ANALYSIS: Lee Hill Elementary Event Showcases a Leader
Public education is in a fight for its life. Clint Mitchell gave a Master Class in why public education matters, and why it is not only the best solution for our students, but for our community, too.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Across the greater Fredericksburg region, there are approximately 80 public schools, 65,000 enrolled students, and more than 5,000 teachers. Those strong numbers would suggest that if public schools are in trouble, it’s a problem for other communities, but not here.
Places like Rochester, New York, which has seen public school enrollment decline “from nearly thirty-four thousand in 2003 to less than twenty-three thousand last year,” according to a recent article in the New Yorker.
The loss in Rochester was attributable to “the result of flight to the suburbs, falling birth rates, and the expansion of local charter schools, whose student population had grown from less than two thousand to nearly eight thousand during that time. Between 2020 and 2022, the district’s enrollment had dropped by more than ten percent.”
While enrollment in the 540’s local public schools has not seen that kind of drop, the acceleration of enrollment in private schools has been dramatic since the pandemic, as made clear by research produced by the Weldon Cooper Center out of the University of Virginia.
“The share of children educated privately was higher in nearly every part of Virginia in 2022 than before the pandemic,” according to the report K-12 Enrollment Trends in Virginia During the 2020s, released in February.
In short, what is happening in Rochester may not be here currently, but it could well be coming.
As in Rochester, Virginia’s decline in public school enrollment is partly due to changing demographics. Parents are increasingly opting for non-public-school options. Our population is set to decline, owing to slowing birth rates and an aging population. And while emigration from the commonwealth is slowing, it hasn’t cease altogether.
What hasn’t happened here that has proved devastating to public schools in New York is the rise of charter schools. Something that Gov. Glenn Youngkin has pushed since Day 1 of his administration.
That effort having largely failed, he has shifted tactics and is now pushing a new accreditation standard that threatens to rank as many as 60% of schools as “Off Track” or “Needs Intensive Support.” And this could open the door to more intensive intervention by the state, and potentially a takeover that could open the door, again, to private control of public schools and funneling public dollars to religious schools.
That end game has not been made explicit by the governor, but it would seem to follow based on his actions in office.
Facing this kind of pressure, public schools need to realize the struggle that they are in.
Demographics will dictate whether public school enrollment will decline. And there’s little Virginia politicians can do to control that.
Politics, however, will dictate if public schools again regain their credibility and we rally around these institutions as a public good, of if they will become a patchwork of schools (religious, charter, community, private) that fight over decreasing funding from the state and loose any public accountability or performance oversight.
Enter Lee Hill Elementary School
As FXBG Advance has been chronicling since its inception last year, and as myself and Adele Uphaus have been writing about for several years prior, Spotsylvania County Public Schools has been Ground Zero in Virginia over the past several years in the effort to end public education as we know it.
Beginning with the elevation of Kirk Twigg to Board chair, and continuing under the leadership of Lisa Phelps, the Spotsylvania County School Board systematically set about undermining the structures that traditionally have made public schools work.
Demographics dictate that public school enrollment will decline. Politics, however, will dictate if schools become like so many other public-service organizations have become in America (think health care) — a free market that leads to a Wild West array of schools lacking consistent accountability and little oversight of performance.
These actions have included threatening to burn and ban books that offended the sensibilities of mostly evangelical Christians, taking final hiring and firing decisions away from the entire board and giving it to Phelps and the former superintendent, and trying to give parents final say over most every aspect of how and what teachers teach in their classroom.
Over a two-year period when Twigg and Phelps headed the Board, this group of leaders began to clear the way for a new type of education. What that looks like and how it plays out is largely unknown, leaving people to guess. That’s because these two Board leaders repeatedly refused to publicly explain what their goals were.
In the face of this frontal assault, public school advocates found themselves on the defensive. With the education system largely unchallenged for several decades, the need to explain what they stand for and why it matters was lost.
The new school superintendent knows what he stands for, and he is taking that argument directly to Spotsylvania’s parents — beginning in the backyard of the former Board Chair who did so much to undermine the system she was charged to protect.
On Tuesday night, Superintendent Clint Mitchell held a listening session with about 40 people at Lee Hill Elementary, and he focused on five broad questions:
What traditions and beliefs do we value as a school division?
