Ep. 63 "Meet Virginia’s School Board Member Alliance" (Part 1 of 2)

Today on The State of Education, Melvin talks to Sherri Story and Cheryl Facciani, who are part of the team behind Virginia’s new School Board Member Alliance. Sherri and Cheryl have very different life stories, but they share a common experience—being the dissenting voices on their local school boards. Plus, they love their kids and want to do what they can to create safe educational spaces for the next generation. The SBMA was founded to empower other school board members to do the same. Listen in to learn all the details!


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Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Increasingly more often, school boards have been in the news countless times over the past few years. Parents are dissatisfied, concerned school board candidates are asking questions, and school board administrations are trying to sweep it all under the rug. That’s why a few people got together in Virginia and created a new non-partisan association: the School Board Member Alliance. Listen in as SBMA’s Chairwoman, Sherri D. Story, and Director Cheryl Facciani discuss their experiences and give us a glimpse into what the Alliance is all about.

ADAMS: For 116 years, one partisan association has held a monopoly over school boards. And school board members are getting fed up. The insufficient training they get only prepares them to represent their division and not their constituents and is all too focused on school board limitations and red tape.

That is why, today, we are talking about Virginia’s New School Board Member Alliance, the SBMA. The SBMA is a non-partisan organization that empowers and resources school board members to be great servants of their community.

Join me in welcoming SBMA board chairman, Sherri Story, and Cheryl Facciani, SBMA’s director. Ladies, welcome to The State of Education podcast.

FACCIANI: Thank you, it’s great to be here.

ADAMS: It’s a delight to have you. So, these guests today are highly educated. They have extensive experience in education themselves, as well as serving on school boards.

They are driven by a love for our children and our country and to help empower school board members to be great leaders and to give great oversight in their work. 

Sherri, why don’t we start off with you and let’s jump into a few things. I’m going to come back to you, Cheryl, if you don’t mind.

STORY: That sounds good.

ADAMS: Alright, so, Sherri…tell us a little bit about yourself personally and professionally.

STORY: Well, I’m originally from the Midwest. My home was in Wisconsin for many, many years, and I had my first teaching jobs in Wisconsin. I also lived in Michigan for quite a while, while raising my two children. 

Then came to Virginia in 1999. So I’m a transplant, I guess, but now this feels like home. I have two children and four grandchildren and they live in Northern Virginia so we’re all in the same state. I feel privileged for that. We’re nice and close.

ADAMS: Where are you in Virginia? What part of Virginia do you live in?

STORY: Oh! I live in Suffolk, Virginia right now. I’m hoping to transplant myself closer to my grandkids, which will be around Fairfax, soon.

I’ve had twenty-two years of teaching experience in the field of high school biology. I love teaching. I did it for ten years in Wisconsin and then took a break. When I came here to Virginia I taught for twelve years at King;s Fork High School in the Suffolk City public schools.

ADAMS: That’s very interesting. You probably don’t know this, but one of my favorite subjects in high school was biology. In fact, I wanted to be a veterinary doctor.

STORY: Awesome.

ADAMS: Anyway, I ended up shifting as I grew older and opportunities came. I went a whole different direction, but I love science and particularly biology. 

So as a teacher in that experience, what in the world got you interested in running for and serving on school boards?

STORY: I think as a teacher here in Virginia, I could not understand how the sciences were funded. Huge budgets—million-dollar budgets—and yet, the finances were never clear to me. They were not transparent. It seemed like, as a teacher, I was constantly asking why the sciences were so underfunded. I talked in front of the board several times lamenting the lack of funding for science and lab. 

That really got me interested in why school boards were so non-transparent. It seemed like they were hiding all the time, trying to come up with word-salad sentences, and not really answering your question. I thought that was a disservice, especially to the sciences, which is my passion. 

One of the schools was budgeted at seven cents per student. At seven cents per student, you cannot do science. You’re just doing book work.

ADAMS: You can’t even buy a pencil for seven cents!

STORY: I know! That’s what really got me interested in becoming part of the board—to try to right some of those funding issues. Also, to be more transparent. I saw a board that walked in and didn’t have any discussion. It just didn’t seem like it represented the people, especially me as a constituent. So I got interested in running for school board.

ADAMS: It sounds to me like you attended a few school board meetings, saw the folk come in, salute, and say “yes sir, yes ma’am,” sign-off and go home.

STORY: That was it!

