NORFOLK
On Tuesday, Norfolk voters will select five people to serve on the city’s first fully elected School Board in decades. Among the candidates are current and retired educators, an accountant and nonprofit executives, all of whom say their experiences will help them improve the schools.
The new board will face challenges: One third of the district’s schools aren’t fully accredited, and the graduation rate is below the state average. Enrollment is declining, and many of the city’s school buildings are operating past their useful lifetimes.
Fourteen candidates are running, and voters may select one candidate from their ward. Board members receive a $3,000 annual stipend.
Below is a look, ward by ward, at who’s running and why.
Ward 1
When talking about their interest in representing the northwest corner of Norfolk, both School Board candidates start by explaining how their past led them here.
Nicole Carry, a Navy veteran in a ward with the world’s largest naval base, said she wants to see the district use technology to inspire students the way she was growing up. Working with robotics and lasers, she fell in love and “got the bug.”
It led to military and civilian careers in technology and to the advocacy work she’s done to push technology initiatives in the city, including a brief stint as a City Council member when she was appointed to fill a vacancy in 2016.
Adale Martin, the Slover Library Foundation’s executive director, talks about how transformative education was to her life, too. As a teenager, “my mother took action,” moving so that Martin could go to a better school. Though they were homeless and living in a car for a time, the experience opened her eyes to new possibilities and changed her life’s direction.
“I’ve worked my whole life to rise above where I came from and where I was destined to be,” Martin said at an Urban League of Hampton Roads forum. “That’s why I put all of my trust and my hope in our public education.”
Both women say those experiences make them attuned to the unmet needs of Norfolk’s students and able to make changes if elected.
“We need to quit fixing the same old broken machine,” Carry said at the Urban League forum. “I feel like we need a blank canvas and we need to talk about a new day.”
The district needs to improve student achievement and public perception to attract more families, each said.
Carry, 47, said she wants more military families to live in Norfolk instead of surrounding cities, but they’re currently turned off by by what they hear about academics.
Martin, 41, said that when her family moved to Norfolk, people discouraged her from sending her children to public schools or told her to seek out certain neighborhoods. Her two sons went to private school initially, “but it just wasn’t a good fit,” she said.
Her perspective as a parent of a child with special needs – Martin’s oldest was born with hearing loss – will be valuable as the district works to improve services for and address disproportionate discipline of students with disabilities, she said.
Increased trust in the schools will come from engaging more partners, Carry said, but right now it can be hard for outside groups to get involved. Businesses including her employer, ADP, don’t always know what’s needed, Carry said. They want to help, but “we don’t know how.”
Ward 2
Challengers in the only School Board race in which an incumbent is running to keep her seat have turned the campaign into a referendum on the board, saying they would bring needed change.
All three Ward 2 candidates agree: More improvements are needed in Norfolk schools.
That’s “no secret,” said Tanya Bhasin, a child and maternal health researcher appointed to the board in 2015. Improvements are already under way, though, Bhasin has said – progress she credits to the current board’s efforts in the past few years to stabilize district leadership.
When she joined the board, two thirds of schools lacked full accreditation; now the ratio has flipped.
“That’s still not great, but it’s certainly progress,” Bhasin said at a forum hosted by the Suburban Park Civic League this month.
Bhasin, 43, moved to Norfolk with her family in 2006. Before being appointed to the board, Bhasin lobbied for increased school funding as a steering committee member of the Norfolk GAINS education advocacy group. She’s been the only board member to hold office hours, something several candidates have said they will copy if elected.
Bhasin, a parent of three attending Norfolk schools, points to work she’s championed as a board member around student mental health, increased teacher pay and the equitable distribution of resources as work that she wants to continue if elected. She’s said her experience will be helpful to keep up momentum once a majority of board seats are taken by newcomers in July.
One challenger, Virginia Beach music teacher Nate Kinnison, says the board and administration haven’t yet ensured every school has the baseline level of resources it needs. He’s particularly critical of the decision last year to cut the number of full-time elementary resource teachers, saying the cuts put pressure on teachers who already felt they lacked sufficient support.
“It really cut out a lot of services out of the school division that many, many students needed,” Kinnison, 36, said at an Urban League of Hampton Roads forum.
The district needs to find a way to fund those positions in every school before tackling other issues, Kinnison said. He’d like to see more done to strengthen neighborhood schools to attract families to the district who might otherwise send their children elsewhere. Three of his children attend Norfolk public schools; two are not yet kindergarten age.
The current board also hasn’t been transparent enough about its decisions, Kinnison said. It’s led to mistrust by City Council members and the public, he said, making it difficult for the board to advocate successfully for what the schools need.
Brittany Shearer, an academic adviser at Old Dominion University and the youngest of any candidate in the race, has pitched herself as the ultimate outsider – but one who can represent groups not traditionally engaged with School Board decisions, like younger residents and those without children. The board needs to be “more intentional” about reaching those groups, she said.
Shearer, 28, also points to herself as the only candidate in the Ward 2 race without any ties to the current board, a reference not just to Bhasin’s appointment but to Kinnison’s ties to Noelle Gabriel, the board’s vice-chairwoman and his sister-in-law. He ran her 2016 campaign.
Kinnison said he’s been transparent about the connection on the campaign trail but that it’s a “non-issue” and he and Gabriel will act independently because they don’t share all the same views.
Shearer said working in higher education gives her a perspective other candidates lack. The district needs to do more to ensure students are ready for life after high school, she said.
“Our kids unfortunately are really not prepared for either college or the workforce,” the Granby High graduate told the Urban League. “I work in the sciences, where students have a lot of math and chemistry, and they’re just not ready for it.”
