Hirons seeks a return to the Stafford School Board as a write-in candidate

Scott Hirons is a familiar face in the Stafford County Public Schools as a former school board member from 2014 to 2017.

The government contractor and father of three has become a write-in candidate to represent the Falmouth District on Stafford County School Board, currently held by Dr. Sarah Chase. Chase is the only candidate whose name will be printed on the ballot for Falmouth School Board. 

Hirons is a graduate of George Mason University with a Bachelor’s of Science in public administration earned in 1996 and an MBA from the University of Maryland in 2000. Potomac Local News talked with Hirons about his decision to run again and the issues he sees as necessary to the Stafford County Public Schools.

“I was hoping somebody else would run”

Potomac Local News: According to your website, you had decided not to run because of family demands and the impact it would have on your family. But, so what changed your mind that you chose to offer yourself as a writing candidate?

Hirons: I stayed knowledgeable and involved with the school issues and the issues that the school board deals with. I was considering filing and running as a regular candidate. Still, my wife and I knew that with two boys going off to college. One that’s a junior in college and one that just started as a freshman in college.

We knew we’d be busy over the summer with our middle schooler and his baseball team. I was hoping somebody else would run, but then nobody else filed. Then at the beginning of the school year here in Stafford, the start of the school year was just a complete debacle.

The transportation, for example, granted there were issues throughout the country with student transportation. Still, here in Stafford, it seemed to be increased because the school board wasn’t prepared. They waited and didn’t ask the right questions.

Also, they haven’t prioritized budgets over the last two years to help minimize the effects of driver shortages and fuel costs. They also switched up the schedule where the elementary schools, students start first, middle schoolers, then high schoolers. Well, that just increased.

Transportation issues

Hirons: The issues of getting transportation settled when we’re coming off a pandemic year. In my view, you want to minimize the number of problems that you could have, and adding a schedule change just increases the issues and the potential risk. I don’t think the school board had asked the right questions, and that frustrated me.

My son had a few days where his bus never showed up, and other times he was over an hour behind arriving home. I realized I could still run as a write-in candidate, but I really wasn’t convinced. Then, I was at a pool party in August, and several neighbors came up to me and said, “Hey Scott, we need somebody. We need a good candidate to run for the school board. We know it’s late but we’re there. We’re going to support you, and we’re behind you.” Meg Bohmke, our current Falmouth District Supervisor [on the Stafford County Board of Supervisors, a separately elected body], had called me and encouraged me to run as well.

And so that’s why I decided to put all my chips on the table and make a run for it as a write-in candidate.

PLN: The board recently put together an ad-hoc committee on the school transportation commission in the wake of the transportation issue you mentioned. Do you think that’s a step in the right direction of trying to address some of these issues that have popped up regarding school transportation?

Hirons: It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s also a year behind. That’s something they really should have been doing a year ago with the plans of going back to school in some sort of normal fashion. If they want to pass it on to a commission or a parent committee, that’s fine. Still, you need to give that parent committee time to be able to analyze the data, ask the right question and make the right recommendations to the school board and this ad hoc committee.

Now, you know, it’s going to take them three months to do their work and provide any real value to the school board and make any sort of recommended improvements to transportation.

The current School Board focuses on social issues, not students

PLN: What are some of the concerns you’ve had about the current board’s priorities?

Hirons: As a whole, I think they have gotten much more political. They focus more on social issues than actually doing the work that the school board should be doing. Prioritizing teacher compensation, facilities, ensuring that we have enough classrooms, ensuring class sizes are small.

That’s happened, really, over the last four years and that’s concerning to me. Where my initial motivation to consider being a write-in came from — when I was on the school board, we adopted a strategic plan. We followed that plan and budgeted based on the priorities of the strategic plan.

Whereas they’ve now shelved the strategic plan, they don’t have an active one. They haven’t reviewed it in at least three years and have not prioritized it long-term in their budget. They’re budgeting essentially on short-term goals and short-term priorities from four years ago.

Need to focus on long-term planning

PLN: What are the issues you believe the board should be facing now, and how different are they from when you were previously on the board?

Hirons: I really, truly believe in long-term planning, especially now as we’re hopefully coming out of the pandemic or at least making strides to come out of the pandemic. I think we need to focus on the long long-term planning of where the school division should be.

