School Board receives bad forecast in Richmond
ROANOKE COUNTY- Recently, some of the citizens of Roanoke County have come down hard on their School Board members. Many have even shown up at meetings just to tell them how despicable they are.
“I don’t know what that accomplishes,” Vinton Magisterial District representative Mike Stovall said. “Do people honestly believe we want to close schools, lay people off, and redistrict?”
The tide seems to be turning, however, if Tuesday night’s Roanoke County School Board meeting was any indication. Three citizens chose to speak at the meeting, and all three seemed supportive of the School Board. While they pleaded with the Board not to close any more schools, the citizens also offered their support.
“These are budget times that try everyone’s souls,” Mike Wray said.
Wray told the Board that he and other community members were in the process of a grass roots effort, emailing their officials to protest the latest round of budget cuts.
Windsor Hills representative Drew Barrineau encouraged this grass roots effort.
“It would go a long way for you to use your God-given right to vote and ask questions,” Barrineau said.
While the recent uptick in support for the School Board is encouraging, Hollins representative Jerry Canada believes that the support may be related to Bob McDonnell’s recent round of budget cuts, which will hurt the schools even more.
“Folks know that we’re going to have to cut something,” Canada said.
Canada, along with School Board members Mike Stovall and David Wymer, and Superintendent Lorraine Lange, visited Richmond on February 17th through the 19th for the annual Virginia School Board Association meeting. What they saw at the capital shocked them.
The gap between Virginia’s Democrats and Republicans is growing, and it is deeply affecting the schools. Stovall blames the cut to the school breakfast program on legislators not working together, and he believes that this particular reduction will have tragic consequences.
Stovall knows that some children leave school at 3:10 every day, and do not eat again until they come to school the next morning. Without breakfast, students will struggle to concentrate, and their grades will suffer.
Stovall believes that the breakfast program is even more important than re-opening the rest stops.
“We’re re-opening rest stops, and not going to feed kids breakfast,” Stovall said. “To me, that doesn’t add up.”
Canada also sees that the new governor and his administration have an agenda, and are pushing it, regardless of the state of the economy. This is especially evident, according to Canada, in McDonnell’s choice for Department of Education Secretary. Canada believes that the new Secretary, Gerard Robinson, who was brought in from Atlanta, was selected because of his charter schools background. McDonnell is a supporter of charter schools himself, and hopes to create legislation to support the creation of more such schools.
While Stovall and other members of the Board do not have a problem with the idea of charter schools, they do have a problem with the fact that the charter schools have the potential to take money from public ones. While Roanoke County has never been approached about approving a charter school, there could be a problem if they were approached.
“Under the current circumstances, if we had to fund a charter school, we might have to close a school to fund it,” Canada said.
Under proposed legislation, a School Board’s refusal to fund a charter school could be overturned, and a district could be forced to finance one.
“Please, please don’t take money from the public schools to pay for charter schools,” Fuzzy Minnix, the Cave Spring representative, said.
Canada, Stovall, and Wymer had a chance to broach the topic of charter schools when they were in Richmond. Department of Education Secretary Gerard Robinson made an appearance at the conference, and a significant part of his lecture was about the benefits of charter schools.
“He proceeded to tell us that public schools were failing kids,” Stovall said.
The meeting was attended by members of over 100 public school boards in the state of Virginia, and they were understandably upset.
“Frankly, it wasn’t pretty,” Stovall said.
Robinson did not stay long. Once people started speaking against him, according to Stovall, Robinson left quickly. Stovall estimates the Secretary stayed for a maximum of 20 minutes; he was scheduled for more than an hour.
“A couple of School Board members started to take him to task, and all of a sudden he had to go,” Canada said.
Along with the rest of the state’s public school boards, members of the Roanoke County School Board are stunned by Robinson’s declaration that public schools are failures.
“If you can find me a kid we’ve left behind, show him to me,” Stovall said.
He believes that if regulations on public schools were decreased, as regulations for charter schools are, then public schools could thrive even more.
“Let’s stop doing unfunded mandates, and we will be successful,” Stovall said.
In the end, Canada and the other School Board members were dissatisfied with their trip to Richmond.
“I didn’t come away from there feeling good,” Canada said. “In fact, I left early.”
Back at home, the School Board faces even more problems. On Tuesday, they voted to close Bent Mountain Elementary School, which is heartbreaking for many parents and administrators.
“That’s a dark day,” Stovall said.
Stovall does hope that the school will eventually re-open, however, and that the School Board will one day be able to return to business as usual.
For now, however, the School Board members will keep chugging along, making enough cuts to balance their budget.
