Facing continued enrollment declines, Bedford County renews talk of elementary school consolidation

Bedford County Public Schools already plans to close Stewartsville Elementary School in 2028, but now the school division is weighing additional closures as well as attendance zone changes as enrollment continues to decline across the county.

Bedford County’s population has been steadily increasing for years, but school enrollment has dropped more than 20% in the past two decades. Some of the division’s 13 elementary schools are only half full, while others are bursting at the seams, school officials say. 

A division-wide study outlines four possible scenarios, including the closures of either Otter River Elementary, Bedford Primary School or Big Island Elementary in addition to Stewartsville.

Now school board members are garnering feedback from the community through a series of town halls and public hearings this fall.

Consolidation scenarios vary

About 30 people gathered in the “cafetorium” at Forest Middle School on Monday night to hear from school board members Jill Dobson and Dora Purvis and share their thoughts on the proposed closures.

Among the crowd was a group of teachers from Otter River and Big Island elementary schools and parents who shared frustrations over the multiple school consolidation conversations the school division has had over the past few years. Some attendees seemed skeptical about the board members’ lack of information or their answers to some of the crowd’s questions.

Media representatives, including from Cardinal News, initially were not allowed into the town hall, but Forest Middle Principal Scott Graham ultimately let reporters in about 20 minutes into the meeting.

Earlier this month, Chris Dick, president and founder of Demographic Analytics Advisors, the consulting firm that conducted the study, presented the Bedford County School Board with potential consolidation and boundary-alignment scenarios, but some were immediately off the table, Dobson and Purvis told attendees Monday.

Several of the scenarios included year-round school for some students or even building a new school in Forest, which is seeing some growth and capacity concerns.

Ultimately, four options have emerged: 

• Closing Stewartsville Elementary and adjusting all attendance boundaries;
• Closing Stewartsville and Big Island elementary schools; 
• Closing Stewartsville and Otter River elementary schools; 
• Closing Stewartsville and Bedford Primary elementary schools, with pre-K moving to Bedford Elementary

Bedford County first looked to close Stewartsville Elementary, located in Goodview, in 2024. At the time, the century-old school was in need of major repairs that could cost the county $20 million to $30 million. It also was operating at 56% of capacity, which has since decreased to under 45%.

Four options were presented at the time, but robust community opposition — including heated town hall meetings with parents, teachers and community members — ultimately led to the then-school board opting to keep the school open.

The issue resurfaced this spring, though, when the school board again proposed closing Stewartsville. 

School officials estimated that closing the school could save the division about $900,000 a year, WDBJ reported at the time. In March, the board voted 5-2 to close the school, but a group of parents immediately filed a lawsuit challenging what the plaintiffs alleged was an expedited process.

In April, the school voted to keep Stewartsville open another year while it completed a countywide redistricting study. As of the September board meeting, the board is also discussing keeping the school open until the end of the 2027-28 school year. 

That study is what is now informing this larger consolidation and redistricting conversation.

It’s a conversation that Dobson said is necessary but not one she is excited about. 

“It feels very premature for us, as well, because we don’t have the answers to your questions, and I know you might be leaving here with more questions than you had answers, but we are using these [town halls] as an opportunity to gather concerns so that we can get the answers to those questions,” Dobson told town hall attendees Monday.

As a parent herself, she also reiterated that she isn’t excited about closing schools. But she later told Cardinal News that as officials across the region are closing and consolidating schools, it is a conversation that Bedford County schools probably should have had sooner.

“But now we’re having it,” she said.

A growing population, a shrinking school division

For some, the idea of closing schools is confusing: Bedford County is among the fastest-growing in the state. 

But the same can’t be said for the county’s schools.

From 2020 to 2025, the county’s population increased by 2.8%, just below the state average of 2.9%, according to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia. 

Since 2010, that increase looks more like 15.7%.

Despite the population growth, the county is aging. Growth has been driven by more people moving into the county from nearby localities like Roanoke or Lynchburg, and retirees and those buying second homes are also attracted to areas of the county close to the Blue Ridge Mountains and Smith Mountain Lake. 

Residents under the age of 18 make up less than 20% of the population, and the percentage of school-age children in the county has declined from about 18.2% in 2000 to 15.2% today, according to Demographic Analytics Advisors.

Enrollment in the county’s public schools has followed a similar downward trend. In the past 20 years, K-12 enrollment has decreased by about 22%, from 10,961 students in 2026 to 8,495 in 2025.

This decrease comes as more families opt to homeschool their children or send them to private school, school officials said, and as birth rates drop across the state and the country.

The consultants predict that enrollment will continue to decline by at least 1.6% by 2035. 

Enrollment growth in some areas, decline in others

Where those declines are happening is also problematic, Dick told school board members during a Sept. 10 meeting.

Bedford County is currently home to more than 80,000 residents, according to Dick, but not all areas of the county are seeing the same type of population increase.

The Forest and New London areas in the eastern portion of the county are seeing growth, and recent construction is also appearing in Huddleston and Moneta, but Demographic Analytics Advisors projects that western and lake-area attendance zones will continue to lose students.

Currently, the division has capacity for about 11,731 students, putting overall use at approximately 72%.

But Forest Elementary is operating at around 98%, while Bedford and New London elementary schools both operate above 85%.

In comparison, Stewartsville is operating at about 44% capacity, and Big Island and Otter River are operating at less than 55%.

School consultants regularly recommend schools operate between 80% and 90%, or even higher in areas that are seeing enrollment declines, as the cost of operating a school building doesn’t decrease with enrollment drops.

Under current enrollment predictions, closing only Stewartsville and redistricting the county’s attendance zones could help with the capacity concerns, but Purvis said closing an additional school could also help the division stave off the need to redistrict again as enrollment continues to fall.

“That’s why we’re trying to do this one time and rip the Band-Aid off and not have to keep doing it,” she told attendees Monday. “And that’s why I hate to say it, but going ahead and closing two schools would make it less likely for us to do [this] again in another year or two, so that we can actually get these kids where they need to be and have them consistently in the same place.”

How long should kids be on the bus?

No matter which scenario the board adopts, consolidating schools will present challenges, board members and parents alike have argued.

In addition to balancing how school buildings are used, school officials will also be looking at transportation and how long students might spend on the bus across a county that spans about 769 square miles.

Carley Bodily said her second grader is already on the bus for about two hours a day, riding to and from Otter River Elementary School.

She said that she and her husband, who both attended the town hall Monday, are concerned about scenarios that project kids might spend as much as 90 minutes on the bus one-way.

Of the scenarios, Dick told the board that closing Stewartsville and Big Island would mean shuttering the two least-used elementary schools — meaning it would disrupt the fewest students — but would be among the most difficult options, transportation-wise.

Closing Stewartsville and Otter River would have the fewest students riding more than an hour on the bus but would also require the largest number of students to change schools.

The current scenarios show anywhere from about a dozen to more than 40 elementary school students spending more than an hour on the bus to get to school.

Purvis and Dobson told attendees Monday that they can’t yet tell specific families where their children might go to school under the various scenarios. That information will be refined after the board commits to one of the four scenarios and draws new attendance zones, they said.