Ward 3
A teacher, a nonprofit community leader and a Navy veteran are seeking the School Board seat in Ward 3, which covers central Norfolk.
Support for teachers, school safety and the need for more community engagement have dominated their conversations with voters.
Ronel Brewer, an English teacher at Virginia Beach’s alternative education school, said teachers will be his top priority if elected.
The district can’t help children and keep them in school without making sure qualified teachers are in the classroom, he said. In addition to high-quality teachers, he said the district also needs to make more of an effort to hire teachers that reflect the student body’s demographics.
Brewer, a former Virginia Beach teacher of the year, said he’s often the only black man in any gathering of educators. A diverse teaching staff, he said, will help schools better connect with students.
“Our students are lacking diversity in people that we trust and believe in,” Brewer said.
Carlos Clanton, a Maury High graduate, said teachers “poured” resources into him. As director of the Norfolk Education Foundation for eight years, Clanton said he tried to build community support around those teachers’ efforts. The board needs to “protect the classroom” and look at how administrative operations could be streamlined to prioritize classroom spending, he said.
Norfolk schools were at a high in 2005 when the district won the Broad Prize for Urban Education, but since then “we’ve gotten a little slack,” Clanton said. He’d like to see things improve again.
“We’ve allowed ourselves to get a little complacent and a little comfortable,” he said. “We’ve got to continue to reinvent ourselves.”
Most days after school, Jackie Glass’ house is overrun with kids from the block who come to the “homework house.” It started organically, she said, because she’d talk with kids while waiting for the bus in the mornings with her own, and it bothered her when some said they hadn’t done their homework because they didn’t have anywhere to do it or anyone to help them.
Hands-on solutions like that are what Glass said she’d like to bring to the board. A Navy veteran who worked as a cryptologist and learning specialist, Glass said she wants a “block-by-block” effort to improve both neighborhoods and schools.
“I’m in the business of building people up, and I’m making Norfolk public schools my business,” Glass said.
Ward 4
For the first time in years, residents in Ward 4 – which includes the east side of the city, Berkley, Campostella and public housing communities – will have one of their own on the School Board.
It’s a responsibility the four candidates take seriously, saying the educational needs of people in Norfolk’s poorest ward deserve more attention.
“The city is lopsided,” Bonita Anthony, a Booker T. Washington High alumna, said at a Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce candidate forum. “There is a lack of quality education across the city.”
Most of the Norfolk schools that aren’t accredited are within Ward 4, which also has the highest rate of poverty in the city. Anthony, an engineering administrator and instructor at Old Dominion University, said the board will need to ensure those schools receive equitable resources to meet their increased needs. A city is only as good as all of its schools, she said.
Leon Rouson, an education professor at Norfolk State University who started his career as a public school math teacher, said the district needs to provide those students with additional support, some of which might not be academic, before they can succeed in the classroom.
Support for teachers is also key, he said.
“If we don’t empower teachers and engage teachers, I don’t think we’re going to move very far at all,” Rouson said at the chamber forum. “They’re the heart, and without a heart, you’re dead.”
The district does a great job preparing students heading to college, but needs to improve what it offers other students, said Christine Smith, a Lake Taylor High alumna.
“I’d like to see us also do an excellent job preparing students for the workforce,” Smith told an audience at a forum hosted by the NAACP Youth Council.
A certified public accountant, Smith said her financial background will help on a board likely to be dominated by current and former educators. She’d like to use her experience to push for more financial literacy education for students.
The fourth candidate in the race, Alfreda Thomas, said she appreciates the challenges schools face because she’s seen it first hand as a substitute teacher in Norfolk schools.
“Being an employee of Norfolk Public Schools, I’m in the inside and I see what’s actually going on,” Thomas said at the NAACP Youth Council forum.
Thomas said she would be a voice for public housing residents as the city’s proposed redevelopment of the St. Paul’s area gets under way – a project that could disrupt school attendance patterns. A resident of Grandy Village who used to work for the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, Thomas said she understands residents’ concerns.
Ward 5
Two longtime educators, now retired, say they’re seeking the seat in Ward 5 – which includes Ocean View and other neighborhoods on the city’s north side – because they’re not done helping Norfolk children.
Arthur Broadbent, who spent 33 years teaching music in the district, mostly at Norview Middle, said the school system’s gotten a “bum rap” for several years. The board needs someone who can better advocate for students and teachers to the public and city leaders, he said.
“As an educator, my focus for the child was always creating engagement … so that if I saw a child had a need, I could effectively address and identify why that child needed assistance,” Broadbent told members of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. “I want to take that same kind of focus to engage with our community and to engage with our collaborators on the board and administration.”
Lauren Campsen, a longtime principal of Ocean View Elementary who served as the district’s interim chief academic officer before she retired in 2013, said the skills that helped her lead a turnaround at Ocean View make her suited to oversee districtwide change as a board member.
Ocean View wasn’t accredited when she became principal in 1999, but became so and then went on to earn the National Blue Ribbon Award nine years later.
“It’s time for change in Norfolk, and change is what I know how to do,” Campsen said at a Urban League of Hampton Roads forum.
Both say the district needs to make significant academic improvements. Broadbent said he wants to see more wraparound services to help students in need. He also wants to ensure there are full-time counselors at every elementary school – this year’s budget provided full-time coverage, but some schools have floating counselors who work at multiple schools. It’s important these resources be distributed equitably, Broadbent said, because some schools have greater needs.
Campsen also said she wants to see resources distributed equitably and praised the administration for the work done so far to ensure that. She opposed the cuts to reading specialists during last year’s budget process, however, and said the board should focus its resources on providing instructional support.
Sara Gregory, 757-222-5150, sara.gregory@pilotonline.com. Follow @saragregory on Twitter.
