BEAVERDAM, Va. — The same school board in rural Virginia that censored “To Kill A Mockingbird” in 1966 removed at least 20 books this year after granting itself sole authority over library content. Last spring, it renamed a school christened after a Black historical figure from the state. Now, the Hanover County School Board is swept up in the widespread right-wing movement to reshape public education — and a bipartisan group of parents is fighting back.
I recently visited a beer-and-music festival where members of Hanover Citizens for an Elected School Board were campaigning for their cause: taking away county officials’ power to appoint school board members, who are otherwise insulated from public accountability. Unelected boards are rooted in the state’s Jim Crow past, as they were sometimes used to keep Black residents out.
The group has created unlikely alliances. John Dixon, a Republican retiree who dabbles in hog farming, stopped by the table to lend support. “I’m losing friends over this,” he joked.
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Dixon isn’t alone. “We’re all along the spectrum politically, but we all want a say in who our school board members are,” said Stephanie Kim. The Southern Baptist mom joined the group because she’s not happy with how schools are handling kids with special needs such as her own.
Similarly, liberal-leaning Kelly Merrill, a University of Richmond professor with a transgender teenager, said she was angered when the school board voted against accommodations for trans students.
The case for an elected board in Hanover County, which stretches from Richmond’s suburbs into outlying rural areas and backed Donald Trump in 2020 by 26 points, is strong. It is one of only a dozen school boards in the state that are still appointed — and it’s the largest among those. (The others switched to elected status after the state legislature allowed the change in 1992.) Its seven members are appointed to four-year terms by the (elected) county Board of Supervisors.
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Opponents argue that switching to an elected body would enable Democratic special interests to spend big money to influence its makeup, and that campaigning for board seats will distract the focus from kids. The Hanover Republican Party has contributed $25,000 to the effort to block elected school boards, whereas supporters of the move say they don’t receive financial backing from the local Democratic Party (or any special-interest groups).
Share this articleShareMore residents started joining the push for elected boards last spring. First, the board voted to give itself sole authority over book-banning decisions for school libraries — and then promptly started nixing books from circulation, including several with LGBTQ+ themes.
Board members also voted against keeping the name John M. Gandy — the son of formerly enslaved people who later became president of what is now Virginia State University — on a school in Ashland, drawing more attention to their unchecked power. “Our small-town parents showed up,” Merrill said.
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This saga goes back a century. At the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902, delegates shut down a proposal for elected school boards after opponents made clear they believed that would give too much “negro” control over the schools.
Later, in the 1950s, the General Assembly retaliated against Arlington County’s board (the only one at the time that was permitted to elect members) by revoking that status in favor of appointments. This ratified the idea of appointed boards as a bulwark defending segregation.
“Appointed boards were part and parcel of the way the Jim Crow system operated in Virginia,” historian Peyton McCrary told me.
In Hanover, liberals and even some conservatives are mindful of that dark past. This fall, if residents vote to give themselves the power to hold school board members accountable moving forward, it will be another step toward repudiating it.
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