York County School Board to get policy services from right-wing group

YORK COUNTY, Va. (WAVY) — The York County School Board will receive policies going forward from an openly right-wing organization known as the School Board Member Alliance (SBMA).

Though they won’t sever policy writing services with the nonpartisan Virginia School Boards Association (VSBA) as previously expected. The board voted 4-1 Monday to purchase policy writing services from both organizations (VSBA Tidewater rep James Richardson was the no vote).

Vice Chair Kimberly Goodwin, who’s in the SBMA, motioned to approve policy services from both as a compromise. She said the added cost was “peanuts” compared to the district’s overall budget.

It came after community members, two board members and the board’s attorney voiced concerns about the SBMA.

Board attorney Melanie Berry said she was worried about the lack of access to a policy database through SBMA, and the lack of attorneys on staff and legal protections.

The SBMA was created in December of 2022 and is headed by former Suffolk School Board member Sherri Story. Story, who faced calls to resign from that role after a controversial post during Black History Month in 2022, has complained about “indoctrination of the School Board training unions” and said she started the SBMA “to take back public schools from WOKE leadership.”

Story’s social media also features an array of extreme right-wing views. She frequently shares anti-transgender and migrant “invasion” stories, rails about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and the “woke mind virus,” and even shared a post praising self-described El Salvadorean dictator Nayib Bukele.

Story said she bills the SBMA as a conservative alternative to the VSBA, and it features several school board members from around the commonwealth. They include York School Board Chair Lynda Fairman and Vice Chair Goodwin.

Several school boards elsewhere in Virginia have opted to leave the VSBA in favor of the SBMA, saying the SBMA’s views align more with theirs. Other boards such as Isle of Wight’s have considered it.

York County’s board discussed in recent meetings that their contract with VSBA, which has provided policy writing services for the board since 2011, was allowed to expire under the new board leadership.

Ahead of Monday’s vote, Berry and board members James Richardson and Mark Shafer said they were left in the dark about key components about the SBMA. They later said they received materials from SBMA the day of the vote.

“The School Board Member Alliance has not provided me anything,” Berry said in an interview on March 21. “I’ve reached out on numerous occasions to Sherri Story, who’s the executive director, and she’s not providing me any information at all.”

Berry said she attempted to join the group to compare costs and services between SBMA and the nonpartisan Virginia School Boards Association, but was denied access.

She added on March 21 that the School Board Member Alliance claims to offer services to write school policies for the board, but she’s not aware of attorneys SBMA has on staff.

“I’m not sure who would be drafting their policies. The VSBA has an attorney who does all the policies, vets them all … and we rely on VSBA and having that attorney do that, and then we can adapt them how we wish, according to our needs.”

In an interview with WAVY ahead of Monday’s meeting, Story didn’t share who the attorneys were for SBMA, but said Virginia Beach School Board member Victoria Manning, another highly-controversial figure, was serving as SBMA’s “head of policy services.”

Story acknowledged Manning was not a practicing lawyer, but pointed to Manning having a master’s degree in law from Regent University.

“She’s overseeing it and then coordinates with the lawyers that we have that guide us. And she’ll explain that tonight,” said Story, who added that she believes her legal team is sound.

When pressed about her views on social media, Story said her posts didn’t reflect the views of the SBMA.

“Everyone has the ability to speak as a citizen, as an individual, but that does not represent the SBMA position.”

Sherri Story

The three other members who make up the York County board’s new right-wing majority — Chair Lynda Fairman, Vice Chair Kimberly Goodwin and board member Zoran Pajevic — are members of SBMA and have attended multiple training sessions coordinated by the group.

WAVY reached out to them for comment ahead of Monday’s vote and for answers to questions about the SBMA.

Board Chair Fairman responded via email, but didn’t answer WAVY’s questions. She said, “The SBMA will be giving their presentation at Monday’s School Board meeting as the VSBA did at our last meeting.”

Elizabeth Ewing with VSBA did not respond to WAVY’s interview requests. She recently gave a presentation on VSBA’s services at a school board work session.

WAVY also spoke to the president of the Virginia Education Association, Dr. James Fedderman, ahead of Monday’s vote.

He said York and other districts in Virginia deserve “an association that is tested, vetted and that has stood the test of time.”

“And that is our Virginia School Boards Association,” Fedderman said. ” … our educators deserve leadership that is doing what’s right, that is not based or biased in politics. Nor should it be an agenda that’s driven by one party or the other.”

Fedderman said policies funneled through the SBMA could impact learning and create even more divisiveness in the county.

“Talking about book banning, talking about white washing our history, talking about not teaching the truth. And just basically just trying to dissect every single thing versus allowing the teachers to be the authentic eye openers for their classrooms.”

“It’s more a dictatorship,” Fedderman added. “While [board members] go on with their lives not even being in the hustle and bustle every day. This is more a dictatorship than a collaborative structure.”

Fedderman said the School Board Member Alliance and its backers show an overt far-right bias in many ways, but also has a “hidden agenda” that includes things such as universal school choice and efforts to dismantle federal education regulations.

The School Board Member Alliance has the support of many conservatives groups, including the Middle Resolution PAC backed by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.

It’s worked with the Noah Webster Educational Foundation, a similar organization that’s linked to other far-right initiatives.

A Noah Webster event attended by Fairman and Goodwin this January was sponsored by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump administration that calls for mass deportations, a purge of the federal civil service to install Trump loyalists and the elimination of the Department of Education.

“Under the guise of strengthening ‘parent’s rights’ and ‘school choice, the Right wants to abolish public education and replace it with a system of private schools,” said Georgetown historian Thomas Zimmer in a series on Project 2025. “They have plans for higher education as well, where the enemy is the same as throughout “Project 2025” – those “woke” forces who seek to undermine the nation.”

Fedderman says the overall plans would be catastrophic for public schools, particularly for those without means and other vulnerable groups such as disabled and LGBTQ+ students.

“That would then go back to discrimination, that would go back to segregation. That would go back to creating divisive policies, rules and regulations that continue to divide us as a commonwealth and ultimately as a country. That divide starts at the local level and then goes to the district level, then goes to the state level. Then it goes to the national level. So it’s a trickle effect that’s truly damaging public education.”