Ep. 64 "Uniting School Board Members" (Part 2 of 2)

There aren’t a lot of good decisions being made by school board members. Some don’t even know that they have the power of decision. Why is that? On today’s episode, Sherri Story and Cheryl Facciani give us an answer to that question. They believe school board members can and should be empowered to act on behalf of their communities, not be silenced by associations and superintendents. They also have some incredible personal stories to share with us that illustrate the importance of standing firm in your convictions.

Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

• Go to the School Board Member Alliance website to learn more and support their work 

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Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Welcome back to The State of Education with Melvin Adams. Today, Sherri Story and Cheryl Facciani join us again for a discussion on school boards. Story and Facciani are on the board of directors for Virginia’s School Board Member Alliance, and they’re already making waves in the educational arena. Listen in as they give insight into what prompted them to launch a new school board association, the challenges school board members face across the country, and much, much more.

ADAMS: Talk to us a little bit about the startup of the Alliance—the School Board Member Alliance of Virginia. That started the end of last year, of 2022. Walk us through a little bit of the time table and how you formed that…and some of that process and how long it took. And then how you got launched.

STORY: Sure. I was approached by some of the leadership at the Family Foundation, wondering if I had any interest in the formation of an alliance for individual members. They felt that it was a prime time—that there were so many questions coming into the Family Foundation that had to do with school board issues, that perhaps it was prime time to start something that could represent individual members. 

And that it’s always good to not have monopolies exist in any particular arena. I had a conversation with them. Quickly, you became part of the conversation—Noah Webster Educational Foundation. We had spoken a lot. I’m sorry I don’t remember where I was when you were in Walmart.

ADAMS: That’s all right! No problem. It was just a little after we did that first summit that you did…

STORY: That’s right. That’s right.

So really, it was: how would we start such a thing? I got some school board member names that had been coming to conferences—from both the Family Foundation and Noah Webster. 

So I put together some names and said, “Well, I’ll just create an email list and put out a Zoom meeting. Let’s see what happens.” That’s what I did. I put out some email names from multiple foundations that were really committed to improving education in Virginia because there had been such a loss. And then this handful of names—maybe twelve, fifteen names? I threw that out there in an email and said, “Let’s meet and talk about this.”

Hence the very loosely organized Zoom meetings. It became an every-other-week event and we talked. The consistency of certain people who were always on the calls, showing a lot of passion, like Cheryl—finding an alliance of collaborators that felt very much as she did and didn’t want to be alone out there—that’s really how it started.

From there, we started saying, “What would it take to actually organize, to become an association, an alliance? What would we have to do?” And that became some conversations with legal help…how to form a 501-(c)(3). What would it take? Board members, the application. We just kept walking step-by-step and then, January 12th, we launched.

It was with—I think, at the time—ten board directors and an executive team and some advisors to us. And that’s how we did it!

FACCIANI: Can I add to that, Melvin?


ADAMS: Sure, please!

FACCIANI: This is a little anecdote story. You might get a kick out of this because you talked about Walmart. Me, being the new kid on the block, you know—I have Google, I would do searches. And I would say, “Hm. Let’s see…Bedford. I think those people might be like-minded. You know, close enough to Roanoke, southwest Virginia.”

I go to their website and I look at their names. I do a search, I do a Facebook search, I read their bios…not all school board members have their bios on there, by the way…but I read their bios and I say, “Huh. This guy works for Jersey Mikes. I bet he’s a conservative, a small business owner.”

Find his phone number, call him up, and then do one of these, like, Magnum P.I. investigative questions and try to feel them out to see who they were and if we were on the same page. And that’s Chris Daniels, that I ended up coming across. 

So these are just ways that, really, you had to be resourceful. I kept on saying to myself, “There’s got to be a better way. We need an organization of folks that can come together to make things happen.” I even called Jason Miyares’s office. Like, “Okay, you guys gave pact money out. Who are those people? You’ve got to have a list. Is there a list?” “No, I really don’t have a list.”

Okay, this is crazy! 

ADAMS: But, Cheryl, I think what you just expressed there is…when you are trying to survive and when you know there’s a better way, you do the things that are out of the box and you look for people that are like-minded. 

