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 fourth article of the series.
The videos are available here.
If elected, how would you approach budget priorities? What areas of school spending do you believe need more investment, and where—if anywhere—would you look to cut or reduce costs?
Scharpenberg (Aquia): 
I think non-English speaking students and Special Education students, where funding has been reduced, is a really big area. I’m not sure I would reduce funding anywhere else. Everything that Stafford offers leads to a well-rounded, very well-educated person. So I’m not in favor of cutting funds. I want to go to the state legislature and ask for more. I always wrote on the board when I was teaching school so my students had to look at that, write it down, and then they would have to go to the textbook. I think Chromebooks might shorten the process, but I really think our students need to slow down a little bit. I want to make sure that they can read and write and take direction. Maybe I’m a dinosaur, but I just think we don’t really need the laptops. I’m sure that 99% of our people would disagree with me and if I’m elected, I’m not going to vote against it, but I’m just saying [based on] my years in the classroom, students’ brains are still developing, and they need to slow down, write words out, and think what they’re going to say.
Regan (Aquia): 
We definitely need more investment in some of the things that I’ve already mentioned, like school security and resources for mental and emotional health. We need to be smart about how we allocate our funds. We need to implement professional development in data-driven instruction at the middle and high school levels. We need to invest some money into the early literacy program at the elementary levels, and we need to be really, careful in making sure there’s enough money to help students that do have learning gaps. Those are the students that tend to fall through the cracks. In every school, there are students that have some learning struggles that are not identified as special education. Teachers in the classroom need to be able to identify and work with those students, whether or not they have an IEP. We need to make sure we’re getting the full budget that we request from the Board of Supervisors, but also we need to be very transparent about where we need extra money and why.
Breedin Chase (Falmouth, incumbent): 
I think salary is just a huge piece of what we need to do. Another priority is to try to create a learning environment for our students that really supports their learning. Everybody on the board will tell you that Dr. Chase has been pushing to get cell phones, smartphones, out of schools since before I even got on the board. Distractions are a real problem, and I think we have successfully moved in that direction over the last two years. But what we now see coming onboard is the effect of artificial intelligence. Stafford County Public Schools was the first school system in Virginia to adopt a policy for artificial intelligence. There’s a lot to artificial intelligence in our schools, so on the one hand, our students often know more about technology than our teachers do. [We need] to get our teachers up to speed on artificial intelligence. Then we need to think about how can we educate our students how to use this very powerful tool, because they’re not going to be competitive in the workplace if they don’t know how to use this tool. We need to make sure that they have a level of knowledge in order to critically assess what artificial intelligence is producing for them. So those are some of the things that are coming down the pike that we need to be on top of.
Chergosky (Falmouth): 
Cutting costs is always on people’s minds, because you always try to find where to cut, but not everyone is happy with the decisions that are made. Teachers’ pay always needs more funding. They did just increase [it recently], which is great, using a meal tax through the county. That’s going to help retain a lot of staff. I also am concerned about technology and cyclical replacements, training, and [pay rates for] our paras and bus attendants -their pay is not at all competitive or appropriate for their positions.
Siegmund (Garrisonville, incumbent): 
We definitely have some capital needs that need to be caught up on. The supervisors were fantastic this year in fully funding our ask for the 3R, which is our repair, replacement, and renovate plan. That’s our scheduled maintenance, scheduled on a 10-year rotation. In the past, our ask for that annual maintenance has not been fully provided, and that means we have to cut, defer, or delay projects, or defer projects. What gets cut are the things closest to the students. Security systems, fire alarms, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, things that contribute to a safe facility all have to be up and running. The things that are left over are the things that our kids touch every day: furniture, playgrounds, athletic facilities. Those get cut because they are not directly tied to safety and security. Funding scheduled maintenance helps save money down the road, because emergencies cost more than maintenance. I do not want to spend money on emergencies anymore. If we don’t fund it this year, if we can’t afford to fix it, what’s the backup plan? We’ve been trying for several years to differentiate the funding we give to schools for student services. Right now, it’s a flat rate for every student in the school to fund things like assemblies, field trips, or to provide materials that the entire school will use. Some of our schools are Title I, some are not. We would like to differentiate so that the students that might be free and reduced lunch or English language learners, or special education that require additional tools for learning. That [can be] factored into the school-based allocation, rather than just a flat rate.
Mojica (Garrisonville): 
[We should] look into wasteful spending and managing the budget wisely, and have more transparency with the community on explaining budget allocations. We spent $2 million on Chromebooks for middle schoolers. The board members recently received a pay raise for 2026 from $12,000 to $20,000, with a stipend for the Chairman. The chairwoman for the school board stated that the school division is chronically under-resourced and could use more funding – I think that that’s bad timing to be getting a raise. That extra money could have gone towards our schools, the students, and to the teachers. [We should be] working with the Board of Supervisors to advocate for more funding at the state level.I don’t believe it’s fair to continue to burden taxpayers to pay more and more taxes. We need to find better solutions on how we can combat underfunding for our schools.
Fingerholz (Hartwood): 
More focus needs to be on our three R’s, all the repairs that need to be done to the schools. Last summer, there were enough trailers at our schools to fill an entire elementary school. My daughter was in one of the trailers, and her teacher’s foot fell through the floor. The trailer had soft spots on the floor where kids couldn’t walk. They went in one morning, and there was a big mushroom growing out of the floor. Then we had the pipe that burst in I think it was Rodney Thompson Middle School. Thank God that was in the middle of the night, because it was 165 degree boiling water that came pouring down into the cafeteria. So many people, so many kids could have been tragically hurt. We budget to be able to maintain our houses; schools need to maintain their houses. There’s such a shortfall every single year. What they ask for and what they get is not matching. There’s really nothing big that would make a huge impact [if cut from the budget]. I call it budget dust: small things, like reducing the amount of color printing, when we feed the school board, maybe we find other ways to feed them at a lower cost. So again, there’s very small budget dust that could maybe have some improvements.
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: Why Should Someone Vote for You? Stay tuned for the answers in our final installment.