We should be able to do better in terms of academic performance in Virginia, better teacher compensation, and overall the quality of schools. Right now, I think we’re on the exact opposite path of that. And we do that by what we did when I was on the school board of adopting a good strategic plan that lays out our vision and informs what the board of supervisors is funding.

“We could have gotten more kids back into a classroom”

PLN: In what areas has the current school board excelled?

Hirons: I will say I think the board and the school division did a pretty decent job reacting to the pandemic with all the forces that come with that, from national mandates to state mandates to even local county health department mandates.

You know, I wasn’t really excited about kids having the only option being a virtual school setting initially. In retrospect, they probably took the right direction there. I wish they would have moved a little bit faster. Get back to the hybrid model where we could have gotten more kids back into a classroom.

And now, as we’re coming out of it, I’m kind of concerned about how they’re approaching things like the mask mandate. I think they’re sort of hiding behind state law, which isn’t necessarily as clear as they claim it to be, to require all students to wear a mask every day throughout the school.

Relaxing quarantining rules 

PLN: The school board recently decided to loosen the rules when it comes to quarantine. They went from a strict 14 days to parents deciding whether they wanted to do 14 days at the most or 10 days without a test or for seven days with a COVID test. What’s your opinion on that?

Hirons: The school board has finally acknowledged that parents exist. They actually listened to some parent concerns because the extended quarantine didn’t make a lot of sense. There was nothing specific within the state code or the health recommendation, no requirements on setting that timeframe.

So, that’s at least a good thing that they listened to parents, but it took a relatively new member of the board, Susan Randall, as I understand. She’s the one who really pushed it to make that happen.

Critical race theory debate 

PLN: Virginia has become ground zero for the critical race theory in schools debate. What’s your take?

Hirons: That’s not real or a really heavy focus of my campaign. It’s somewhat of an issue of the day. There are concerns, of course, but I’ll take the interim superintendent’s word that there was no critical race theory being taught within the school division’s curriculum.

I’m concerned about other programs, how some teachers may interpret their teaching, and whether or not there are any parts of what has become CRT within how they teach it.

I understand the board of supervisors’ concern and the action they took [calling the interim schools superintendent to testify on CRT or the lack thereof in the county’s schools]. I would have liked to have seen the School Board and the Board of Supervisors work more closely on the issue, which the Board of Supervisors wanted to begin with back in March.

They kept asking the questions and asking questions. They had to get to the point of taking the action they did to get the school board to at least acknowledge potential issues and discuss them.

Frankly, Sarah Chase’s response to the resolution was that she was frustrated that the Board of Supervisors adopted that resolution because she was concerned about teachers being offended and leaving the school division. Meanwhile, she’s increasing class sizes and not compensating them and apparently not concerned about them leaving the classrooms because of that or leaving late, leaving the division because of crowded classrooms and lower competence.

Reducing class sizes

PLN: Should you become elected, what do you think you can bring to the school board?

Hirons: The first and foremost thing I want to push for is to reduce our class sizes. Again, that was a big issue for me when I served, and I want to see us reduce our class sizes again and reinstate caps that we adopted on the size of classes.

In elementary school, where he had kept [kindergarten] through [third grade] at 24, [in fifth and sixth grades] 26 students, they can have as many as 30 students in the classrooms now under what the school board has done in more recent years.

That’s the first thing I really want to work on. From what I hear from teachers, students learn better and academic performance has shown to be improved with lower class sizes.

I also want to work on making sure we’re compensating teachers to a value that is competitive within our region.

Not confident new high school will be ready by 2026

Hirons: We need to be doing better on teacher compensation and we really need to focus on infrastructure. High school number six is desperately needed, and now I believe the CIP has an opening at best for 2026.

I’m not confident that the current school board would even keep to that date. I almost believe that high school six wouldn’t be pushed off another two to four years.

There has to be a push and a strong demand from the school board to make sure that it happens. It’s going to happen by working with us with the board of supervisors on finding the ways to properly fund new school buildings like school six, the next elementary school, and the next middle school.

These are the things I did when I was on the school board. Previously, I worked with the board of supervisors to ensure that the new Moncure [Elementary School in North Stafford] was built on time and on schedule.

Scott Hirons will be a write-in candidate for the Falmouth District Representative of the Stafford County School Board on Nov. 5.