A group of citizens in the Alleghany Highlands have banned together to get petitions signed, ones favoring the election of school board members.
Currently, school board members are appointed by the Covington City Council and the Alleghany County Board of Supervisors, and the new school board’s seven members have been appointed with the first meeting of the school board to take place in July.
Citizens in the Commonwealth of Virginia were not allowed to elect school boards during the post-Reconstruction Period, and for racial reasons, Virginia’s General Assembly met in 1901 to devise ways to keep Black citizens from having representation in the state.
Poll taxes, literacy tests, and Jim Crow served the purpose of those in political power. However, following World War II, society changed, and by 1992, Virginia had elected Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first Black governor.
Governor Douglas Wilder signed the law that the General Assembly had passed in 1992 that gives Virginians the right to elect their school boards.
Virginia was the last state to allow its school districts to elect its school boards, but following the signing of the bill into law, the vast majority of school boards are now elected rather than appointed.
The Alleghany Highlands Public Schools is set to become official on July 1, and it will be governed by an appointed school board. The seven members will hold their first meeting in July.
Bob Umstead, a retired special education teacher and longtime coach at Alleghany High School who serves as vice-mayor of the Town of Clifton Forge, favors giving citizens the right to elect their school board.
Umstead remarked, “I got involved because my brother is in the Marine Corps, and he fights to protect people’s right to vote and have a say in what they take part in and how it is handled.”
He continued, “Right now, the community has no say in who represents them on the school board.”
At the June Clifton Forge Town Council meeting, Umstead held up a petition and encouraged everyone to sign it in order to gain enough signatures to have an up or down vote included on the Nov. ballot.
If enough signatures are garnered and the vote to elect school board members should pass, the first election of school board members would take place in Nov. of 2023.
Umstead concluded, “I’d like to say that people should have a choice whether or not their school board is appointed or elected.”
An examination of Virginia’s history of disfranchisement of Blacks by codifying Jim Crow practices to limit Blacks from having influence in public affairs provides insight into the reason Virginia became the last state in the nation to allow its citizens to elect school boards.
In 1987, the ACLU of Virginia filed a lawsuit that maintained that Virginia’s ban on elected school boards violated the Voting Rights Act.
Although the ACLU lost the case, much light was cast upon the subject throughout Virginia, paving the way for Governor Wilder’s election and his historic signing of the bill that has changed the way most school boards in Virginia have been formed since 1992.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.