What happens is, it doesn’t take very much searching and you find these people—and some of of them might be hiding under a rock—

FACCIANI: Right.

ADAMS: But they’re desperate for the sunlight. And when they realize that they can get out from underneath the rock and actually be part of a community that is imploring sunshine to shine into this space and where we truly can be empowered and we can truly make an influence to improve our schools for our communities—it’s amazing how many people get on board. 

And we’re seeing that—you’re seeing that happen. We’re working in some of those same places, just different lanes. For example, the first summit we had a year ago, we had a handful of people and this last one, we had a large room full of them.

STORY: Right.

FACCIANI: And the truth is, people are afraid and they’ve been afraid for a long time. I understand that. For me to run was a huge risk. I’m a mom of four, my husband is a very well-respected physician in the community, I was in health-care. People support you, but they’re a quiet majority. And the minority is so loud and filled with such venomous hate, that they squelch the voices of so many others.

I saw that time and time again during my campaign and I think we just hit a crossroads where people said, “I can’t sit down any more. I need to find my people.” It was almost an act of desperation to crawl for the light, to find others. It really has been a blessing to get to know Sherri and Shelly and a bunch of these other folks…truly, it’s been a blessing.

ADAMS: Yeah.

STORY: I think that’s true, Melvin, what you said, that I like desperation. I felt very isolated for a while in Suffolk as the attacks came in such a vicious way. This public censure and rebuke of me…it was just constant.

Then I found one like-minded member who said, “Oh, this happened to me too. You’re okay! Hang in there. My board’s done that.” That’s what’s aligned us, is the…if you have a different opinion, and you want to advocate for you constituents, you are really bullied. It exists in our schools. I know our teachers feel bullied, but there’s a lot of bullying that goes on at the school board level as well.

That, too, I think, keeps people from running. Because a lot of times the bullying is very public and trying to shame a different voice on the board.

ADAMS: Sherri, let me get this clear. You’re telling me that bullying in our schools is not just limited to the playgrounds and some classrooms?

STORY: Oh no. Oh no. Oh no, the bullying goes far and wide and often it’s from the majority and right from the gavel and the chair of school boards. Who now feel threatened, I’m sure. But from the top, from that gavel, there’s just…the public can see that, you know, “I would never want to be on that school board, look at what they did to Story.”

Luckily, however, they also saw that I was able to open things up. They saw the need and we had some really good candidates run this time. Where before, no one even ran for the school board because they didn’t know what they did! They only saw them vote 7-0, 7-0, 7-0, yes, yes, yes. And they didn’t even know what they did.

ADAMS: Let’s shift here for just a second, because we’re talking about some of the inner workings in boards and the conflict and those kinds of things. But, for the average person out there, the parent who has kids or the grandparent who has kids in school and they’re just members of the community. They’re concerned because of issues they see happening in their schools. They’re concerned about some of the teaching that their kids are getting. They’re concerned about some of the policies  that have slid right into our schools.

Even down to, “These are our secrets and we keep them here in school. The parents have no right to know how their child is feeling or thinking or how we are influencing their kids.” Let’s talk about that because I believe there are many school board members out there who are opposed to those basic ideals. They believe that the parents should have knowledge of what’s in schools, what kids are being taught. They shouldn’t have to do subpoenas or FOIAs to find out what’s being taught.

These days [they are] being charged thousands of dollars just to get the information. They’re already paying for that education through their tax dollars! A lot of school board members feel like these things are wrong, but they don’t know where to start to fix them, too often.

I want to say: look, you start by swimming upstream and talking about these issues and learning what kinds of things can be done, not just listen to what you’re told can’t be done. Because at the end of the day, everybody has the responsibility to serve their constituents. At the end of the day, everybody has the responsibility to make sure that the children in their neighborhood school are getting the very best the community and the state can give them.

Those school board members have a very significant voice in how that happens. Talk to us a little more about that. Both of you, either of you.

FACCIANI: Can I say something about this? Because this was another lightbulb moment for me. The VSBA who has had the monopoly for years—and now we are the alternative choice, right? They write our policies. They take a policy and they write and then you pay for the service. I think my district pays $17,000 a year.