ADAMS: Far too often happens. 

So you got on the school board. You ran, you got elected. Our focus is going to shift toward the SBMA, but could you tell us a story from your experience on school board that may be a catalyst or a window into why SBMA? What was something that happened to you that said we’ve got to fix a problem, here?

STORY: There’s a lot of stories I could tell you. Most importantly, I think that when I started asking questions, as a school board member, wanting to know more—within two or three months of asking questions, I was a target. That was just not “allowed.”

Then I wondered, where is this coming from? Why couldn’t a school board member receive data? Why couldn’t they receive the things they asked for? I was constantly denied. Why are talking about things in closed-session that I think the public constituents would want to know?

Why weren’t we doing that up front? Why were we doing that behind the scenes? Those are the kind of obstacles I ran into, and I felt the most important—being transparent—truly, the constituents were not hearing the business of the school board.

There were so many things going on by phone calls and in closed-session. It was one of the things that I felt necessary to take my school board to court. I used the FOIL law to try to open things up. That’s where I really got engaged in transparency.

Winning several of those, the school board today in Suffolk is operating under a lot more transparency than they were four years ago when I came on the board.

ADAMS: It’s amazing what a little bit of pushback will do, properly done. Just helps people understand there’s a better way of doing business. Thank you for sharing that part of your story.

Let me switch over now to Cheryl, just for a few minutes. Cheryl, talk to us a little bit. Talk to our audience, tell us a little about yourself personally and professionally.

FACCIANI: Sure. I grew up in New Jersey, if you can hear the accent. I’ve been living in Roanoke for over twenty years. I grew up in a very tight-knit Italian family. Lots of Sunday dinners together, wonderful parents. 

My parents really believed in the importance of education. That’s because…really my mother, who did not have college education. I think where you come from and what you become really gells together. For me, what shaped me was my grandfather. 

At a very young age, both my grandparents came to the United States for the American dream, from Italy. They immigrated from Ellis Island, and they were just ten years old. They didn’t speak a lick of English. They didn’t have two nickels to rub together, as my grandfather would say.

He was just seeking a better life and he didn’t have an education. At the age of seventeen he actually enlisted in the Army and was a 101st Airborne Division Paratrooper. He was there on D-Day and it was because of him and his bravery that I’m here today, right?

Growing up, we heard those stories about how important education was, how important patriotism was, how important your love of country. It really instilled in me this deep love of the United States of America and of freedom.

He was—I don’t want to say he was the patriarch of the family, but he certainly was a guiding light in my life. Anyway, make no mistake, the day that I was sworn into office was his birthday. I think that was a sign from God that he had been watching over me through my entire campaign. 

So I decided to run—actually almost because of him. There were a lot of other things that were taking place in the world: the pandemic was at the forefront, our children were on lockdown, they weren’t going to school. The atrocities, I thought, that were taking place, the lack of respect for parents and them as decision-makers…really pushed me in the direction of saying, “Listen, if I don’t stand up, who’s going to stand up? If I don’t do this, who is?”

I ended up running and I obviously won. It was an excellent election, but it was very contested and it was hot. 

With regards to myself, personally, I am a speech-language pathologist. I’m retired. I worked for many years—not in the schools, so I don’t have a school background—but I have a pediatric background. I worked in hospitals, acute care, sub-acute care, [unintelligible 10:42] had a private practice.

I always wanted to become a speech pathologist because my brother had a stutter and I saw the impact that she made on the life of him and his family for me…she was just a hero because she was able to teach him without a stutter. That sounds a little silly, but there’s little people in your life, I think, that come into play, and this woman really had an impact on me.

I worked for many years in hospitals. My husband’s job brought us to Roanoke about twenty years ago. We could have lived anywhere. We could have lived in Atlanta, North Carolina, California, but we picked Virginia because of its schools. That was our number-one priority. What were the schools like where we were going?

I was a product of a private school, all girls, Catholic education. I just thought I’d really like my children to go to public school. Public education in Virginia has always been well-known to be outstanding. That’s why we settled here, was for the schools.

And here we are, twenty years later, our scores are not that great. Youngkin put out that great report about how much we’re failing and the literacy act…it’s really fascinating. I think there was a shift. I don’t think Virginia has the best school systems right now but I think we’re on the up-and-up and we’re creating a pathway for success.

ADAMS: How long have you been on the school board?

