Spotsylvania Teacher Arrested for Drugs Worked for Fredericksburg City Schools until November
Parents and teachers in Fredericksburg raised concerns to administration. Hiring in Spotsylvania surfaces questions about the district's hiring process at that time.
by Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Candyce Carter, the 2nd grade teacher for Spotsylvania County Public Schools who was arrested last week on charges of possession of narcotics, child endangerment, and child neglect or abuse, was previously a teacher in Fredericksburg City Schools.
Multiple sources have confirmed that Carter worked for the division from August until November of 2023, when she resigned. The Fredericksburg School Board approved her resignation, among other personnel actions, at its November 6, 2023, meeting.
The Advance spoke to the parents of three 5th-grade students who were taught by Carter in the fall. The parents either personally witnessed behavior on the part of Carter that concerned them or heard about such behavior from their children.
“Day one, [my son] came home and told me there was a problem. And it just kept going downhill,” one parent said.
During a field trip in October, Carter repeatedly went missing for long stretches of time and put a 5th-grader in charge of the rest of the class, another parent said.
The parents said they raised these issues with school administration and were told that other parents and teachers had expressed the same concerns.
From Fredericksburg to Spotsylvania
Carter was hired by Spotsylvania County Public Schools sometime in the late fall. At that time, the hiring of contracted employees—teachers, principals, assistant principals, and some supervisors—was under the authority of then-School Board Chair Lisa Phelps.
The School Board approved a resolution granting that authority to the School Board Chair in June of 2023. The purpose of this regulation and another granting then-superintendent Mark Taylor the authority to hire non-contracted staff was to speed up the employment process in an “extremely competitive” labor market, according to language found in the resolutions.
In January, the new School Board rescinded both resolutions.
The Advance asked Phelps and school division spokeswoman Rene Daniels on Saturday whether a recommendation from a previous employer was sought during Carter’s hiring process, or whether it is common practice to request a recommendation from a previous employer.
The Advance also asked the Fredericksburg school division whether it imposed any disciplinary action on Carter and whether anyone from Spotsylvania reached out seeking a reference for her.
Neither school division had responded to the questions by publication time.
Carter does not appear to have an active teaching license, according to the Virginia Department of Education’s on-line active license search tool.
Her profile on LinkedIn does not mention her employment in Fredericksburg City Public Schools. It states that she worked for Spotsylvania from 2022 until the present.
It also states that Carter was attending or had attended Regent University, a private, Christian university founded by Pat Robertson.
At the January 6, 2024, Spotsylvania School Board meeting, human resources director Amy Williams announced as part of an update on recruitment that the division had launched a partnership with Regent, aimed at helping provisionally licensed special education teachers attain full licensure.
Through the partnership, Spotsylvania covers half the cost of enrolling in Regent’s online, 30-credit-hour master’s degree course in special education, and Regent provides on-site mentors to teachers enrolled in the program.
It is not known if Carter was brought in under the Regent agreement.
Kirk Twigg, who was a member of the Spotsylvania School Board from 2015 until 2023 and was Chair of the Board in 2022, has a master’s degree from Regent University.
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Has that partnership with Regent been cancelled?
How about vetting new employees instead of bringing them in off the streets and waiting to see if something will happen?