UPDATE: In a surprising move, York’s school board voted 4-1 Monday night to move forward with policy writing services with the nonpartisan Virginia School Boards Association.
Vice Chair Kim Goodwin motioned to do so and Chair Lynda Fairman was the only vote against going with the VSBA.
The development also means, at least as a board, York won’t contract the partisan School Board Member Alliance for policy writing.
This is an update. Previous coverage is below.
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YORK COUNTY, Va. (WAVY) — The York County School Board is expected to reverse course on a previous vote, and pursue policy writing services solely from a new right-wing organization.
The agenda for Monday’s 7 p.m. school board meeting shows a motion to amend the board’s earlier vote on March 25. At that meeting, the board voted 4-1 to purchase policy services from both the nonpartisan Virginia School Boards Association and the School Board Member Alliance, an evident right-leaning group that now claims to be nonpartisan on its website.
Vice Chair Kimberly Goodwin, who is already an individual member of SBMA along with Board Chair Lynda Fairman, and board member Zoran Pajevic, suggested buying both organization’s policy services as a compromise after pushback from the public. She said the cost to do so would be “peanuts” in relation to the district’s overall budget.
Now the board is set to revisit the issue after later learning of an “exclusivity clause” from SBMA that would require York’s board to pick one organization or the other.
“If that’s the case, why would we go with someone that’s a totally unknown quantity … if we can only have one or the other, I want the VSBA,” said board member Mark Shafer (District 1), who voted last time to approve working with both organizations to avoid just going with SBMA.
Like with the previous vote before, Shafer said he was still in the dark on SBMA’s workings and their communication with the board chair about the issue.
He wishes things were more transparent for both the board and the public.
“Why waste our time if we’re just going to have to go back and do it again?” Shafer asked.
WAVY has reached out to SBMA through Executive Director Sherri Story, as well as York School Board Chair Lynda Fairman for more information about the clause ahead of Monday’s vote and why it wasn’t disclosed before. WAVY had yet to hear back at the time of publishing.
In the meantime, an email from VSBA Executive Director Gina Patterson to board attorney Melanie Berry and Fairman provides more context about events after the March 25 vote.
In the April 1 email obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, Patterson shows a formal contract had not been reached, and that the board was asked to refrain from using services that the VSBA believed would be paid for.
“It has come to my attention that there is a possibility of the decision being revisited during the upcoming April session,” Patterson wrote. “Regrettably, I must emphasize the necessity for immediate action considering the information conveyed by my staff attorney, who, acting in good faith, provided access to VSBA’s most recent policy updates, including our February revisions.”
Barbara Haywood, who served three decades on York’s school board, said this is another example of behavior from the new board that builds distrust.
“When you tell me you voted, you voted to do both. And now you’re going to tell me ‘I can’t sign because SBMA said no.’ Did you know that ahead of time and this was just a way of getting out of that meeting?”
Haywood believes the guise of compromise at the last meeting was a way of buying time so criticism of the new partisan right-wing majority (Fairman, Goodwin, Pajevic) dies down.
“See as long as you’ve got three members as your quorum, they can do whatever they want. Are they waiting for people to say ‘we can’t win’ and they just back off?”
Members of the York County community though are not backing off in sharing their grievances, including that the board’s recent actions could lead to an exodus of teachers from the county. That includes a petition, which has gathered hundreds of petitions from York County voters so far, calling on the new three-member majority to resign.
Haywood said she’s not signed the petition, and instead believes the board can move forward in a positive direction through training and education.
“I want them to be the best board members they can be, they’re going to leave a legacy. I want that legacy to be a positive one. In order to be a positive one, you have to be trained appropriately, you have to be willing to communicate.”
Haywood though said she too will keep going to meetings to hold the board accountable and to encourage them to come together to help the district’s students and staff.
“This is not the York County that we worked so hard for. You go up in flames like this … if they continue on the stance that we are continuing, we’re going to lose so much,” Haywood said.