FACCIANI: Just a year. Actually how that all transpired was once the kids were all locked out of the schools, I called the person who was in my seat and I said, “Jason, we need to get our kids in schools.”

Oddly enough, his son was my son’s best friend. So I ran against my son’s best friend’s dad. And everyone said, “I can’t believe you’re going to run against him. Aren’t your kids best friends?” And I said, “Well, he’s not doing his job. I can do better.”

I had a meeting at my house, I called a couple of the delegates, I said, “Please come on over. We’re going to have some parents come together and we need to figure out a way to get our kids back in school.” 

That night as I was saying goodbye to everybody and they were headed out the door, a friend of mine who served as Chair of the Republican Committee pulled me aside and said, “You know you really need to run for school board.”

And I said, “You’re joking,” and he said, “No, you really need to run. His seat is up in a year, you need to take it.” And I said, “I don’t really think I want to do that.” And then it just got worse, and worse, and worse. 

Our kids weren’t in school. I was afraid our kids were going to be forced to take the vaccines. I’ve got four children. Three of the four have an auto-immune disease. Type-1 diabetes. I did not want them to have to put something in their body.

Now, we have Youngkin and everything’s hunky-dory right now, right? I feel like. But there was a chance, a very—Younkin won by what? Two percent? There was a chance that he wasn’t going to win. I knew that I needed to serve on the school board to protect my kids and make sure they stayed in school.

ADAMS: Interesting. Thank you for sharing that with us, Cheryl. 

Let’s jump into the bigger topic here. I know, particularly Sherri…you and I have talked to each other numerous times the last couple of years. I remember one particular conversation—I believe I was down in Florida, I was going to a conference down there. We had played a little phone-tag and I was in Walmart. We had a long conversation around a lot of things that were going on in education then. Brainstormed about a bunch of stuff.

But this has been a process that’s been happening for a while. More and more school board members are really frustrated with their roles. And really, many times, a sense that the school board association that their boards are members of was sometimes heavy-handed, sometimes felt manipulated by lawyers and always told what you couldn’t do instead of what you could do.

It’s been a long process here, fomenting. Talk to our audience about your own personal journey and what caused you to say, “You know what, this is the right thing to do and start pulling some people together to get it done.” We’ll talk some about that process, but tell that story.

STORY: As soon as I got on—we are all required to take some high-quality professional development and training. And I think that was really good and I certainly took a lot of it. Even this past—my last year on the board, I got some award for attending a lot of the training.

In attending those trainings, I was frustrated by always being told it was not my lane. What I could not do. It was really that one-sided. There was really no reason to have a school board if everything that was being done at the school level was in the hands of the superintendent once you hired him, and the administration. I didn’t really know why we were having a meeting every month.

Was it just to come and for the superintendent to show off arts things and athletic things? We never seemed to do the business of the school division. So I started reading the law, got my hands on a school law book, and started reading everywhere—and outlining—everywhere that it said “the local school district shall.” I started highlighting that.

I said, “Oh my gosh. We have a really important role. We need to be doing what we have been elected to do.” You know, the legislature in Virginia has made really good code, statues. They have taken a lot of consideration on how to make and have a good school district at the local level.

But if you don’t follow any of those, then that’s on us. That’s not on them. It’s on us. So many I would bring up and I would ask the question—it says every year we are to evaluate the professional development of our teachers. And my school board didn’t care. They still would not allow any critique…not even any information on it.

It frustrated me that there was no one advocating for individual school board members who really wanted to follow the law and who really wanted to be very good, transparent representatives of their constituents. And I wanted to be accountable to my constituents. I felt that once I got elected, I spoke for them. I didn’t speak for the superintendent, I don't speak for all the other school board members. 

We are a corporate body and I thoroughly understood that. One person could not autonomously do anything. However, I didn’t lose my voice and I didn’t lose my ability to speak for my constituents. At least, I didn’t think I did.

ADAMS: Sherri, if I could just interrupt for just a second: I’ve talked to so many school board members here in Virginia and across the country. People who want to get involved, people who really want to know what’s going on in their school districts and their local schools. They want to engage with parents, they want to engage with teachers, they want to know, look, what do you need? How can we help? What are the challenges you face everyday? What makes you love to come to work and what makes you hate to come to work? These kinds of things.

