First-Class Tickets, Canceled Cards, and Shuttle Service Led to Policy Change

Fredericksburg City Public Schools' new travel policy for Board members grew out of budget-busting traveling expenses and concerns about transparency.

By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Photo by emanuviews on Unsplash

Expenses related to travel for two Fredericksburg City School Board members, Jarvis Bailey and Malvina Kay, amounted to almost half the Board’s total budget for travel for professional development, according to documents provided to the Advance through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Board’s total budget for professional development for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2025, was $16,500. Three conferences attended by Bailey and Kay this year totaled at least $8,000. The Board exceeded its total professional development for the recent fiscal year by almost $5,000.

In both cases, the Board members had in their possession while attending out-of-state conferences the credit card issued either to the Board Clerk, Angie Roenke, or the Superintendent, Marci Catlett.

First Class Tickets to Atlanta

School Board member Malvina Kay (Ward 4) purchased a first-class ticket for her flight to Atlanta to attend the National School Board Association’s annual conference in April.

In her expense reimbursement report, Kay wrote that the first-class ticket was the “only viable option” because the “comfort ticket was sold out,” and “Main seating is all the way in the back and [I] had a meeting to get to.”

The main cabin ticket was $479, according to paperwork included in the expense reimbursement, and the first-class ticket was $739. Kay reimbursed the division for $80, which she said was the difference between the comfort and first-class ticket. The comfort ticket price isn’t documented in the expense reimbursement.

School division transportation employees also drove Kay to the Richmond airport for her flight to Atlanta on Thursday, April 3, and picked her up on Sunday, April 6. The two round trips together totaled 7.5 hours and the employees received a total of $175.99 in overtime pay. The drop-off on Thursday did not conflict with school bus runs.

Kay wrote in an April 4 email to Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Brody, School Board Clerk Angie Roenke, School Board Chair Matt Rowe, and division superintendent Marci Catlett that her travel choices reflect her concern with personal safety.

“I am a single woman traveling alone: I must stay on a high floor preferably in a hotel that requires a key to access the floor,” she wrote. “I will not stand on the street to hail a taxi or wait for Uber. I have had men try to pull over and pick me up. Taxi drivers have intentionally gone out of the way to get to a destination to drive up the fare. I rent cars where I can have valet parking or open parking.”

Canceled Credit Card

While in Atlanta this April, Kay had the school purchase card issued to Roenke, the School Board clerk.

Kay attempted to use the card to purchase gifts for School Board members at the conference bookstore and learned it had been cancelled, according to her April 4 email.

In a later email, sent on April 21 to all School Board members and titled “Complaint about travel experience,” Kay wrote that she left her personal credit card at home because “I did not want to keep up with different cards.”

Brody, the chief financial officer, said in an email to the Advance this week that she shut down the purchase cards issued to both Roenke and Catlett due to “possible purchase card usage issues.” She said she ordered replacement cards and that she did not know Roenke’s card was in Kay’s possession at the time.

Kay, in her April 21 email, said the cancellation of the cards was “unauthorized” and that it created “fear and anxiety” for her. Brody said Kay’s hotel and rental car charges had already been charged to the purchase card before it was cancelled.

School Board members do not have credit cards issued in their names, according to division finance staff, and there are no school procurement credit card authorization forms on file for any School Board member, according to the results of the Advance’s FOIA request.

The procedure manual for the division’s Bank of America purchase card program states that cards “may be used only by the identified authorized cardholder… No other person is authorized to use an FCPS P-Card.” (Bolded text is as-written in the procedure manual.)

However, the Advance reported on July 8 that School Board member Jarvis Bailey used the cards issued to Catlett and Roenke to pay for travel, hotels, meals, and incidentals while in Honolulu and Atlanta for conferences in January and March, respectively, of this year.

And in an email sent to Catlett and Rowe on April 1, before traveling to the Atlanta conference, Kay wrote, “For the past 30+ years, school board members have had to use staff credit cards while traveling in order to cover school expenses. I am recommending that a School Board credit card is created that has Dr. Catlett's name on it and the heading School Board.”