When a new policy comes out from Youngkin’s administration—and it’s a good policy! It’s about sexually explicit content in the curriculum. And it says, through how Youngkin listed it—it was great, it was a solid policy. I’m sure you know about it. 

But I felt like we needed to go above and beyond in that policy. And my school board members sat in that meeting and said, “Well, the VSBA did our policy.” And I said, “Hold on a second. Youngkin’s got a policy and we can take that policy and—” They didn’t want to do anything. They didn’t know what they didn’t know.

It takes a path to educating these school board members and say, “Hold on a second, you can do this. You don’t have to take their policy. You could adapt it, you could go further.” One example, for me, was their library policy. I wanted every parent—who is the decision maker—to get an email notification when their child took a book out from the library.

I brought this up to my superintendent and I said, “Listen, I really think this should be, when we’re rewriting this policy, this should be standard.” And he said, “Let me talk to the librarians about this.” I said, “You’re going to talk to the librarians about this? Why are we bringing the librarians into this?”

We kind of went back and forth on this, and then he said to me: “Well, Cheryl, I think that’s government overreach.” And I said, “Excuse me?” He said, “That’s government overreach, if we notify our parents.” I said, “That doesn’t make any sense to me,” I said, “In fact, that’s the opposite of government overreach. That’s doing our job and when we as parents hand you our children and say, ‘please educate them,’ we do not give up our parental rights. We are the decision makers.”

So when my child takes a book out from the library, and they’re a minor—because all our children in schools are minors—I have every right to be notified. He wanted it to be an opt-in. You would opt into this notification process. And I said, “Well, that’s just trash. Who has time to opt in? It should be across the board. Every single parent gets notified.”

And he still was just so resistant to this idea, thinking that parents should not have the authority to know what their kids are doing. At the end of the day, he did end up calling the librarian, the head librarian, and she said, “Oh, I have no problem with that.”

When he called me back, I said, “Let me ask you a question. This is where I think we differ. I tell you—your board told you what we think is a good idea. This is just common sense to me. Why did you feel the need to go and ask the chief librarian, or whoever she is?” He said, “I just think that sometimes they have good input.” I said, “I’m the decision maker. She does not—if she wants to have input after we make the decision, that’s fine, but in order for us to make the decision, I don’t need her input. I’m making the decision for my constituents.”

That’s where the divide is. They don’t get that. If they could just understand that you, as a school board member, have authority. You have the right to listen to your constituents. Your constituents should be coming to you so that you can represent the constituents, that’s what’s empowering. But that’s just not what’s happening.

ADAMS: Interesting. 

FACCIANI: It’s by design that I think, by the way.

ADAMS: Of course. Yeah.

STORY: I would say that—so, hence, we have the School Board Member Alliance. And we do have principles that we have decided we agree on. We did this prior to starting the Alliance. 

One is for parents. We believe, and we want to, empower school board members to consider parents first and listen to parents. We all strongly feel—as Cheryl said—parents do not give up their rights over their children by sending them to public education. Parents come first. Parents are fundamental to raiding their children.

We would be training and having these collaboration talks, and so on, with school board members, to say, “Look at making policy. Think about engaging the parents, having work sessions that include the parents. We don’t have to alienate any professionals. They can be part of the conversation.”

But parents—we can not leave parents out of the picture. We cannot feel that someone’s professionalism…and I’m glad your librarian said that, Cheryl, but it was really fought hard in this past legislative session that the professionalism of a librarian overrode parents’ right to know. 

I don’t think that’s true. I think parents come first and our Alliance puts parents first. And would be advocating for school board members to govern in such a way, and write policy, where parents’ rights were not trampled on. I think that goes with the Virginia State Constitution and the U.S. Constitution. It guarantees that parents have full authority over the education and raising of their children.

We want to have governance that aligns with those constitutions. To me that’s common sense, but right now we’re fighting for some common sense principles where parents continue to have ownership—loving, caring relationships…and really, the decision-making power of their own children. That’s one of our guiding principles.

