04/15/2026
The VBEA PACE team would like to share their thoughts on the school board meeting last night, where board members voted on the motion submitted by Melinda Rodgers to suspend policy 6-13 so that we could avoid adding 10 instructional minutes to everyone's day. As a reminder to everyone, this committee is made up of educators & staff volunteering their time. This is coming from the mouths of those who have been directly affected not just by this action, but a myriad of bad choices from our school board throughout our entire careers. It's going to be a long one so bare with us.
First, we appreciate the 4 members that seemed to hear our frustrations and vote in favor of this motion. Matt Cummings and Melinda Rodgers both made excellent points and truly tried to urge their fellow board members to act with compassion for their community. Most of them failed to do so.
District 3’s Mark Bohenstiel informed us while that 1700 signatures in support of suspending policy 6-13 sounded like a lot, in the grand scheme of things he felt that it really wasn't🤷♂️. We'd like to remind Mr. Bohenstiel that only a small fraction of supporters were willing to put their name on a public petition out of fear of retaliation from this school board. However, it's nice to know that those 1700 publicly voiced concerns didn't matter enough in your eyes.
District 1’s Rose Dwyer was concerned that the emails that came from the campaign we started, which is a very common practice and an accessible way for people to voice their concerns in a concise and timely manner, didn't actually come from "real" people because the emails all used the same wording. Ms. Dwyer, that is in fact how email campaigns are supposed to work. Every single email that was sent to the school board was sent by a living, breathing human being. All emails are verified before being allowed to participate. She also felt the need to point out multiple times that she was just following our superintendent's recommendation. We'd like to remind Ms. Dwyer that as a school board member you are there to be an advocate for staff and parents of this community, and you should make your own decisions based on what is best for them and what they express they want to see from you. You are the superintendent’s boss, not the other way around.
District 9’s Carolyn Weems pointed out to us that she's busy as well! She gets it! But, the school board has done this several times in the past. In fact, they've added even more than 10 minutes before! It seems like she's trying to say "it wasn't a big deal then, why should it be now?" And to that we say, Vice Chair Weems we have no doubt that it absolutely was a big deal then. In fact, we've heard from veteran educators in this district that you all have made decisions like this before and people were ANGRY. But just like now that anger, frustration, and feeling of complete dismissal was ignored. We would like to remind you that the current wave of educators in our district are younger, less afraid to speak up, and less tolerant of decisions that aren’t beneficial for our students, families, and staff. What once was tolerated has reached a boiling point.
District 6’s Michael Callan insisted that for our students to compete and be successful on a global level we needed to adopt the same academic policies as in other countries, such as China. According to him, the fact that they go to school for an average of 190 days is what makes them great. Not the fact that they respect their educators, fund their schools abundantly, and place a real importance on family time more than our own school board seems to.
Board member Melinda Rodgers proposed what we thought was a very clever plan that would have compromised on all fronts and made this situation infinitely better. She pointed out that the school board's first choice for handling how to make up for the April 21 closure would have been to use a synchronous day. However, the VDOE would not allow that as those should only be reserved for natural emergencies if they are to count towards instructional days. So, if the board would have voted to suspend the policy, we could have counted our instructional hours (which we have a plethora of) instead of days , met the VDOE's requirements, and used a virtual synchronous day on April 21. We would think that any board members insisting that we NEED to count days for our test scores to be successful should have been happy with this solution. A synchronous day seems much more productive than adding 10 divisive minutes each day that do not provide any meaningful instructional time and simply cause chaos and an exorbitant amount of late fees for VBCPS families and staff. When Melinda brought this up to our Superintendent Dr. Donald Robertson, he agreed that the synchronous day was their first choice and "we do them well," but then went on to immediately state that he would not support Mrs. Rodger's proposed plan, giving zero reason.
Overall, we are not surprised with how this meeting went, but we are hurt and angry. This may not seem like a significant issue, but we've already posted about the numerous reasons why this decision hurts staff & parents. And more than that, this school board has a history of dismissing staff which leaves us feeling completely unsupported. This is another one of those times. We urge you to remember this and all of the other decisions that have shown how inflexible, unsupportive, and ill-informed the board majority is when several seats are up for reelection in November. Most of the board has sat before us during moments of community outrage and basically said "too bad." Our community deserves leaders that are transparent, responsive, and willing to listen.
If you are an educator or support staff who is already a part of our union and you are looking for something tangible to do in moments like this, reach out to us about joining our PACE today. There is strength in numbers and we greatly value having an abundance of input from our colleagues!