She continued: “…In today's economy (and we expect it is going to get worse with tariffs) School Board Members should not be expected to come out of pocket and get reimbursed later. When I started on the Board, we never had to worry about anything.”

Kay did not respond to questions from the Advance about her travel.

Rental Car to Atlanta

Documents received through the FOIA request also show that School Board member Jarvis Bailey (At Large) rented a “premium elite” SUV (car classification code UFAR) to drive to Atlanta in March for the Consortium of State School Boards Associations conference. The total charge was $1,086 for eight days, March 18 through March 25.

The Atlanta trip included an overnight stop on the way down at an Embassy Suites hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the room cost $255, and at a Hampton Inn in Lumberton, North Carolina on the way back, where the room cost $174.

Rowe, the School Board chair, said the division uses the same per diem rates as those set by the federal General Services Administration. Board members are supposed to submit paperwork for a per diem reimbursement two weeks before their travel.

The GSA’s maximum daily lodging rate for Charlotte in March is $131, and for Lumberton is $110.

Bailey’s hotel charges for three nights in Atlanta total $1,032, averaging $344 per night. The GSA’s maximum daily lodging rate for Atlanta in March is $197.

The documents show that Bailey reimbursed $244.51 to the division on May 5 and 6. Bailey did not respond to a question from the Advance about what specific expenses he reimbursed.

New Travel Policies

Concerns about out-of-state travel—as well as the fact that there was no previous policy regulating School Board travel for professional development—led to the development of a policy on these matters, Rowe said last week in an interview with the Advance.

The policy, adopted on July 7, states that attendance at any conference or professional development event aside from Virginia School Board Association conferences must be approved in advance by the board in open session. It also states that reimbursement for expenses will only be permitted for “activities approved in advance by the School Board and for which a statement of travel, with supporting documentation, is submitted at the conclusion of the travel.”

Rowe and School Board member Molly McFadden began working with deputy superintendent Matt Eberhardt on crafting the new policy in May.

McFadden sent an email to Catlett on May 6, expressing her concern with Kay’s suggestion that the School Board should have a credit card issued to it.

“I believe this topic deserves a more in-depth discussion rather than simply issuing cards to board members,” McFadden wrote. “I do not think it is appropriate or necessary for board members to hold credit cards, as we do not typically make large or frequent purchases for the division. I will not be requesting a card, and I strongly believe that others should not request one either, or that board members should be using cards not issued to them. Instead, I would like us to focus on developing clear policies and protocols for board member travel and spending. This approach would help us demonstrate transparency, responsibility, and accountability.”

McFadden followed up on her interest in crafting the new policy in a May 15 email to Rowe and deputy superintendent Matt Eberhardt. She sent links to professional development and expense reimbursement policies in place in Henrico and Virginia Beach, and wrote, “I feel like we could easily adapt these examples, I’d be happy to put something together for you all to look at before the rest of the board would review. Let me know, I do not want this to fall through the cracks.”

Rowe told the Advance last week that “we had heard about some of the spending that a couple board members had done on travel out of state, and when we were looking into that, it was brought up that maybe we might be over budget.”

He continued, “That’s when we figured out, OK, we have one issue of expenditures and then the other of going over budget.”

Travel being monitored for staff

According to Brody, the division is currently “monitoring” professional development expenses for staff, in case City Council needs to hold back funds for the schools as a result of lower-than-expected sales-tax revenue.

McFadden said in an interview with the Advance that her interest in establishing a travel and reimbursement policy was “never about people or personalities” but about a desire for the board to operate transparently, because “that’s what we owe our students and the tax payers.”

“It’s important to me that we function responsibly and with accountability,” she said. “I’m glad we passed [the policy]. Let’s implement it, and if we need to revisit it, that’s something we can have a conversation about.”

Rowe said the School Board is “in a phase where we’re trying to clean up policy.”

“And,” he continued, “this most recent policy we passed is part of that.”

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