FROM THE EDITOR: Fredericksburg School Board Has Had a Bad Month ...

... School Board elections have had a bad couple decades. Don't expect schools to get better until the people of Fredericksburg decide that education matters.

By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Photo by Artturi Jalli on Unsplash

The month of July has not been a favorable one for the Fredericksburg City School Board.

On July 8, the Advance reported that new travel policies for the School Board were the result of Board members exceeding their travel budget to conferences and using credit cards during trips to Georgia and Hawaii that were designated for use only by Superintendent Marci Catlett and Board Clerk Angela Roenke.

Then on July 27, the Advance reported more details about Board travel expenses and practices. A partial list follows:

• Members Malvina Kay and Jarvis Bailey were responsible for nearly half (about $8,000) of the Board’s allotted travel budget ($16,500)

• Kay purchased a first-class ticket for her flight to Atlanta

• School division transportation employees were paid $175.99 in overtime pay for driving Kay to the Richmond airport for her flight to Atlanta and then picking her up

• Kay and Baily both traveled with credit cards issued to Catlett and Roenke when 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.)

• Bailey rented a “premium elite” SUV (total cost $1,086 for eight days) to drive to a meeting in Atlanta

This reporting has raised more than a few eyebrows in the city. As well it should.

So also should the fact that up to this point, neither Kay nor Bailey has been willing to answer questions the Advance has about Board travel.

That they won’t speak suggests they will simply wait for this to blow over. There’s reason to believe this strategy will work.

There are four School Board seats up this November, and only one of those four seats is contested.

It’s not unusual in Fredericksburg.

According to information at the Virginia Department of Elections, Ward 1 has not had a contested election since at least 2006 (See here and here)

In Ward 2, it’s the same story. The current occupant of that seat, Katie Pomeroy, faced no opponent in the last two elections, and prior to that the seat was won without opposition every election since at least 2006. Pomeroy will run in November and will not face an opponent.

In Ward 3, four of the last six elections were taken by a candidate with no opponent. (See here and here)

And in Ward 4, Kay has run uncontested in every election since at least 2006. She will run uncontested again this year.

The Fredericksburg City Public School district has been long beset with problems, ranging from stubbornly poor scores on state exams and serving a student population that has many challenges — from high poverty rates and a high percentage of English language learners, to name just a few, to difficulties retaining staff.

Against this background, trips to Hawaii, first-class airline tickets, using school staff to make airport runs, and renting “premium elite” vehicles presents — at least — an optics issue.

But that so few people have been willing to stand up and challenge the system to get better suggests something far more concerning than the events that the Advance reported this month.

It suggests that the citizens of Fredericksburg either no longer believe the school system is worth fighting for, or they’ve lost faith that things will ever get better.

Over the past five years, first as the Opinion Page editor at the Free Lance-Star and then as Editor-in-Chief of the Advance, I and my colleagues reported doggedly on the chaos that erupted in Spotsylvania County Public Schools, when a conservative majority that actively advocated banning and burning books, took control and put that district in a downward spiral.

That school board was, in my 25-plus years of writing about education, the most combative I’d ever watched and tracked first-hand. As bad as it got, however, at least people were fighting for what they believed. First the conservatives who took control, and then the parents who worked to regain control and set the system back on a healthy path.

Apathy, however, is every bit as damaging as the chaos that erupted in Spotsylvania. And apathy is precisely what is evident in Fredericksburg based on the inordinate number of uncontested School Board elections.

School Board races are, by law, nonpartisan. Don’t look to the Democratic or Republican committees to do the work of raising candidates.

If parents and students want things to get better, they are going to have to take it upon themselves to begin demanding better than they are getting.

The question becomes, are there enough people left in the city who believe that public education matters?

That challenge is waiting.

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