In a busy five hours of meetings, the Mathews County School Board kicked off the 2026-2027 budget process, addressed plans to consolidate the division into two schools (combining Mathews Elementary and Thomas Hunter Middle School into a single pre-K-seventh grade school), examined the newly released state school performance data, heard from parents concerned about problems in special education instruction at the elementary school, and honored the three MCPS Teachers of the Year, crowning a division-wide Teacher of the Year.

Budget work session

Tuesday night’s meeting in the Brooks Auditorium at THMS began with a budget work session, where superintendent Dr. David S. Daniel reviewed some of the challenges facing the division as it heads into the upcoming budget process.
From FY23 to the current FY26 budget, Mathews has seen a steady reduction in funding from the state level, resulting in a decrease in the overall budget from $18.1 million to $15.9 million.

That trend in reduced state contributions is likely to continue, with declining enrollment and a jump in the Local Composite Index in the 2026-2027 biennium from .5904 to .6637.

LCI is the formula the state uses to calculate a locality’s ability to pay for its educational needs, and how much basic aid is awarded by the state. The .6637 LCI figure means that for every dollar of a Standards of Quality position that needs to be funded, the county is expected to pick up a little over 66 cents.

Looking at neighboring localities, Gloucester’s LCI for 2026-2027 is .3999, West Point is .2524 and Middlesex is .6207. The scale tops out at .8000.

At the same time as Mathews faces this continued drop in state funding, the school division needs to attract and retain teachers and compete with neighboring divisions. “I know this is going to be a challenging budget year,” school board member Linda Hodges said. Hodges “threw out” a figure of 6 percent raises to remain competitive with other divisions. Also, she mentioned, “the starting salary for aides is abysmal … we need to do a better job of having a higher starting salary. Attracting and keeping them has been very difficult.”

“It’s going to be a balancing act,” said school board member Calvin Morgan. “It’s really going to be a struggle.” While Morgan said that he wouldn’t yet put a percentage on the salary raise, he said there needs to be “a meaningful increase” and not just 1 or 2 percent. “The cost of living is not getting cheaper for any of us,” he said. “We’ve got to take care of our people.”

The school board will hold another work session on Jan. 20, when it will review the first draft of a budget proposal.

Consolidation

The declining enrollment is the driving force behind plans to consolidate Mathews Elementary and Thomas Hunter Middle School into a single pre-K through seventh grade elementary school. Mathews has been experiencing declining enrollment for the past 20+ years. Since the 2003-2004 school year (when the schools had nearly 1,300 students), Mathews has seen a roughly 40 percent reduction in enrollment. At present, enrollment stands at approximately 759 students. Daniel reviewed the demographic trends for Mathews, showing the county’s school-age and young population continuing to decrease.

At the start of the 2024-2025 school year, the eighth grade was moved from THMS to Mathews High. This year, the fifth grade was moved to the elementary school. Currently, MES and THMS share several positions, including a nurse, registrar and media specialist, with THMS and MHS sharing band and art teachers, two CTE teachers and a math instructor.

Consolidation was first included in the school board’s strategic plan in November of 2024, with a community committee meeting for the past three months to evaluate the options.

The combined school would remain with the name Mathews Elementary. The unused space at Thomas Hunter would be converted into school board offices and renamed something like the Thomas Hunter Education Building, Daniel said.

School performance

Daniel reviewed the Virginia Department of Education’s new school performance evaluation. He said the evaluation was supposed to be out in early October, but was delayed up until about a week ago.

The complex evaluation metric is separate from traditional accreditation (which looks at schools following state code and meeting mandates), with schools getting a grade for student performance in areas such as “mastery,” “growth” and “readiness.” He likened the state’s excessively complex evaluation formula to a “Rube Goldberg machine.”

The state’s four performance categories are Distinguished (90 points and above), On Track (80-89 points), Off Track (65-79 points) and Needs Intensive Support (below 65 points).

For 2025-2026, the county schools’ performance index scores are 89.5 for MHS and 84.6 for MES (both on track) and 84 for THMS (off track). Despite the score of 84, THMS was moved from on track to off track due to the performance of one subgroup that resulted in the school being placed in what is called “Targeted Support.”

Parent concerns

During the public comment period during the regular board meeting, several parents of elementary school special education students took to the podium to voice their concerns about disruptions experienced in the classroom.
Kellie Lockerby, Cassandra Mathiesen and Rebecca Mullins each addressed the board with their concerns. Mathiesen spoke of her daughter, who is nonverbal, being attacked by a violent child in the classroom, a delay in being notified about the attack for several hours and the matter not being handled as an assault. All three women expressed concerns about what they see as a lack of support for the teacher and paraprofessional, with Lockerby expressing her “disappointment and concern” that the division is again going to be “without a licensed, qualified special education teacher at the elementary school for students with disabilities for the second year in a row. To be fair though, years prior to 2023, the employee that held the position was not a licensed teacher, even though parents were led to believe that was the case.”

The three also took issue with a new regulation that will go into effect in January on parents’ observation of their children in the classroom, which must be scheduled at least five days in advance.

Teacher of the Year

The school board also celebrated the Teachers of the Year for each school, with Christina Tomcany receiving the honor for Mathews Elementary; Mary Beth Burroughs at Thomas Hunter, and John Corrigan at MHS.

After the three were introduced and presented their plaques, Daniel announced that this year’s division-wide Teacher of the Year is Corrigan, who heads up the English department at MHS and is the coach of the school’s Scholastic Bowl team.

In another presentation on Tuesday night, a retirement plaque was presented to Sharon Morgan, who retired after 28 years with the division, serving as the school board’s clerk.

During a closed meeting, which took place between the budget work session and the regular monthly meeting, the board approved the retirement of Dr. Kevin Hogge, teacher/transition program coordinator at MHS, effective Jan. 1, as well as the appointment of MES teacher assistant Michelle Ireland, and two volunteer sports coaching appointments—Joice Small for girls’ basketball and Alexander Forrest for boys’ basketball.