Aidan Stern,
September 8th, 2023
How Can Our School Board Help Us?
Elections this year aren’t as exciting as in years where governmental control is in debate, like when we are electing a president or flipping control of the house every other year. Still, this year's elections are essential to our community functions. This year, our parents, and maybe some of you, will vote on 3 contested school board races. Overall, the quality of our schools has been trending downward since the pandemic. These elections are crucial for deciding the new path of our school system going forward. You and other students at BHS should understand what each representative stands for because their changes or complacency will affect us the most.
Below are profiles of the seven new candidates running for the school board. Some candidates have provided more information on agendas than others, so I’ve included additional information in their profiles. Since I’ve been a part of this school system my entire life, I am biased towards some topics addressed by the candidates. I have tried to keep my bias out of the campaign profiles, but if you’d like to hear my opinion on the subject, I have my takeaways below.
District B
While District B is situated in Christiansburg, it is an important race because it involves our previous superintendent, Mark Miear.
Incumbent* Penny Franklin
Source: https://pennyjfranklinforschoolboard.com/.
*Running for re-election
Penny Franklin is a Christiansburg native who has been on the Montgomery County School Board since 2000. Her core values have been equity for African-American and LGBTQ+ students, stopping book bans, and investing in public schools rather than private school vouchers. She also voices action to support teachers. To learn more about her career, here is her bio and website.
Mark Miear
Source: The Roanoke Times
Mark Miear is no stranger to the public school system, where he has worked for over 30 years. After becoming our superintendent, he was unanimously ousted by the current school board in 2022. However, he is back to run against Penny Franklin on issues such as creating initiatives to boost avenues for trade jobs and standing up for parents' rights in the school system. He highlights increasing reading, writing, and math scores across the county by restructuring the curriculum. Read more about his campaign here.
District E
Situated in western Blacksburg, District E is a hot contest between two fundamentally different candidates. One will replace Mark Cherbaka who will step down after his term ends this election cycle.
Lindsay Rich
Source: The Roanoke Times
Lindsay Rich owns a small rental business and is also an active member of the
PTO. Rich states she is running her campaign aligned with Glenn Youngkin’s values. She strongly supports parental rights for private education, separation of bathrooms and sports by biological sex, and harder discipline policies. She has also expressed support for expanding trade job opportunities. While the school board has historically not been affiliated with political parties, she has politicized it in her campaign. Currently, she campaigns online primarily on Facebook.
Derek Rountree
Source: Matt Gentry via The Roanoke Times
Opposing Lindsay Rich is Derek Rountree, a researcher at Luna, a technology company based out of Blacksburg. One of his main issues is advocating for higher teacher salaries and acquiring more funding from the state and local governments for our school district. He wants to expand school spending to provide support for mental health, inclusion for all marginalized groups (ethnicities and LGBTQ+), and boost proficiency scores. However, the school board isn’t in charge of financing. Additionally, he wants to install tinted windows so school intruders can’t target classrooms from the outside. Make of that what you will. Here is his website.
District F
While school board member Sue Cass is stepping down as representative for District F, only one person has stood up to take her place. Unless extenuating circumstances occur, Laurel Purcell will take her spot.
Laurel Purcell
Source: Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Since Dr. Purcell doesn’t have an opponent, she has campaigned little. She primarily mirrors the viewpoint of members like Cherbaka, who pushes a more liberal perspective. Special needs education and bullying are also big issues that Purcell wants to address. Here is her Facebook page.
District G
These prospective candidates are vying to replace Mark Cherbaka. District G is the smallest, most densely populated district and is situated in North Blacksburg.
Ed Gitre
Source: Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Ed Gitre, a Virginia Tech professor, advocates for inclusion (LBTQ+, race, class) and trust (teachers, administration) based initiatives. He believes in increasing the number of hard-copy books in our schools so students don’t have to learn online and advancing help for kids with disabilities who are struggling compared to state averages in our school district. He also advocates for supporting teachers because of retention issues and teacher shortages.
Jason Massie
Source: Matt Gentry via The Roanoke Times
Jason Massie is a project manager at demolition company D.H. Griffin. Similarly to Rich, he supports efforts to stimulate trade work certifications in high schools and restructuring discipline measures for students. His actions on parental influence in school education are unclear, but he promotes himself as a parent’s rights advocate. He also agrees with many candidates about the necessity of higher compensation for teachers.
Takeaways
After thoroughly researching these candidates, I would like to point out what challenges each potential contender might create. These are purely my speculations on the effectiveness of each politician’s platform.
Penny Franklin - She has the most experience with the workload and has realistic expectations of the authority and efficiency of the school board. Having Penny Franklin on the school board also ensures that it is diverse in its representation of the Montgomery County population. While she doesn’t hold any special duties on the school board, she has remained consistent in her beliefs and provides reliability.
Mark Miear - I have serious concerns about Mark Miear’s history as superintendent of our school district. Reasons for his removal as superintended, which was unanimous, were clarified in March. The school board had multiple grievances against him, which included verbal abuse of an employee, fear tactics, and policy ineffectiveness. If you would like to delve further into this issue, I highly recommend you read this statement from Cherbaka and Miear’s response. I was a student at the high school during the COVID pandemic, where I experienced firsthand the sentiment from teachers and students while Miear was superintendent. The teachers were tired, which affected students' motivation. I highly doubt Miear can be effective among board members who decided to remove him and promote policies that have done little good in the past.
Lindsay Rich - My one concern with Rich is that she has highly politicized the school board and is running on values about the culture wars in America. I believe she could be a capable member, but her platform is based on polarizing topics that are not beneficial to school board efficiency. If she is elected, I’d expect the school board to become a contentious battleground.
Derek Roundtree - He has put great thought into his opinions, but I believe that his plans are a little overzealous. A lot of his policies require financing that he has no control over.
Others - Although I might disagree with some policies of these candidates, I believe all others are good candidates. The most important thing for us is to talk to our parents about problems we want solved in the future. And, of course, vote if you can!
Sources:
Mark Meiar. (2023). Mark Miear for school board: Miear4schoolboard: Christiansburg. My Site. https://www.miear4schoolboard.com/
Penny Franklin. (2023, October 5). Re-elect Penny J. Franklin for Montgomery County School Board. Penny J. Franklin for Montgomery County, VA School Board, District B. https://pennyjfranklinforschoolboard.com/
Lindsay Rich. (n.d.). Lindsay-Rich-for-School-Board-MCPS-VA-District-E. Facebook. https://m.facebook.com/p/Lindsay-Rich-for-School-Board-MCPS-VA-District-E-100092041993051/#_=_
Graham, L. (2023, September 11). Candidates discuss top priorities for Montgomery County School Board at forum . News Messenger. https://montcova.com/2023/09/11/candidates-discuss-top-priorities-for-montgomery-county-school-board-at-forum/
Ranaivo, Y. (2023, May 11). Two more candidates enter Montgomery County School Board races. Roanoke Times. https://roanoke.com/news/local/government-politics/two-more-candidates-enter-montgomery-county-school-board-races/article_a2c69ca0-ef89-11ed-b821-c79ac7f41096.html
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