FACCIANI: You made me think of something, and it’s something someone said to me very early on in my campaign. They said, “Don’t forget public schools were built for children and not for teachers.” We didn’t build public schools so teachers could teach or be professionals. We built public schools to teach our children.

Who produces those children are the parents, not the teachers, the professionals. They absolutely, foundationally, have the decision-making. And I don’t know how we got lost in that process. I don’t know when anybody decided the teachers or the administration or the staff take ownership of our children. 

It continues to blow my mind that this is even a thought.

ADAMS: I agree with you, one hundred percent. The state does not own the kids, neither do the state schools. All the foundational laws, our Constitution—even Supreme Court decisions—all go back to the thing that kids belong to the parents and parents have, not only the opportunity, but the responsibility to make the decisions regarding the children and their upbringing. Including their education and so forth.

Let’s kind of start wrapping up, here. There may be some school board members who hear this. There may be parents who hear this and say, “I want to tell my school board member about this new Alliance.” I know this is a very young organization. You’re just getting started. But what do you do and what are some of your immediate goals as you are coalescing?

STORY: We’ve certainly talked about knowledge. You don’t know what you don’t know. You have to start knowing.

This past summit where we worked with you—and the Noah Webster Educational Foundation was tremendous in designing this summit that was geared toward educating school board members. 

ADAMS: Yes.

STORY: Education was founded on the principles, the Constitution, it was founded on the code. And I think every workshop was focused on what school board members can do to make their school districts better and focus on student achievement.

That’s the number one goal. We want to provide solid knowledge and professional development so school board members feel empowered to make changes that are necessary. So they know they have a right to see the curriculum. 

I think education is number one. We’re going to do that through a newsletter so people know what’s going on at the VDOE, know when the next new training sessions are…so we’re going to produce that kind of information on a regular basis. We have a website that is mysbma.org. That is a way we communicate with one another and we put our events that are coming up. 

We certainly intend to have regional events, bring school board members together and discuss these kinds of things. Like Cheryl said, to bounce ideas off each other. What’s working in your district? What’s a curriculum to have? What’s a not-so-good curriculum? We’ve had this curriculum for five years and it’s not working!

We are responsible for those things, according to law. To oversee them. And if something isn’t working it is inherent upon us to expect some changes to occur. We don’t have to choose it, but we certainly can expect to be brought some choices for change. I think that’s what we’ve been missing.

Those are the kinds of things…and then, legal! Let me put in that. It’s very important that we have some legal advice available to school board members, because very often they are attacked, they’re threatened, if they do something different. They have to have some legal assurances. That’s been very important in this beginning of our very young association.

ADAMS: That’s excellent. Well, I know that there are a lot of plans and a lot of things that are being worked on and developed. But you’ve got to start where you are and go from there.

STORY: Right.

ADAMS: I really appreciate you ladies, both, for your involvement and all the members that are getting engaged in that. I believe it is a very positive thing for our children, for our families, for our communities, and really, for the Commonwealth.

As we think about what’s starting to happen here, are you of the opinion that there’s a hunger for this all across this country? That there are, in every state they’re grappling with the same issues? And people and school board members need to be resourced and empowered so they can get out from under the rock and get out of a box and start doing the things that are necessary to make real positive change for our schools?

STORY: Absolutely. Yes. Every state has this very powerful school board union that they are under. And it is a monopoly in so many states for school board members.

They are school boards. You have to either all join, you’re all in, or not. It gave me no autonomy and certainly no voice. Any state could initiate something like ours to give school board members—individual members—and alliance. I recommend that happen, because it’s been so beneficial already.

We’ve had so much support at every level to be able to align with people who have common sense values and want to focus on student achievement. I think that’s another thing that’s come through this Alliance. The focus just hasn’t been on student achievement and we must focus on this going forward.

ADAMS: That’s the baseline job, isn’t it?

STORY: It is! It is. And hiding scores is not—I mean, not allowing school board members to see scores! I can’t tell you how many times my superintendent told me he wouldn’t send me student scores! That’s just crazy.

FACCIANI: I’ve had to ask them…“Okay, so I have the data, I see where you’ve kind of skewed the data…can you provide me the data set so I can actually look at the data? Because your interpretation of the data and mine is probably going to be a little bit different?”

