Tuesday March 28, 2023 - Special Edition

COMMENTARY: Iago, Svengali, and the Death of Learning in Spotsylvania | PUBLICATION

COMMENTARY: Iago, Svengali, and the Death of Learning in Spotsylvania

by: Martin Davis

For more than a year, I’ve been writing about and reporting on the Spotsylvania School Board’s Tea Party-fueled majority. My efforts to talk with them, to give them substantial space in the pages of the Free Lance-Star, to elicit responses via email, were mostly met with silence.

And for more than a year, I’ve taken a measured approach to what I have written about what this board is doing. I spent considerable time with Albert King, who financed all four of the majority board members, as he explained his concerns about excess spending in the school district and how these people’s elections were all about restoring fiscal responsibility to the district.

I gave ink to people who believed that it was possible to befriend and work with the majority.

When I finally spoke with one of the majority members, I gave three hours of my day to Rabih Abuismail, only to hear not a thoughtful critique or plan for the future, but an embarrassing tantrum about how ugly politics can be.

Despite his own significant role in fueling the “ugly politics,” I wrote a piece encouraging him to do the right thing and appoint Lorita Daniels as board chair. Far more qualified and reasoned than Lisa Phelps, he nonetheless acted as those of us who have watched this board knew he would. He put Phelps in charge.

As a journalist, I live by a simple mantra. “Take people at their word, until they give you reason not to trust them.”

I’ve taken them at their word. I’ve given them every opportunity to be heard. And I’ve worked hard to see the world through their eyes.

But tonight - Monday, March 27, 2023 - I’ve reached a conclusion that I’ve sensed for some time, but hesitated to write. The majority board members and Mark Taylor are not to be trusted.

Don’t Blame Me

Before knowing what the county’s Board of Supervisors are going to give to the school district. Before knowing what the state is going to give to the school district. Mark Taylor took it upon himself to sound a three-alarm fire and announce potential Draconian cuts.

The budget reductions under consideration are not done for the benefit of students. They are nothing short of a declaration of war against public education.

• Libraries: Eliminated

• Governor’s School: Eliminated

• International Baccalaureate Program: Eliminated

• 60 Teachers: Eliminated

It should not surprise.

We have seen across the country - especially in Florida and Texas - a concerted effort to eliminate any book, any academic idea, any training that goes against the ideals of a movement known as Christian Nationalism. A movement that according to Joseph Williams:

… insist(s) that the United States was established as an explicitly Christian nation, and they believe that this close relationship between Christianity and the state needs to be protected—and in many respects restored—in order for the U.S. to fulfill its God-given destiny. Recent scholarship underscores the extent to which these efforts to secure a privileged position for Christianity in the public square often coincide with efforts to preserve the historical status quo on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. And the practical ramifications of such views involve everything from support for laws that codify specific interpretations of Christian morality, to the defense of religious displays on public property, to nativist reactions to non-white, non-Christian immigrants.

These cuts reflect Christian Nationalist ideals.

There are few absolutes in education, but the connection between reading and academic achievement is well-established.

To put libraries on the chopping block first is simply an acknowledgement of what the year-long struggle over books in the county school libraries has long suggested - the majority board members do not believe in books. In reading. In allowing young people to read and explore the world through books before facing it head-on after graduation.

Contrary to what Second Amendment advocates claim, oppressive governments don’t come first for people’s guns. They come for people’s books.

This board’s hatred of learning extends to developing academically superior students. How else to explain cutting the two programs (Governor’s School and I.B.) that have a long history of preparing our top students for some of the best schools in America.

Taylor repeatedly said he doesn’t like the cuts. He cannot be believed. In his first attempt to find a way forward in a tight budget year, he went straight for the jugular.

Budgets are not fiscal documents, they are moral documents.

Taylor’s actions tonight put his blatantly immoral position on education on display for all to see.

Board Member Nicole Cole and Dawn Shelley repeatedly called attention in their comments to how brazen an attack on children and learning this proposed cut is.

Cole excoriated Taylor for exceptionally poor judgment. Shelley asked him directly if he has a problem with smart students.

Knowing their culpability, Taylor and the board majority did what autocrats do - deflect. They blamed staff for putting the items on the cut list. They blamed educational leaders. They blamed finance staff. They blamed the board of supervisors.

But Taylor is the superintendent. Every slide. Every cut. Every proposal to destroy this school system required his final approval. He, and he alone, is responsible.

Still, the majority board members sat there and provided Taylor cover. Claiming to hate the cuts, they joined Taylor is blaming everyone but the one person in the room responsible - Taylor; an overpaid, underprepared, ill-informed ideologue being paid handsomely to destroy the school system.

The Bottom Line

There is no middle ground to be had here. The board majority and Taylor have no interest in compromise. In doing what is right for this county’s children. In preparing our students for the world they’re going to face.

This is not a problem for Republicans or Democrats. It’s a problem for everyone who understands the power of learning and the values it instills in young minds: curiosity, respect, and humility.

Tonight - the game changed.

Iago sits in the board chair. Svengali casts the spell.

And soon nary a book or library will be found in Spotsylvania schools to explain those literary references to students, and just how awful their leaders are.

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