But you can’t get that unless you are interactive and engaged at that level. So many school board members are saying, “We’re always told ‘you’re not supposed to show up, you’re not supposed to engage, all you are is a policy body and you only have any influence or any authority when you are in session in a group.’” We understand you have to be in session as a group when you are doing the deliberation and the work. But in order to do that job well, you have to be well-informed and that kind of activity is part of being well-informed.

Is that something you experienced and is that something you find very common?

STORY: Absolutely. When I wanted to engage with teachers, I was told I can’t do that. That’s the superintendent's lane. And I’m like, “Wait a minute, how do I have oversight of what’s going on if I’m forbidden to talk to a teacher who actually is contracted by the school board?” That’s who they’re contracted with. 

I am their literal employer…how can you forbid me from talking to them? And yet it was a constant fight. To go and look at the grounds, to check out the buildings, and to see. You know, when teachers would complain about mold and getting sick…to go and observe that was an absolute no-no.

There’s been such tight control and they’ve been taught that by a group that I did not think really represented what the law says. One of the duties is to go and visit at any time that I feel a need. School board members should be going into their schools and seeing what is going on physically and what’s going on with their staff if there’s problems.

I think that there has been training that has been done to handcuff school board members. When a new school board member comes on they’re told, literally—I was told repeatedly—“You’re a bad school board member. Do not ask these questions. You’re being bad.” How can you be bad for asking questions?

The other thing is, “Just go ask the superintendent privately. He’ll give you those answers, but don’t bring them up in a public meeting.” I thought we were a public school system! This is a public meeting. What do you mean, go privately ask the superintendent? This should be open and above-board to be discussed. And if it can’t be discussed openly and above-board, then we’re not public.

If that’s how school board members are trained, to do things privately behind the board, then I think we ought to go and be part of a private school school board. 

That’s not public education and I didn’t think I was elected to do that. So that certainly got the ball rolling. I thought, where is this kind training coming from that keeps education so private and so closed down to the public that school board members are being told and given this inference that we can’t talk at a school board meeting?

To me, that’s not public education. That’s not democracy, that’s not a republic. We’re elected. We should be talking and discussing and having conversations back and forth on our board. Our school board still doesn’t have conversations! I think now we’ve got some new members that have been elected and it will work that way…but conversation, intellectual discussion between members is very important because we have topics that need discussing.

ADAMS: There’s another factor, here. It seems like the School Board Association…their policy is simply that they only deal with a full board and their decisions. That’s kind of the extent of where they’re going to go with a school board. While we understand that school boards have to make collective decisions, that school board is made up of a variety of people, each one representing the constituents of that community.


STORY: Yes!


ADAMS: So many school board members—and, I believe, many in the community—when they’re having issues with their school and they can’t get certain things to happen—whether it should happen or not is not the question—it boils down to, “Look, you are my representative and I want to talk to about my interests and my concerns and I want you to do something about it.”

When that is going on in that sense…there’s so much that’s been out, here in Virginia—well, not just in Virginia, but on a nation-wide level—about the parents being the terrorists and all of those kinds of things. Many of us believe that parents need to be an integral part of what is going on in the schools and they need to be able to have open access to their school board members.

And their school board members should be able to represent those parents and the broader community, directly. Not only within the board, but within association outside and beyond that board structure.

STORY: Yes.

ADAMS: Talk to us about that a little bit,

STORY: I think that the teaching and instruction—and Cheryl can…she’s newer on the board and what she’s received is, “You’re to funnel every single question to the superintendent.” Well, they’re my constituents. Why would I do that? Why would I not speak with them?

I had to go out and campaign. I let them know what I was campaigning on, but then I’m never to speak to them again? That makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to me that every single vote should be unanimous. In fact, there is a norm that was written in our school board that said, “You can disagree behind the scenes, but when you go out front, you’re expected to vote whatever the majority’s going to vote. Who does that?

What elected body in our republic moves by motion and unanimous? Every single vote? Then I’m not representing my constituents. And yet, when I did not vote with the majority…the bullying that goes on with individual school board members is quite horrendous. 

I can’t tell you how many times I was called a racist because I wouldn’t vote with the majority. How does that have to do with anything? We’re elected to represent people and we must represent them and that’s what our voice is meant to do in my opinion.

ADAMS: Cheryl, you want to weigh in on this?

FACCIANI: Yep. When I was first elected and you went through all the training, it quickly became clear to me that I was supposed to rubber-stamp. There was let’s get along to go along and just so as they say. I was, too, asking a lot of questions. 

