The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors called its colleagues on the county school board to task at a special October 15 meeting, asking Virginia’s Department of Education to scrutinize Albemarle’s troubled school district.
Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution that “responds to community concerns about alleged failures to comply with mandated child abuse reporting requirements and questions about compliance with transparency laws,” the board said in an October 16 statement.
Supervisors can’t legally compel the school board or the district to take action. But their resolution requests regular updates from the school board on how the district responds when staff suspect that someone is abusing a child. It also asks the board for updates about the independent investigation the school board approved in early August, so that the public can weigh in on that inquiry’s scope and thoroughness.
County police said earlier this week that at least one school district employee reported feeling reluctant to report suspected abuse for fear of official retaliation. In response, supervisors asked the school board to set up formal protections for whistleblowers, echoing a request supervisor Sally Duncan independently made in late September.
Supervisors further asked the school board to review how well it follows laws governing Freedom of Information Act requests, and to set up a formal crisis management plan with a clear timeline for what steps the district will take, and when, to address its problems.
The resolution concludes by sending up a signal flare to the state Department of Education, formally asking it to investigate and monitor the school district’s practices. On October 13, Governor Abigail Spanberger condemned any “culture of fear and retaliation” in the district that might have kept employees from speaking up, and called for the prosecution of any staff members who failed in their responsibilities.
At the October 15 meeting, Supervisor Mike Pruitt said that since the supervisors’ previous gathering, “I have learned of even more patterns and practices [within the school district] that I consider just as or even more outrageous and repugnant, and indicate a deep level of dysfunction.”
“These students feel broken and need to heal, and those who created the crisis are no longer in a position to solve it,” Supervisor Ann Mallek said. “I look forward to news that will show that our school board is stepping up.”
“Our goal is not to assign blame or undermine our school system,” Supervisor Fred Missel said. “It is to help ensure that our schools are places where students thrive, educators feel supported, parents are heard, and public trust is earned through actions, not simply words.”
“ACPS is in a crisis,” Duncan said. “Everyone sees it, except, it seems, the only people with the constitutional authority to do something about it.”
“The crisis has been allowed to become too large,” she said. “There are too many facets. There are too many legal issues and too many people involved for this to be handled by six people who are not experts and who are doing a part-time job.”
Duncan’s criticism echoed concerns from former at-large school board member Allison Spillman in a late August interview with C-VILLE. “We are elected officials getting paid $16,000 a year,” she said. Per hour of school board work the average member does weekly, she said, that works out to “way less than minimum wage.”
“You’re asking those ordinary citizens to step up to the plate to bear this burden,” Spillman said. “But they have to maintain full-time jobs because this doesn’t pay a full-time salary.”
Asked whether he would support making school board appointments full-time, salaried positions, state Sen. Creigh Deeds says he’d have to think about it. “Historically, school boards have hired administrations, superintendents, who actually run the schools,” Deeds says. “I am not certain what has happened in Albemarle County in the past year warrants changing that. In my view, school boards have become too politicized in general. The focus needs to be on providing all young people with the best education and opportunity possible.”
At press time, the school board had not responded to the board of supervisors’ resolution. It is scheduled to meet next on October 22.