I agree with Sherri. You know, I’m just waiting for that first phone call that says, “Hey, we’re ready to do this in Pennsylvania. We’re ready to do this in Texas.” Now, I think Arizona has their own organization, perhaps?

STORY: It has something like us, something similar.

FACCIANI: And maybe Kansas? Or Arkansas? I’m not too sure.

STORY: I don’t think anything exactly like ours, but their heading…they have some policy-driven associations that are trying to get to this point for school board members. I know in Michigan there’s some people that are really looking to form a school board member alliance. 

FACCIANI: You know what, I think through all the misdirection and the craziness we’ve seen in that past so many years, I always thought to myself, “There’s going to come a time when we have to have an alternate universe.” That’s what we’re offering: an alternative choice so there’s not just one. 

Even on dating websites nowadays—there’s “The Right Stuff” dating website for people who think this way versus another way. Really, you have to have a place to go for support. Otherwise, you just feel like you’re floundering.

To be able to offer this organization to other school members who come to us we can—like I said before—galvanize to push for common sense policies, common sense education, and really fight for our students and put students first is really the ultimate goal, I think.

ADAMS: Well, ladies, this has been very interesting, very informative. For those who are wanting to learn more they can find it at mysbma.org.

STORY: There’s a very easy pull-down bar that says “contact us” and it’s very easy to do. We’re very responsive and we certainly want to encourage any alliance of school board members that feel they are overrun. Even attacked. We want to encourage them to reach out to us! We’ll give you some warm fellowship for a while and help you figure out a way to get started in your own state.

FACCIANI: And Sherri, we should mention that past school board members can join our Alliance. Candidates who are running for school board membership, and of course, current school board members.

STORY: Thank you, Cheryl.

ADAMS: Excellent. Well, thank you for the good work you’re doing. We appreciate you spending some time with us today.

STORY: Thank you, Melvin.

FACCIANI: If anybody’s interested in supporting us, too, we should put a plug in for that. 

ADAMS: Absolutely. Why not? Shamelessly.

 FACCIANI: Melvin, thank you for all your support. The Noah Webster Foundation is fantastic and it’s been a pleasure to get to know you as well.

ADAMS: Thank you. Thank you, ladies. Again, I just want to encourage those that are listening: if you want to learn more, go check out the website. Reach out to them. It’s just getting started, but it’s a great idea and there’s a great network that’s growing. I’ve been working with them and it’s very exciting. I think the possibilities are huge.

The bottom line is, there are many good things going on in education in this Commonwealth and across the nation, but there are some very, very broken things.

STORY: Yes.

ADAMS: I am convinced that the most empowered people to bring substantive change to our schools are our school board members. 

FACCIANI: I agree.

ADAMS: But they need to be empowered, they need to be well-informed, they need to know the law. Not just what an attorney says, but they need to understand the laws they are supposed to be operating under and get good guidance from attorneys as well. And then take real leadership, give great oversight of our schools. 

I am convinced—I just have to say this. I’m convinced that so many problems happen in our schools because the unions and associations kind of control, and so many things are driven by an agenda. We are facing a major teacher shortage in our nation today. All across the country, school teachers are quitting in droves. Many times, it's because the classrooms and the schools literally became chaos. There’s no longer opportunity—it’s all swimming upstream.

And they want to teach these kids. They love these kids! But when they have no ability, no empowerment, often, to do their jobs the way they need to and know they can…I mean, people who have been teaching for some time, it’s a whole different world ten or twenty years ago than what they’re facing today.

I lay a lot of the fault of that at the school board members and the associations that manipulate them. So I just really encourage people to stand up. Let’s join arm in arm across communities. It’s for our country, it’s for our children. Let’s do this.

FACCIANI: Melvin, you can have a whole other podcast on the disciplinary issues that are happening in schools and the way teachers are leaving the classroom. Good teachers that are leaving because they do not feel supported. And they’re being bullied, as well.

ADAMS: Stay tuned, those podcasts are coming up. Alright, thank you so much!

FACCIANI: Thanks, Melvin.

STORY: Thank you!