Monday - Jan. 23
Analysis: Spotsy School Board | Great Lives Lectures | Government Calendars | Observed | Looking Ahead
ANALYSIS: Snacks give bite-sized taste of School Board dysfunction
It started with a shortage of snacks.
Parents and volunteers in Spotsylvania County tried to fill the need to provide students snacks when they became aware that some at the elementary-school level didn’t have them. They did what good citizens do. Raised money. Purchased snacks. Delivered them to area schools.
It turns out, shortages of snacks just scratched the surface of student need.
“I began asking around at schools,” Melissa Floyd – a concerned Spotsylvania parent – told F2S, “and became aware that there’s a much larger problem.”
She talked about one school that received several “weekend bags” of food, distributed on Fridays to students facing food scarcity at home, from the food bank. The total received represented just a third of the actual need. In other schools, there were only enough weekend bags to cover just 10 percent of the need.
The issue of food scarcity was largely masked during the pandemic thanks to the CARES Act, which provided funds so that every child in every school – regardless of their family’s income level – could receive free breakfast and lunch. Changes in federal law about how food could be served also allowed schools to become distribution centers, where families with school-age children could pick up food to eat at home.
With the end of CARES funding came the end of the giveaways.
And now, the issue of food scarcity is again front-and-center in the school system.
“The schools can’t solve the problem,” Floyd said, “because they aren’t going to get any money for it.”
And fundraisers that proved useful for generating funds to purchase snacks can’t meet the need Floyd and others are seeing in the school system.
“We need to look for bigger money, and to learn how much to ask for – what the need is,” she said.
To that end, Floyd and others have banded together. Though their group has no formal name as of yet, it’s taking a close look at what is currently being done to address food scarcity, what the obstacles are to meeting the needs that exist, and looking at creative ways both inside and outside the school system to address that need.
Where’s the school board?
In many school districts, that would be the end of the story – an example of the private sector coming together in good faith to address a need in the community. But there’s more to it.
School boards are well-positioned to help districts address problems such as this. Models of how this is occurring across the country were outlined in a recent piece at We Are Teachers. The current Spotsylvania School Board, however, has shown no interest, going so far as to call the snack issue a manufactured crisis.
The crisis is hardly manufactured, as shortages of snacks are a nationwide problem in schools due to sourcing issues. And food scarcity is again an issue at schools. Even if students receive free lunch and breakfast, scarcity it homes mean weekends and summer breaks can be filled with hunger.
While measuring exact numbers is difficult, a recent New York Times story about the number of students who are struggling with food insecurity nots that:
“In a survey released this month by the School Nutrition Association, 96.3 percent of school districts reported that meal debt had increased. Median debt rose to $5,164 per district through November, already higher than the $3,400 median reported for the entire school year in the group’s [pre-pandemic] 2019 survey.”
Some districts are looking to make breakfast and lunch free to all students, as they were during the pandemic. According to the Washington Post, such efforts are underway in D.C., Colorado, Maine, and California.
That this problem is well-known and nationwide, it begs the question, Why isn’t the Spotsylvania School Board taking a hard look at this issue?
Politics over education
While the School Board majority of Lisa Phelps, Kirk Twigg, April Gillespie, and Rabih Abuismail continue to stonewall citizens about their plans for the district, several actions in recent weeks paint an ominous sign of where things are headed.
Even as parents wrestle with the day-to-day needs of students, this board has dropped the pedal on a political overtake of public education.
Here are just three recent examples.
At the final board meeting in December, Lisa Phelps, now chair, moved to strike all the division-specific language from policies that had updates from the Virginia School Board Association. This move means that there’s no policy on young children being accompanied to and from a bus stop, or students needing proof of immunization against communicable disease, among other changes.
At the January meeting where Phelps was named chair, the board voted to allow only the board chair to add old or new business to the agenda. Given the well-documented history of Phelps, Twigg, and Gillespie not responding to emails from minority board members Dawn Shelley, Nicole Cole, and Lorita Daniels, the message is clear: These three will have no voice in setting discussion in the coming year.
The board has also hired Tara Mergener to take over the communications job previously held by longtime employee Renee Daniels. Mergener is something of an odd choice for this position. An award-winning journalist with CBS News, she also has spent time with the Christian Broadcasting Networking and as a news anchor in Texas. A devoted evangelical Christian, judging by the posts on her Facebook page, Mergener is a highly overqualified choice for this position.
