. He said that plan is more affordable as the county is leery of the operational costs of a fourth elementary school.
Superintendent Sarah Calveric said a conservative estimate of an elementary school is $40 million, but there won’t be many additional staff expenses because the division was forced to hire so many teachers to handle the large number of students at Lewis & Clark and BGE.
While Bowling Green District school board representative Michael Hubbard noted statistics from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center over the past two years that show Caroline is the fastest growing locality in the Fredericksburg area, and top four in the state, Forehand said those numbers aren’t convincing the board of supervisors that a new school is required.
School officials also noted that there are 7,007 unbuilt approved lots in the county, according to the planning department. By 2030, the middle and high schools are also expected to be above capacity.
“Growth is not projected,” Hubbard said. “It’s happening now.”
But Forehand said the school board is overestimating the number of students that will enroll. He noted that more students are being homeschooled than ever before, and that the trend is particularly popular in Caroline.
Madison is centrally located, he said, so an expansion will allow it to take on pre-K students from Lewis & Clark and students from the Woodford area who attend BGE.
“Doing an addition is much cheaper than a full build,” Forehand said. “It kind of checks a lot of boxes, and not having four [elementary] buildings is better for us financially,”
The dispute over whether a new school is needed and the non-communication over the reversion funds are symbolic of the growing divide between the boards.
Calveric told BGE Parent Teacher Association President Patrick Stambaugh that he’s an “astute listener” after he recapped her rundown of the tensions between the boards. Stambaugh said the supervisors attempted to “strong arm” the school board into taking over the construction of six classrooms and a gymnasium at BGE — a project the supervisors proposed, and the school board only supported because it was promised funds for the trailers.
The boards failed to come to an agreement over the construction of the gym and classrooms because of the county’s demand in a Memorandum of Understanding to oversee the project, so that effort is on hold indefinitely. Forehand said the county doesn’t plan to back down from its stance that it oversees the construction of any projects rather than the school division.
“Our board was not in agreement with the MOU, and we worked with our attorney and submitted a revised draft,” Calveric said. “It was not accepted. As of today, the expansion project has not proceeded.”
School officials also provided a breakdown of why one commonly asked question from constituents isn’t viable: Why can’t the division use current auxiliary buildings for students?
Calveric noted that a facility study performed by RRMM Architects rated Lotus Academy (formerly Ladysmith Elementary), the annex building next to the school board office, the transportation building and the school board office, which once served as BGE, in fair or poor condition. It would cost 87% of the price of a new construction to renovate the annex and Lotus Academy to make them suitable to address capacity issues.
“Any time you’ve got something over 80% the architect and engineering firm recommend, you don’t do that option because you’re still left with old infrastructure,” Calveric said … “These findings ultimately confirm that neither site is cost-effective or a sustainable solution to address short-term or long-term capacity needs.”
Calveric said building a new high school and converting the current high school into a middle school — and the middle school to an elementary school — is also an idea proposed by many. However, she said it isn’t feasible, because the cost of a high school can reach $140 million and that the process of making those changes would take nine years to complete.
Calveric encouraged residents to monitor the General Assembly for passage of a bill that would allow localities to charge a 1% sales tax to go toward school construction. If the supervisors were to put that item on a referendum, it could generate more than $4 million per year. School officials also implored residents to advocate for the division at upcoming school board and board of supervisors meetings.
