The Albemarle County School Board has selected David Storm to fill the open at-large seat vacated by Allison Spillman in August. But the board’s pick has drawn ire from community members who say it’s the wrong choice for a system in need of change. It’s also prompted one member of the Board of Supervisors to call for an independent investigation into the relationship between the board and district management.
Storm is a lawyer, compliance expert, and the parent of ACPS students. Since 2018, he’s served on the division’s Long-Range Planning Advisory Committee, which the school board says will play a key role “as the county considers adopting a 1-cent sales tax that could generate approximately $20 million a year for school construction projects if approved.”
The board voted 6-0 to select Storm at its September 24 meeting. “We believe Mr. Storm … will ask hard questions, challenge the status quo, and work collaboratively with the board as we navigate the challenges and opportunities in the year ahead,” said ACSB Chair Rebecca Berlin in a statement.
Heidi Gilman Bennett was one of the 12 other applicants for the opening, and she resigned from her post as the chair of the ACPS Family Council to seek the appointment. “In all of my years paying close attention to ACPS, the school board and LRPAC,” she says, “I have never once heard Storm ask a hard question, demand transparency, or challenge the status quo.”
“The board is facing a series of crises to get through,” Storm says. “My vast experience across Albemarle County [allows] me to bring a perspective that will be helpful to the board as we try to navigate all of these.”
Storm’s priorities include improving student test scores and teachers’ salaries and working environments. “I will still argue for what I think is right … for our students and our faculty and our staff in the schools,” he says.
ACPS Family Council member Bridgette Rodgers is an engineer with extensive experience on multimillion-dollar capital projects. “The fact that they have just appointed David Storm to the board, who has historically shown that he has not been capable of navigating political support to do major projects, has me very concerned about his ability to be a school board member, and to be successful at advocating for what kids need in terms of facilities and for the overall budget,” she says.
“I’m going to push back gently on the fact that we haven’t done anything,” Storm says in response. “We’ve had a pretty strong record, I think, in the last eight years of getting funding at the elementary school level, which was our priority.” He says the committee’s ability to make progress is limited by its purely advisory role to the school board, which decides whether to enact those recommendations.
Gilman Bennett says Storm’s work on the Long-Range Planning Advisory Committee hasn’t led to the action the district needs with the school-funding sales tax on the ballot.
“ACPS is massively far behind on the retail sales tax,” she says. “Members of LRPAC discussed the retail sales tax at both August and September meetings, yet created no action plan. Not a single member of the committee, including its chair, has advocated to the public to vote yes or even to share basic information. … ACPS is dropping the ball.”
“I think you’re right that … long-range planning could do a better job of getting this information out there,” Storm says. “We know that the needs are out there. We think that Albemarle County knows that the needs are out there. But yes, I wish there were more people speaking out, not just people deep in the weeds on this, but people who have kids in schools who would be willing to speak out on behalf of the referendum.”
“My frustration is not so much about who they appointed, but about who they chose not to appoint,” says Jack Jouett Supervisor Sally Duncan. “[Gilman Bennett] is just eminently qualified, and she has been doing the work for years. … For [the board] to say ‘We don’t want that help’ is just insulting, frankly.”
Board member Jim Dillenbeck says that during the review process, the board received “dozens of emails from people recommending Heidi Gilman Bennett, and a handful of emails for several other candidates, including David Storm.”
In a September 25 press release, Duncan called for an independent investigation into “Central Office leaders including their relationship with the School Board,” incorporating protections for potential whistleblowers. (The school district declined to comment on Duncan’s statement.)
“There is a whisper network of women in the ACPS community and they need to be listened to,” Duncan wrote in the release. “I am not the only person who has heard the whispers, and this is not the first time that I have spoken up. This is just the first time I am publicly doing so.”
The board’s choice of Storm over other candidates, Duncan wrote, “sends a message that they are unwilling to do the hard work of honestly dealing with the long-standing serious issues within [the] Central Office.”
“I think [Duncan] raises some very important points,” Storm says. “I know that people have come before the board in open session in public comment to talk about these things, and if those allegations are correct, there has to be a serious internal look into what had allowed those things to happen.”
Duncan says she’s not sure how setting up such an investigation might work; based on her research, the Board of Supervisors lacks any such power. But she says other districts have carried out similar investigations successfully. “It’s a solvable problem, if [the board] would like to solve the problem. If they even believe there’s a problem.”
Duncan believes that the board should have selected a candidate ideologically closer to Spillman, who won her election promising to push for change. “There were multiple people that would have fit the mold of Allison Spillman,” she says, “and it is interesting that with several qualified women, they chose an older white man.”
“There were a tremendous number of really qualified candidates for this,” Storm says, “and I don’t take the fact that I was selected instead of them lightly.”
