
Stafford County Elementary Schools ES #18 and ES #19
Stafford, VA
Size:
New construction of two 131,000 SF structures
For both Stafford County Public Schools (SCPS) Elementary School (ES) #18 and #19 our team demonstrated unwavering commitment to SCPS’s vision. Throughout the design of ES #18 our transparent communication, collaborative problem-solving, and innovative design earned the trust of SCPS and the broader Stafford County community to award Samaha ES #19. These projects exemplify our ability to listen, lead, and deliver results that resonate with stakeholders and elevate educational spaces.
SCPS Elementary School #18
Stafford County Public Schools’ (SCPS) Elementary School #18 offered an opportunity to redevelop the early education teaching model and provide an ideal school for this first prototype build and three to five more schools to follow.
The ES#18 prototype design started with learning the ideal teaching models and detailed goals of the SCPS team. Our discussions included collaborating with facilities planners, design and construction team members, instructional specialists, food service leaders, engineers, and the superintendent of schools. We focused on listening first and then leading by presenting options for consideration while crafting design solutions around elements of importance in our conversations.
The ES#18 design reinforces the school system’s preferred teaching model through a simple and economic design that eases circulation, reduces operations and maintenance cost, promotes security and wellbeing, while presenting aesthetics that are specific to Stafford County’s preferences. The new prototype school employs a tight footprint in a three-story concept that maintains outdoor site area site circulation, green space, and athletic areas. The efficiency of the implemented design retained enough site area at ES#18 to accommodate a new school bus depot housing 83 buses and 102 driver vehicles.
SCPS’ commitment to holistic education to 1,070 students is reflected in the design through the inclusion of 48 daylit classrooms with adjacent collaborative spaces and outdoor amenities such as the quarter mile running path and generous play fields. The prototype meets the challenge of Virginia’s High-Performance Buildings Act through targeted Green Globes certification.
Our team presented SCPS with multiple exterior design options. We met with the entire client team, including the school superintendent, and performed a very transparent and inclusive process in discussing the design. Through the multiple changes and iterations, we were able to come up with a solution that celebrated the vision of Stafford County.
SCPS Elementary School #19
Following SCPS Elementary School #18’s success, SCPS accelerated the site adaptation of their new prototype to an immediately available location. The Brooke Point High School and Stafford Middle School site possessed site area adequate to locate ES#19 to create a campus design that did not negatively impact the existing school facilities.
The strengths of the new school prototype include a tight building footprint that minimizes site development costs, a rectilinear design that features a simple circulation pattern devoid of costly angled or curved elements, and an economic structural grid that facilitates program stacking, reducing steel tonnage and ensuring efficient mechanical, electrical, and plumbing distribution systems. Additionally, the compact and well-insulated building envelope reduces heating and cooling loads, leading to smaller upfront equipment costs and lower operating energy expenses in the future.
The adaptation to the Brooke Point site brings several benefits, including speed, as SCPS avoids the need for multiple procurement, design, or approval processes for each school, allowing for accelerated schedules. This efficiency enables our team to identify potential construction savings by constructing similar schools, while maintenance planning becomes streamlined, with duplicate schools featuring matching systems providing familiarity for maintenance teams to standardize routine and long-term upkeep. Furthermore, the prototype ensures equality by delivering the same educational programmed spaces to each school community across all new construction elementary schools.
Stafford County determined the best site for the new school would be co-located on a site with an existing school. This decision brought additional challenges. Grading, parking, traffic, vehicular circulation, and site amenities such as tennis courts and playing fields all needed to be designed or redesigned around the existing infrastructure. Furthermore, additional coordination was required to determine which school would receive specific amenities for use outside of the new elementary school, such as tennis courts and student parking. Our team worked with SCPS to accommodate these additional deliverables within our existing contract. We were able to successfully survey and design a larger site under our original contract and complete the project on schedule.



