This fall, Stafford’s voters will choose their representatives for the School Board and Board of Supervisors for Garrisonville, Hartwood, Falmouth, and Aquia. George Washington, Rockhill, and Griffis-Widewater are up for election in 2027.
To help local voters learn more about their candidates, Potomac Local News invited all School Board candidates to a virtual interview with the same five questions; their answers have been condensed into a series of articles. This is the third article of the series.
The videos are available here.
The School Board and Board of Supervisors often share responsibilities when it comes to funding and long-term planning. How would you describe the ideal working relationship between the School Board and other county departments?
Scharpenberg (Aquia): 
I think that the school board should be a little bit more forthcoming on how they’re using the money, what committees are being formed, what feedback or issues do parents have with Stafford Schools? We need to keep that up front and out there, and so the Board of Supervisors understands if there are problems with their constituents – for example, [feedback on] where new schools would be built. The school board really doesn’t have any input in that, but the Board of Supervisors does. We need a really good give and take, not just once a year. We need a monthly liaison and a good sharing of information and communication.
Regan (Aquia): 
It’s imperative the school board and the board of supervisors are able to work together. The school board submits a budget request, the board of supervisors determines how much of that request is going to be fulfilled. [If the two boards are unable] to communicate effectively and work together in the best interest of our students, the students are the ones that lose out. I’ve focused my teaching career around building relationships with my students, with their families, and making a comfortable environment in my classroom so children can feel free to be themselves. If you can build a relationship, people who disagree with you will be willing to listen to you. That is lacking right now between the two boards. I plan to leverage my ability to form relationships and work together to overcome those obstacles, because everything that I do on this board is gonna be for the students.
Breedin Chase (Falmouth, incumbent): 
It’s really important to have a relationship with our counterparts across the street, and ideally to have a positive relationship. And that involves being willing to pick up the phone or, send an email and say, “can we sit down and have a conversation about this?” Over the last term, the Board of Supervisors has really stepped up quite a bit over what we had seen previously in terms of helping fund our schools. But, you know, you have to be a little careful when you’re sitting in the school board seat, you don’t necessarily see everything that the person sitting in the Board of Supervisors seat is dealing with. Both [current supervisors] Meg Bohmke and Pam Yeung were on the school board and moved to the board of supervisors, and suddenly found that there were a lot of other priorities that they also needed to deal with.
Chergosky (Falmouth): 
Constant communication is the key to have good collaboration between everyone across the different types of leadership. Then you can have more agreement and you can hear different people’s points of view to make a more educated decision.
Siegmund (Garrisonville, incumbent): 
The current Board of Supervisors has done pretty well at recognizing the school board has a very specific set of tasks set forth by the Virginia Constitution. We are literally elected to carry out those tasks; they have similar tasks they are responsible for and we should be working together to make sure we are moving everything forward. No one section of our tasks is more or less important than the others. I don’t expect them to know everything about schools. [The school board] is its own job – it takes seven of us to get it done, so to ask them to be a familiar with it as we are is unfair. I’ve enjoyed working with Supervisor Diggs, and with supervisor Allen and Ms. Guy as vice chairs, to build a better working relationship between our boards. It’s why we had a joint town hall to work together to hear the community’s needs and how it all intersects. Everything we do here is going to impact everything else. Nothing is stand-alone in Stafford County – We’re a community. When one succeeds, we all succeed.
Mojica (Garrisonville): 
The biggest thing is having good communication with the Board of Supervisors. You have to work well with them in order for there to be progress: that’s the biggest thing, communicating with them and working together so that there can be more solutions rather than back and forth disagreements. I believe there’s a solution for anything. Being more transparent and letting the public know where the budget allocations are going is very important.
Fingerholz (Hartwood): 
Over the last decade and a half or so, there’s been a lot of contention, a lot of ‘I’m not gonna give you this because I’m mad at you.’ The people who suffer aren’t the elected officials. It’s our kids that are sitting in those seats, which is absurd. We need to be adults. We’ve seen some improvements like the two chairs had a town hall meeting this year, a chance for people to talk, and we really need more of that. We need to invite the Board of Supervisors, and really encourage them to come. They need to be a partner in what’s going on in the school. The school is a huge part of the county’s budget and the largest employer in our county. We need to make sure that that partnership is really solid. Then the schools can also [recognize the board members attending] events, and that can help build the connection with the community.
In Stafford County, early voting will be held Monday through Friday at the Registrar’s Office at 124 Old Potomac Church Road, Ste. 205, from Friday, Sept. 19, through Friday, Nov. 1, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The only Saturday voting days will be Oct. 25 and Nov. 1 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 4, from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The deadline to register for voting or request an absentee ballot is October 24.
👉 Next in our series: Where should we invest, or cut, the budget? Stay tuned for the answers in our next installment.