Citizens hope that she’ll become an effective communicator about school issues - something the current board majority has failed to do. There’s a real concern, however, that Mergener will spend time promoting the conservative takeover of Spotsylvania schools to like-minded conservatives who want to do the same in their districts. She starts in February, and watching her actions both inside the district as well as how she’s promoting the county to a broader audience will tell us whether her concern is for the schools and it students and teachers, or the board’s political agenda.
Taken together, all these moves suggest that the majority’s concern is to free the county from the checks and balances of traditional powerbrokers in public education, and align the district with the hard-right ideology of groups like No Left Turn in Education.
Playing politics, however, is not the role that school boards are supposed to play. Their jobs are oversight and administrative, not political.
Among a school board’s job is caring for the nutritional needs of its students.
It’s time the school board in Spotsylvania return to what it’s charged to do.
After all, if students can’t eat, they can’t learn.
Great Lives Series
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the William Crawley Great Lives lecutre series at the University of Mary Washington.
Crawley is a professor of history at UMW and the founder of the Great Lives lecture series held each year in the winter and spring.
Speaking recently with F2S, Crawley said that one thing he’s most thankful for is the way “this program has made the academic community more accessible to the nonacademic people” in our region.
“Biography appeals to everyday people,” he said. “Folks like to learn their history through the lives of others.”
Pulling together this program requires a full year’s worth of worth, and the generous support of the many individuals and corporations who fund the travel and speakers’ fees associated with pulling off these events.
Last week marked the first lecture in the series, a talk given by University of Florida professor David Leavitt, who discussed his biography of Alan Turing. Not only was Turing central to breaking the Enigma code during World War II, but he is also considered the founder of modern computing. Leavitt explored how his tragedy-filled personal life shaped Turing’s discoveries.
This Week in the Great Lives Lecture Series
There are two lectures scheduled this week. Each begins at 7:30 p.m. in Dodd Auditorium, George Washington Hall, on the Fredericksburg campus of the University of Mary Washington. The auditorium opens at 6:30 p.m. Parking can be challenging, so if you plan to attend, plan ahead.
Tuesday, January 24 - Shirley Jackson
Ruth Franklin, a former editor at The New Republic, will talk about her biography of Shirley Jackson. Recognized as an innovator in the fictional genre of suspense writing, Jackson’s most famous work is arguably The Haunting of Hill House. Though lesser well=known than suspense and horror writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jackson’s work stands on par with both. This is an opportunity to learn about, or re-acquaint yourself with, this literary giant.
Thursday, January 26 - Thomas Paine
Next to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense may well be the most important piece of writing in American history. Esteemed author Craig Nelson will discuss his biography of Paine, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations, and the many mysteries that surround this often-overlooked Founding Father.
Happening This Week In:
Fredericksburg
City Council Work Session - Jan 24 at 5:30 - Read Agenda - Watch Live
City Council Meeting - Jan. 24 at 7:30 - Read Agenda - Watch Live
Spotsylvania
Board of Supervisors Meeting - Jan. 24 at 6:00 - Read Agenda - Watch Live
School Board Special Meeting - Superintendent’s Budget Presentation - Jan. 24 at 6:30 - Read Agenda - Watch Live
Stafford
School Board Budget Work Session - Jan. 24 at 5:00 - Read Agenda - Watch Live
Observed
Our area stores are forever finding new and interesting ways to attract customers, but the recent promotion announced by Riverby Books may well take the cake.
Called the “Dirty Rag Sale,” the store will give you a microfiber cloth, and your job is to take it and dust in the bookstore. With a good, honest effort, you can get 10% off your purchase, and kids under 13 can get a book worth $5 or less for completing the challenge.
A great way for the book store to clean the shelves, and for book buyers to clean up.
Here’s a hat-tip to the creative folks at Riverby!
Looking Ahead
The next issue will run Thursday and feature a review of recent government meetings, a feature story, and more.
Thank you for this opportunity. I am interested as to whether Tara Mergener will be moving to this area or will she be serving as Spotsylvania's communication director remotely, meaning there would be a valid concern that she does not understand our community. I have not seen this addressed.