We don’t need a new elementary school in Nokesville. The county has severely overcrowded schools and new schools are needed elsewhere, but Nokesville’s elementary student population actually decreased from last year to this year. There is no high density development in Nokesville now or planned. Renovate Nokesville and build new schools where they are needed.
The school’s figures show that other areas in Brentsville and Gainesville districts will gain 4000 more students by the year 2016. The new Kettle Run and Gravely Elementary will accommodate less than half of those 4000 kids. But of those 4000 needed seats, only 113 are actually projected to come from Nokesville! The schools that will be severely overcrowded are Buckland Mills, GlenKirk and Victory Lakes, all nowhere near Nokesville.
By building an 850 student school at Nokesville, you only net 400 seats; the other 450 seats would be taken by the Nokesville kids pulled out of our old building. If you instead build a new school near Buckland and renovate Nokesville, you keep the 450 seats in Nokesville and gain an additional 850 seats in the Buckland Mills area.
A new elementary site has just been donated near Haymarket. The schools could take the money that they would spend on the new school in Nokesville, where it isn’t needed and instead build a new school on Rt. 15 which is badly needed for the 1,138 students they’re projecting in that area by 2016.
That’s just the western end. The eastern end has equally important overcrowding problems. The student distribution map provided by the school’s planning department shows that Nokesville has fewer projected student increases than any other area. There is no place on the entire map with less projected residential development than Nokesville through 2016 except the top of Bull Run Mountain, Manassas Battlefield, in Quantico or Prince William Forest Park. We don’t need a new elementary school here, but they are needed badly in other areas.
Obviously schools need to be built where there is development, but Nokesville is not that site. Renovate Nokesville and build new schools where they are needed.
PATTI McKAY
Nokesville
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