FROM THE EDITOR: November's Biggest Election Story Is Uncontested
Of four Fredericksburg School Board races, just one is contested. Have citizens given up on the school system? Or do they simply no longer care?
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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November is shaping up to showcase some of the most hotly contested local races in years. All four City Council seats are contested and, if early posturing is any indication, it’s going to get testy. In Spotsylvania and Stafford, School Board and Board of Supervisor races are also shaping up to be competitive and consequential.
Because there’s so much energy around elections and potential churn of elected officials this November, one set of races stands out for what it isn’t — competitive.
There are four seats up for election this November on the Fredericksburg City School Board; only one of those four — Ward 3, pitting Annie Langdon against Sarah Stelmok — will feature more than one candidate.
One out of Four.
Of the three uncontested seats, two will be filled by incumbents (Katie Pomeroy in Ward 2 and Malvina Kay in Ward 4). The Ward 1 seat vacated by Matt Rowe attracted just one candidate, Andrew Wolfenbarger.
The failure to field competitive races is not on these five individuals. Indeed, the citizens of Fredericksburg owe a debt of gratitude to the five people who have put their hats in the ring to run. Service on School Board is often a thankless job, and it’s enormously time-consuming.
That so many of these races are non-competitive, however, raises a compelling question.
In a city as politically engaged as Fredericksburg, why is there so little interest in figuring out how to turn around a troubled school system?
Longstanding Poor Academic Outcomes
To put it kindly, the Fredericksburg City School system is struggling.
Test scores are not just bad, they’ve been bad for a very long time. (While the middle school did show some gains this year, the high school continues to struggle.)
The district is also struggling with teacher retention, and parents this past year have raised concerns about staffing levels in at least one school.
The Fredericksburg School system does face some distinctive — though certainly not unique — challenges.
It can point to the economic needs of its students, and that it’s a majority-minority school to help explain, in part, why it isn’t moving the needle on student achievement. But those challenges are not in and of themselves debilitating.
In nearby Staunton, that city’s schools have a similar percentage of economically disadvantaged students as Fredericksburg, yet the city schools there far outperform Fredericksburg’s. And they have turned things around markedly since COVID. Further, while it’s not a majority-minority district, it is quickly on the way to becoming one.
And Staunton is not the only district in Virginia with high poverty rates and high SOL passing rates. Tazewell, Patrick, Wise, and Norton also have high levels of poverty, and their students are exceling.
Fredericksburg can also rightly point to the number of English-language learners in its district (about 26%) as one reason its scores on standardized tests continue to lag. The number of English-language learners is increasing in the city, and this does present challenges— especially when non-English-speaking students enter the system later in their academic careers.
Alexandria City Schools, however, has an even higher percentage of ELLs than Fredericksburg — nearly half of all its students — and while the system is far from sterling, it outperforms Fredericksburg by a modest amount.
Why Aren’t People Running to Make Schools Better?
There are many things that one could point to and blame for the school system’s struggles.
The reality is, however, that a significant level of responsibility must rest with the School Board itself.
For better and worse, School Boards hold an unusual degree of power in American school systems. They are responsible for hiring and firing a district’s top leader — the superintendent. They are also responsible for overseeing that person’s performance and holding them accountable.
School Boards in Virginia do not have taxing authority. However, School Boards are responsible for making clear what financial needs the district has, advocating aggressively for those needs, and ensuring that money spent leads to positive results. When that doesn’t happen, it’s their job to work with the superintendent and find out why, and then put forward solutions.
Given that people can have significant impacts on public schools as School Board members, why aren’t more people in Fredericksburg stepping up?
We can only offer educated guesses.
It is possible that individuals have chosen to get involved not by running for School Board, but by choosing to do what is best for their child and move them into an alternative educational setting. This is not an option for many, but for the city’s better-off citizens, it is a choice.
Fredericksburg’s population is nearly 50% ALICE — that is, families that work but lack the necessary funds to meet their monthly obligations. Whether because they work jobs that require irregular hours or the stress of living at or just above the poverty line takes an emotional toll on them, many of these people may not have the bandwidth to serve.
Older adults may feel too far removed from education to run for office.
Many people may not feel that they have the power on School Board to affect positive change.
There are surely other reasons that people may choose to not run for office.
The citizens of Fredericksburg need to realize, however, that because people aren’t stepping up, the odds that things will change in the coming two years are quite low. With just two new faces on the Board, they won’t have the votes to force change.
These new faces, however, can begin to educate the public as to why the school system is not moving the needle on academic achievement. And they can begin to inform citizens about the power School Board members do have.
No one should be so naive as to suggest that a new School Board is going to be able to turn everything around on a dime. It takes time to right a ship. In districts that have realized marked turnarounds — like Staunton — reforms take two-to-three years to begin producing results.
However, this change will never happen if people don’t demand it. School Board is how citizens can force that change.
The city and its citizens must realize that a poor-achieving public school is a net drain on Fredericksburg’s attractiveness and its economic viability.
It is in everyone’s interest to turn Fredericksburg City Schools from a struggling system to a model system.
It can happen. But only when the citizens of Fredericksburg are ready to step up and do the work on the School Board that must be done.
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In the last few years, political violence and disruption at School Board meetings has become more and more common. Potential candidates have to consider their own safety and their family’s safety. Fredericksburg City hasn’t seen the same level of vitriol as Spotsy and Stafford at Board meetings, but it has to be a consideration.