What are the strengths of SCPS?
What are the challenges facing SCPS?
What must we keep at SPCS
What ideas do you have for improvement at SCPS?
The range of statements reflected the diversity of students the district serves, and the very real challenges that people face.
While participants offered some criticism of the school system as a whole, and spoke of systemic problems that have made improvement difficult — like the Board of Supervisors perennially underfunding education — an undercurrent in the room made clear that many in attendance were tired of the negative attacks on the school system.
“We have to get out positive information about the school division,” one parent said. Teachers were praised by others as the district’s “strength,” as was their ability to do “more with less.”
Another constant thread throughout the event was finding a way to keep teachers in the system once they arrive.
Hopefully, Phelps — who as Board Chair aggravated problems like teacher retention by setting up policies that made teachers feel undervalued and oftentimes disrespected, and now regularly disrupts meetings with what behaviors that amount to little more than tantrums — was paying attention to how Mitchell reacted both to what people valued, and the concerns they had about the school system.
He listened intently. He gave those who had agendas an opportunity to be heard, without allowing them to take control of the event, and he put his reputation on the line by saying explicitly how he would react to each of the challenges that were put before him.
The meeting itself was always under control — principally because Mitchell honestly listened, and then rephrased people’s concerns to ensure he understood them — despite the presence of individuals who regularly appear at school board meetings and occasionally act out inappropriately.
But perhaps most important, he demonstrated an understanding that our public schools are more than institutions of learning; they are community hubs.
We’ve “got to rebuild that culture, and make the schools the hub,” he said in response to a parent who talked about the need to get back to the basics in education and learning.
Remove the politics, she said, and support the teachers and the students.
As Public Schools Go, So Goes the Community
Education researchers have long been aware of a perplexing trend when interviewing people about public education.
Ask parents how they feel about public education in general, and they tend to be critical of the “system.”
We’ve “got to rebuild that culture, and make the schools the hub,” Mitchell said in response to a parent who talked about the need to get back to the basics in education and learning.
Ask these same parents how they feel about their local schools, however, and they tend to be strongly supportive.
That trend held in a 2023 survey released by the University of Mary Washington.
“This survey shows that those combative voices at school board meetings are not representative of public opinion across the Commonwealth regarding public education,” said Stephen J. Farnsworth, professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington and director of UMW’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies. “Overall, Virginians remain quite positive about the performance of their schools, both regarding education generally and providing a safe learning environment.”
Mitchell understands this, and he wants to bring that passion back to Spotsylvania County schools — through sports, the arts, the classroom, and any of another broad range of activities and events schools sponsor for the community.
Alec MacGillis, who wrote the aforementioned New Yorker article, described the trauma to the Rochester community when schools were being shuttered.
[T]here is a pathos to a closed school that doesn’t apply to a shuttered courthouse or post office. The abandonment of a building once full of young voices is an indelible sign of the action having moved elsewhere.
Thomas Dee, a professor of education at Stanford who was quoted in MacGillis’ article, make the point more succinctly: “School closures are difficult events that rend the community, the fabric of the community.”
Public Education - Now More Than Ever
On Tuesday night, Mitchell made clear that he understands the significance of the challenge before him. It’s not just test scores he’s trying to improve, or teachers he’s trying to convince to stay.
It’s the very life-blood of the Spotsylvania community that hinges on his ability to get this school system, and in particular the Board that governs it, moving in the right direction.
Mitchell is a leader unlike any seen in this school system over the past three decades. To say he “gets it” is to undersell what he is bringing to the table.
His willingness to really listen to and then respond to needs and concerns from constituents is a refreshing change from a School Board that in recent years has rudely shut speakers down, and oftentimes walked out of the room to avoid hearing critics speak.
He brings a vision for what needs to be done and in what order.
And he is openly working to elevate not only education, but to elevate a community that for the past two-plus years has seen a school board not just attack the schools, but in the process — whether wittingly or not — tear at the fabric of the community.
Let’s hope Phelps was paying attention and taking notes. Rebuilding this school district will require all of us — and all our diverse thoughts — to move forward quickly.
The time for obstruction and public outbursts is over.
Tuesday night, Mitchell just offered Phelps — and all of us — a Master Class in highlighting how our differences in service of the greater good can get us all where we want to go.
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