FROM THE EDITOR: The Fredericksburg City School Board Must Act
Two incidents in the past year involving transporting unauthorized individuals to James Monroe High School point to more concerning issues.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Education is challenging work, and few who work outside of the field can appreciate the pressures that teachers and administrators are under.
The Advance has from its founding urged caution when grabbing hold of the many shiny handles that people reach for to attack public schools and their teachers — SOL scores; generic concerns about “safety”; and culture war issues over sexuality, literature, and history.
The work of education is not a science that can be neatly defined by test scores. Nor is it an assembly line whereby the stages at which young people become curious about and begin to take seriously both academic and ethical/moral issues can be dictated.
It is a distinctly human enterprise. Perhaps the most important human enterprise a society can engage in.
For these reasons, the Advance prioritizes understanding the challenges that those working inside the education system face, and how they are working to address them, before challenging the efficacy of individuals’ and institutions’ efforts.
Caution, however, does not mean turning a blind eye to serious problems.
Since this past summer, the Advance has published a series of stories about events involving the Fredericksburg City School Board and the school system itself that demand the community’s careful scrutiny.
‘Talk’ of Change, Same Results
Last Thursday, the Advance was the first to report that in March 2025 a 16-year-old individual who was not a student boarded a city school bus and made his way to James Monroe High School. That bus then delivered him to the high school, and the individual gained access to the building and subsequently escaped only to be captured later by police in New Jersey.
The stow-away — Fasihullah Safar — was no innocent child pulling a prank. This January he received an 18-year sentence in New Jersey for attempted murder, aggravated assault, aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, and theft of a motor vehicle.
The March 2025 episode was a catastrophic failure that fortunately did not turn out worse because school personnel and the school resource officer recognized the threat and dealt with it.
According to Deputy Superintendent Matt Eberhardt, the district took a number of actions after the event. He said that there was a five-day training on bus safety and security for transportation staff.
There have also been regular monthly trainings covering the expectation that bus drivers should only be transporting kids assigned to their routes. The trainings have also covered fire and medical lockdown drills, radio etiquette and emergency codes, how to notify dispatch of incorrect boardings, and how to respond to safety concerns without inciting panic, among other topics.
As Eberhardt told the Advance — “We talk about this stuff all the time.”
But nearly a year to the day later, a Fredericksburg City Schools bus driver again allowed an individual who was not a student to board a city school bus and transported him to James Monroe High School.
Unlike the event in 2025, this time the individual wasn’t a 16-year-old kid, but a full-grown 32-year-old man with a mask.
Jonathan Cromes is currently being held without bond at Rappahannock Regional Jail and is charged with two counts of trespassing, disorderly conduct, misdemeanor assault, and felony wearing of a mask in public.
Technology Won’t Fix What’s Wrong
How is the district responding to the latest incident?
Eberhardt pointed to an ID card system. Students will have to scan their cards to board a bus.
The division began moving to implement the ID card system “about a month ago,” Eberhardt said, purchasing 5,000 ID cards for students and tablets for buses.
The machines to read the ID cards were ordered “last week.”
Eberhardt said that the ID system “might [emphasis added] help drivers have the language in place” to respond if someone unauthorized tries board their bus— “You’re not in the system, so I can’t let you on.”
And if the individual protests? Claims there’s an error in the system? What will the driver do then?
Technology will not solve this problem. The problem is more fundamental.
The district may “talk about this stuff all the time,” but that talk is falling on deaf ears.
What isn’t known is why. There are a number of possibilities.
Perhaps the fault is with employees who fail to understand what’s expected, and aren’t held to account when they fail to follow protocols.
Perhaps the fault is with the central office and its inability to effectively communicate expectations
Perhaps the fault is with the school board, which isn’t holding the one hire it is allowed to make — the superintendent — to account.
Perhaps the fault is more broadly spread — perhaps the culture of the school division itself has avoided accountability for so long there is simply no urgency to fix things.
It’s on the School Board
At this stage, the School Board needs to take seriously the possibility that the culture of the school division itself requires reshaping.
It’s not just the two issues with transportation over the past year.
Academic performance in Fredericksburg has been abysmal for years. The challenges the district faces are not to be ignored — high populations of English Language Learners and economically disadvantaged students present distinctive challenges.
But these are populations that other districts in Virginia are having success with. Few communities across Virginia are poorer than Wise County, and yet — using SOL as the measuring stick (a flawed measuring stick to be sure) — Wise is consistently ranked among the most successful districts in the commonwealth.
And Staunton City Schools faces many of the same demographic challenges as Fredericksburg but has surged in recent years in the ranking of school districts according to SOL performance.
Then there is the School Board itself. When School Board seats often go uncontested, and two sitting members of the Board have held their seats for more than two decades, members feel little pressure to respond when indicators make clear that the system itself is not functioning well.
This new School Board needs to rise to the occasion.
That begins by having a serious discussion with the one individual the Board is responsible for — the district superintendent.
Let them begin that work with haste.
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