FROM THE EDITOR: Learning Their Job
Spotsy and Fredericksburg school boards are going in opposite directions - the former stabilizing, the latter in crisis. Both require patience and a learning mindset by new and existing board members.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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In Spotsylvania and Fredericksburg, two school boards will meet this week to organize for the year ahead. They also hold an opportunity to significantly alter the courses of the districts that they oversee.
Why that paragraph is unsettling is that it represents a turning on its head of what Board members are supposed to be doing.
When functioning well, boards should be relatively boring institutions, and board members should rarely be in the news. Boards function not to write laws, nor direct the organizations they are elected to. Rather, boards exist to oversee and support their organizations.
In recent years, however, local boards have become the latest victims of the politization of everything that happens in society.
What has transpired on the Spotsylvania School Board over the past five years serves as an object lesson in the dangers of politicized board leadership. In 2022, a new board came on and before their seats were even warm unceremoniously fired a superintendent for nakedly political reasons and installed a superintendent to their political liking.
Two years on, a new board wasted little time in doing the same.
Yes, there were significant differences in the people fired and hired. And yes, the motivations behind the two events were markedly different.
Regardless, however, the effect was the same. Decapitating leadership for nakedly political ends creates confusion in the system, mistrust among board members, and incentivizes parties and voters to further politicize boards.
As the school boards in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania get to work tonight, both would do well to remember the damage that politicizing board work can be. And new members would do well to embrace the virtues of being patient and learning.
Fredericksburg’s Two Fault Lines
The Fredericksburg School Board onboards two new members who will have to straddle two fault lines this coming year.
The first concerns the Board’s handling of its finances. Reporting last summer by the Advance unearthed troubling spending habits around Board travel. Exceeding budgeted dollars, renting higher-end cars for travel, and using school transportation as a shuttle service were just some of the issues the Advance’s reporting surfaced.
The second concerns the city’s ongoing poor performance on SOL exams. This is no new challenge. Fredericksburg City Schools have seen academic performance mired near the bottom of the state for nearly a decade. While the city faces significant challenges, it for too long has leaned on these challenges as a crutch for underperforming as opposed to information to forge a more productive path.
The success of new State Superintendent of Education Jefferey Smith during his tenure in Hampton is a reminder that challenging districts can be successful.
The issues around travel budgets is the direct responsibility of the Board, and voters are right to expect immediate changes that address the institutional issues that led to this failure.
The academic performance is only secondarily the Board’s concern, however. They are not responsible for righting that ship. They are responsible for the person whose job it is to right the ship — the district superintendent.
That change needs to occur is obvious; how that change is to occur is less obvious. As new school board members, Amy Langdon and Andrew Wolfenbarger will need to exercise some patience as they learn their new roles and weigh the options before them.
What happened in Spotsylvania County the past five years should be in the backs of their minds. Handled well, this Board can be part of putting this school district on track. Handled poorly, Fredericksburg could find itself devolving into a recriminating culture war that will only spiral and delay the improvements the district requires.
Spotsylvania — Coming in Hot
Over the past year, the Spotsylvania School Board has begun to find some stability. Under the direction of Chair Megan Jackson, meetings have run smoother and the district has made significant changes in adjusting hiring policies, supporting its teaching staff, and recentering the district on its students as opposed to external political struggles.
Whether the district continues on this growth trajectory or again finds itself pitting parents against teachers depends in part on the three new Board members — Lawrence DiBella, Jennifer Morgan Craig-Ford, and Rich Lieberman.
None enters the job with experience as a teacher or with a background in education policy. This is not to question their ability to serve; it is to say that as new members of a School Board overseeing a system with a roughly $500 million budget, some 25,000 students and more than 4,000 faculty and staff, and subject to a wide range of federal and state policies that are currently undergoing a rapid remaking each has a great deal to learn.
Let them spend some time learning. Not just the ins and outs of how a public school system operates but also learning what is and isn’t their role.
The Board’s role is not to set curriculum, interview and interact with principals and staff, or re-litigate the decisions of previous Boards. Its role is to ensure that Board policies are correct, that teachers and administrators are appropriately supported and funded, and that they serve as conduits between their constituents’ concerns and the superintendent.
If this new Board stays focused on continuing to recover, the district can begin to make the significant educational steps it needs to take. The superintendent’s record of success in numerous schools and districts prior to arriving here suggests that those gains are within reach.
Should the new members come in hot, however, re-litigating prior decisions and breathing air into the anti-public-school positions and conspiratorial thinking that is never far from this board, the positive strides made the prior year will be in jeopardy.
Boards Work Best When They Grow
Because board members are elected, politics will always be at play. But once elected, school board members in particular need to shift their focus from politics to the work at hand — overseeing and supporting the institutions they are charged to protect.
In Spotsylvania particularly, the district and its employees have been through enough turmoil. Novice board members coming in have much to learn. For a few months at least, there’s value is staying quiet and learning.
In Fredericksburg, the new board members face a district in distress. That the Board will need to make some significant decisions this year seems apparent. But that decisions must be made only underscores the importance of taking one’s time and moving thoughtfully forward as a unit.
There’s enough turmoil in education — let the incoming and existing school board members in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania remember that.
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