For 15 days leading up to Tuesday night’s board of supervisors meeting, Caroline County Public Schools held a social media campaign supporting funds for facility expansion.
But while Supervisor Jeff Black of the Western Caroline District said he supports an additional elementary school to ease overcrowding at Lewis and Clark Elementary and Bowling Green Elementary, he did not appreciate all aspects of the school division’s efforts to increase community awareness over the issue.
“To me,” said Black, “it’s kind of fear mongering.”
He was particularly upset that school officials included in their statistics two housing developments — Haymount and Carmel Church Station — that were approved more than a decade ago but for which developers have made no progress.
But even without those developments, Caroline grew by 9.3% from 2020-24, making it the fourth-fastest growing locality in the state, according to the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center.
Superintendent Sarah Calveric said the division’s social media campaign noted that Haymount and Carmel Church Station will not be completed within 10 years. She also said she embraces “a growth mindset” and took exception to Black’s comments.
“Rest assured there is no fear mongering spirit driving our awareness, education, advocacy and communication plan,” Calveric said. “The facts gathered via the public demographic study stand on their own, specifically the number of approved housing permits. CCPS gleaned rooftop data directly from the county’s planning department.”
Calveric said it’s been an uphill battle attempting to convince the supervisors to support any of the four plans recommended by RRMM Architects to manage growth within the school division.
Instead, the supervisors requested the school board return with a long-term and a short-term plan. Calveric said those plans will be presented and discussed at an April 16 meeting. Calveric told the Free Press that whether anticipated growth over the next 10 years is moderate or high, something needs to be done immediately to manage overcrowding.
“We’re not gaining the traction at the speed that we had hoped,” she said. “We feel that there is a sense of urgency that is not yet recognized by all parties. So, we need to be meeting more regularly, but we’re not able to create a table that all parties come to regularly.”
Supervisor Reginald Underwood of the Reedy Church District expressed concerns Tuesday about pre-K classrooms taking up space in elementary school buildings and using funds appropriated for K-12 students.
The division spends $89,000 per year on pre-K funding, but the remainder is paid for at the state and federal levels.
“It should be a standalone program, and it should fund itself,” Underwood said of pre-K.
Underwood attempted to dispel sentiment in the community that he is “anti-schools” by noting that when he was a teacher and basketball coach at Caroline High School in the 1990s and early 2000s, he spent as much as $7,000 annually of his own money to support the program.
He suggested that preschool students be moved into the current school board administrative building, which is the former Bowling Green Elementary School. He said the school board office should then be moved across the street in the “annex” building that now serves Chesapeake Bay Governor’s School students.
“If [the annex is] good enough for kids, it ought to be good enough for adults,” Underwood said … “I’m going to ensure that every dollar that we spend for taxpayers is spent the best it could be.”
Calveric noted that the governor’s school only uses the first floor of the building, and the upstairs is not suitable for operations. She added that the building is also not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and if pre-K for the whole county was moved into the current school board office, it would take up 15 out of 18 classrooms, leaving little space for administrative purposes.
She also said that what worked decades ago may not work in today’s educational environment when extra space is needed for more students with disabilities and English Language Learners.
“When we take historical experiences and apply them to modern-day education, I struggle with that,” Calveric said. “Everybody has experiences from their past, but are they truly able to be overlaid on top of our current reality and be accurate? That, I don’t think is a fair approach.”
Board of Supervisors Chair Nancy Long and School Board Chair Calvin Taylor, both Port Royal District representatives, toured Bowling Green Elementary recently and witnessed tutors working with children in the hallway because of a lack of available space.
Sandra Gilliam, an assistant principal at Lewis and Clark, said that is a regular occurrence at her school as well. Gilliam said she was taken aback recently when 113 new kindergartners were registered for the 2025-26 school year.
“Yes, 113,” Gilliam said. “Classrooms are overcrowded, and exceptional education students are forced to share instructional spaces.”
Gilliam and Lewis and Clark fifth-grader Violet Crawford both spoke about overcrowding in the cafeteria and in restroom lines. Gilliam said children being tutored in the hallway are often distracted by others lining up to use the restroom. She said assemblies and after-school events typically draw hordes of vehicles and so many people that the fire marshal threatened to shut down the activities. She said Lewis and Clark is no longer able to meet the needs of the community.
“Our current infrastructure is stretched to the limit and simply cannot accommodate the continued growth,” Gilliam said.
In other business, the supervisors voted 4-2 to advertise a real estate tax rate of 51 cents per $100 of assessed value. The equalized rate was 49 cents when taking into consideration a 63% increase in reassessment values.
The current tax rate is 78 cents per $100 of assessed value. Black and Clay Forehand of the Madison District voted against advertising 51 cents. They believed it should’ve been higher because once a rate is advertised, it legally cannot be raised, only lowered.
County Administrator Charles Culley did not provide any graphics or a breakdown of the proposed budget during his presentation.
Forehand said the advertised rate provides the county little wiggle room when establishing its 2026 fiscal year budget.
“It’s kind of a narrow margin in case there was a clerical mistake which actually occurred last year,” Forehand said … “With the state-mandated requirements of when budgets are adopted, it wouldn’t be enough time [to adjust]. All [Black and I] were looking to do is give flexibility in case there was an error where the personal property numbers came back lower than in the past, which is possible.”
