UPDATE: Planning Department Seeks Collaboration with School Board at Wednesday Work Session

Update: The video of the work session has been added. See below.

On Wednesday October 18 at 5:30 p.m. the Warren County School Board met for a work session in the Diversified Minds Meeting Room at 415 West 15^th Street. They heard at length from Warren County Planning Director Matt Wendling and Town Planning Director and Zoning Administrator Lauren Kopishke, both of whom arrived that evening to present a strategic vision for growth in the town and county, over the next 15 to 20 years, and to intensify the chemistry between school board and planning departments as they hopefully seek in unison to implement that vision.

Warren County School Board meets for Wednesday evening work session. Royal Examiner Photos Brenden McHugh

What the town and county planning departments want from the school board is an annual fiscal impact report that would become a tool for Wendling and Kopishke going forward. Wendling highlighted some of the questions the report could answer: “How much enrollment do you have? What are you going to need for additional classrooms? What’s the cost this year per student?”

As the planning departments try to comprehend the fiscal impact, “That analysis is only as good as the data we put into it,” Kopishke said. The kind of data mining the school board can do will then become a tool for the planning departments as they interface with developers and apply the information so that those developers can make more informed proffers.

“That’s why we wanted to get an update from you,” School Board Chairman Kristen Pence said about the evening’s goals. “Over the past six to eight months, we’ve had a lot of conversations about how full our elementary schools are and how close we are to needing a new elementary school. So, I think it’s good for our community just to hear what the growth potential is and to hopefully be able to plan as a school division for those needs as they come to us.”

The keystone of the evening’s discussion was the Warren County Comprehensive Plan, a living document that is reviewed every five years and was last updated in 2005. In both of their presentations, Kopishke and Wendling underlined the relationship between population growth in developing residential areas and the direct impact on the county’s schools. As people, including teachers, take up residence in expanding residential areas, the schools will inevitably be impacted as more young people begin to attend school and new households negotiate the cost of living. As a supplement to this point, Kopishke articulated that it is important to provide affordable and enticing housing for the high caliber teachers the county’s schools will want to employ.

Kopishke also expressed her department’s desire to “discourage residential development in areas of environmentally sensitive lands and agricultural operations,” as the Comprehensive Plan reads under Chapter 4, Section 9 of the plan’s executive summary. What she wants to avoid is “sprawl”. Sixty percent of the county’s current zoning is Agricultural; thus, it is important to build homes in areas that are already residential. Kopishke is optimistic that there is already at least a partial solution to the problem. “We have one-thousand-nine-hundred parcels in the town of Front Royal that are vacant and can be used for residential uses.”

Wendling presented at length the strategic vision of the plan. He highlighted several goals and concerns, including the aim of attracting the best teachers and retaining them.

Matt Wendling presents a strategic vision for growth in the town of Front Royal

Among the board’s other items was a presentation from Assistant Superintendent for Administration Buck Smith about cameras in Warren County public schools; a presentation from the Phoenix Program about protecting students from sexual violation; information from social services about the opportunity to apply for benefits; and after the bulk of the evening’s agenda was accomplished, they went into closed session to address personnel issues.

Click here to watch the Warren County School Board Work Session of October 18, 2023.