My board, itself…four out of five are conservatives, I’d say. We do have a majority, but even that being so, the board I came onto was very misinformed, I would say. They would just say, “Oh, well, he knows what he’s doing. Why would we even question it? That’s what they want, so let’s just do it.” 

I was saying, “Hold on a second. That’s not our job. Our job is to be the decision-maker. Why are we allowing the superintendent to be the decision-maker?” Again, it went back to This is what you can’t do. And I wanted to, Well, what can I do? Let’s be proactive instead of being reactive.

It all came to a head for me—and the lights just went off—when we were sitting in a meeting with our school board attorney, who is the chief lobbyist for the VSBA. And this is in the height of the masking and we were not to let our children go to school without masks. God forbid, they got sick, the teachers got sick, the whole world was going to come to an end. 

In my county we were still going to school partial days, cleaning on Wednesday for some reason. Kids were sitting next to each other to eat a sandwich because they didn’t want to go to the cafeteria, but then, when they would go somewhere else they had to be on opposite ends of the table, six feet apart. It was ludicrous. It was so insane.

So we’re sitting in a meeting and I say, “You know, I’d like to understand what school districts, which divisions, you represent. And out of those divisions how many are in masks still? And our school board attorney represented over 30% of the State of Virginia’s school divisions. And I thought, you represent how many? We have 133 divisions and you represent over a third? 

Her response was “every single one is still in masks.” And I said, “Wow, that’s really interesting. Can you tell me the other schools that aren’t masking—at least they have a choice—who’s representing them?” “I don’t know.” “Are they in masks?” “No.”

So it became very clear to me that there is an agenda and this was coming down from the teacher’s unions and from the Merrick Garlands of the world that said, “You cannot do this and you must comply.” Our attorney, who is also the chief lobbyist for the VSBA, I felt like she had an agenda.

That being said, I just stopped and questioned it and said, “Hold the phone. What are we doing here? Are we following what you want to do? Or are we following what we want to do? We know we have the power to do this. Why are we listening to this one person? Why are we letting her influence us?” And what it came down to was fear.

They ruled with fear. “You will get sued. You will get sued. You will get sued.” And you tell a bunch of school board members that they will get sued:“Oh, I don’t want to get sued.” And I kept on saying, “You are not going to get sued. We’re not going to get sued, this is ridiculous.”

Anyway, I feel like I became the troublemaker on our school board because I really started to question. But the good news is, the other folks started to wake up. And they said, “Gosh, you’re right, you’re right.” And they started to pay attention to some of these positions that the VSBA has. 

My thought all along was, Why are we hiring someone to be our attorney when I already know the ideals that they represent? If this person can be completely unbiased, that’s great. But I didn’t have faith, given her track record—which I just spoke about—that she could truly be unbiased. Because not one of the districts she represented were out of masks.

Honestly, the whole reason why I started to get involved with this organization—SBMA—was I was searching for a person to give us their honest opinion without being jaded. To somebody who could just be our attorney without an agenda. 

And in that search, I came across different folks, and then I started to say to myself Look, I was elected, my constituents put me here to do certain things. Where are school board members who think like I do? Where are the school board members that are like-minded? Where are the school board members who I can pick up the phone and ask them for advice? Ask them, “How did you get here?” Because my school board members…they’re all complying, they’re stepping in line.

It really was by the grace of God, I feel, that this all came together. Through this alliance, we’ve created a group of folks who do think alike, who do want the same things, who feel like we’re not being heard, we’re not being represented and we’re told to step in line. Together we can galvanize and get things accomplished by leaning on each other and asking questions. “Hey, what’s your policy? What did you write? What did you do?”

You shouldn’t always have to rework the wheel. When you can borrow ideas and share thoughts or experiences…even today, we had somebody on a phone call who said, “This is going on in my school division, how would you guys handle this?” 

It was just great to offer that support! We haven’t had that. And I don’t even think the VSBA offers that. 

ADAMS: Yeah. Well, I’ve been watching this. I’ve been seeing what’s going on. We’ve had some things that we’ve done together and it’s interesting to see…I believe there are many school board members that are hungry for something different. They really care about their schools, they really care about their constituents. 

But, like you said, they’re driven too much by fear. Or, sometimes, they’re driven because of a lack of knowledge. They just don’t know. And because they don’t know and they’re not confident in what is really factual and what their authority is or what best practice would be, they just go along with however it’s been happening. That precedent takes place over what could be.