STAFFORD — The proposed plans to move children to new Stafford County elementary schools is ready for prime time.
The Stafford County School Board held two public hearings regarding the nine-month-long redistricting process.
A total of 10 redistricting plans have been created by a Herndon-based consulting firm ArcBridge the, which the county School Board retained to help it through the process. The School Board’s decision at its upcoming March 26 meeting will come down between two different versions of Plan E.
Plan E 2-1 and Plan E 2-2
Plan E 2-1 affects 3,036 students and splits nine neighborhoods. There are entire neighborhoods, like Aquia Harbour, whose children would be moving from Hampton Oaks Elementary School to Ann E. Moncure.
Ann E. Moncure will be the newest elementary school in the county when it opens in September 2019. Students from the Embrey Mill neighborhood will be taken from Winding Creek Elementary School and sent to Park Ridge Elementary School. Along their bus routes, they’ll be passing four other elementary schools.
“It doesn’t make send students to the fifth closest elementary school,” Embrey Mill resident Katie King said at the public hearing. “This will only create the need to redistrict again in a few years.”
Aquia Harbour residents who have attended the old Ann E. Moncure for many years expressed their frustration with Plan E 2-1. Former Aquia District Supervisor member Paul Milde spoke at the public hearing and expressed his frustration with the School Board’s consideration of Plan E 2-1.
“Aquia residents have been going to Moncure for years,” Milde said. “I think we owe it to the residents in Aquia Harbour to keep them at Moncure.”
Plan E 2-2 affects 2,463 students and splits nine neighborhoods. In Plan E 2-2 Aquia Harbour residents stay at Ann E. Moncure while Embrey Mill is sent to Park Ridge.
“My son helped raise money to pay for the outdoor basketball courts and track for the new school,” Aquia Harbour resident Ashley Fint said. “There are 600 fewer kids moved in Plan E 2-2.”
Why redistricting is necessary
In June 2018, the School Board requested that the Stafford County Board of Supervisors, which funds the schools, give $10 million to buy the old Fredericksburg Christian School building off Garrisonville Road in North Stafford, and include the cost of renovations in 2018’s Capital Improvement Plan. While some elementary schools are running out of seats, others have seats going unused, which prompted the need for redistricting.
In return for the old Fredericksburg Christian School, the School Board agreed to redistrict all 17 of the county’s elementary schools.
The purchase of FCS and its planned use as a northern campus for the schools’ head Start program allow for the removal of 20 Head Start classrooms from elementary schools and relocating them to the new facility and the Gari Melchers Complex in southern Stafford County. This makes approximately an extra 473 elementary seats available for use by Kindergarten through fifth grades.
Rising fifth graders stay put
Diversity in each school was one of the many things listed in the criteria that the Board wanted to include in this process of redistricting. In Plan E 2-1 there is a 30 percent difference of students who receive free and reduced lunch in Hampton Oaks and Ann E. Moncure. In Plan E 2-2 the difference between the two schools that number shrinks to seven percent.
“These two plans do not create the diversity every school needs,” county resident Kelly O’Conner said. “Plan E 2-2 is best when including everyone.”
Rising fifth graders will be able to stay at their current school if redistricted under a grandfather clause Superintendent Dr. Scott Kizner announced at the beginning of the redistricting process in December. Some parents will have a child in fifth grade and a child in kindergarten to fourth grade see this as a conflict because they could have two children in two different elementary schools.
“I have a rising fifth grader that will be able to stay at Stafford Elementary while my youngest will have to move to Grafton Village,” resident Shawn Hawkins said. “Maybe we could come up with some type of waiver to allow siblings who are grandfathered in to stay at least for another year.”
The School Board will meet for a work session on March 21 with the final vote coming on March 26.
