ReportCard! – Elected School Boards

Some people look forward to getting their grades when the report cards come out. Others hope that the dog eats them.

In this new feature, we’ll take a category or group of things and grade the items on the standard A to F scale. I think the elected school boards in the regions that we mainly cover would the perfect group to get the first SouthsideCentral ReportCard. Get ready, it’s grading time!

We’ve got five elected school boards in our main region of coverage. Danville, Pittsylvania County, Halifax County, Henry County, and Rockingham County (NC) . The Martinsville city school board is still appointed by their city council, so they won’t be on today’s ReportCard.

Danville: The Danville school board used to be a rubber stamp for previous superintendent Sue Davis, but that’s changing as the board gets rid of long-time members and replaces them with ones that directly challenge new superintendent Ed Newsome. That’s an excellent sign and it looks like it will continue as two new board members will take office in July. The Danville school board had made some previous horrible decisions like closing schools without analyzing the impact and eliminating the alternative school for troublemakers. They’re back on track now, and the loss of two incumbents that helped make those decisions can only be good news. Four months ago, the Danville school board would have gotten a “D”. They’ve improved greatly since then. Grade: B

Pittsylvania County: I don’t think many Pittsylvania County resident could name all of the school board members and the only reason I can is because I researched the board for a SouthsideCentral article last week. Up until a few months ago, the Pittsylvania County board had been rather quiet and letting Superintendent James McDaniel do his job with very few problems. Things are getting a little more heated now as a few board members seem to be getting under McDaniel’s skin. The good news? They’re nowhere close to being as dysfunctional as the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors. Grade: B+

Henry County: Of all the region’s school boards, this is by far the quietest one. They’re so quiet that I can only name about half of the board because they never seem to have any controversies. This is a lame way to start the ReportCard feature, but they’re getting an Incomplete grade because I truly have nothing good nor bad to say about them. Grade: I

Halifax County: This board would love to go back in time and erase the last seven days. As I wrote in that article, the board went in a completely different direction with the hiring of Merle Herndon. She’s been controversial at times and she blew this Albert Randolph issue badly, but the school board seems to have done what it takes to get a solution. Surprisingly, there hasn’t been much lasting fallout from Herndon’s actions. This school board is strong and usually unified. They’ll survive this superintendent’s mistake and keep on doing well. Grade: A-

Rockingham County (NC): The Rockingham County Board of Education is a comedy show. To start off, they have eleven members (six districts and five at-large) so board meetings can become marathons. They’ve fought with a citizens’ group about the Common Core educational system. They’ve got a member who believes that citizens can convene their own grand jury and issue indictments on their own. Sometimes they actually get down to business and care about the school system. Truly, this board is a circus. Grade: F

And there’s your first SouthsideCentral ReportCard! We’ll keep this in our rotation of features and who knows what we’ll grade next?

One thing that we do know is that we’ve got more coming up on SouthsideCentral…