By Gloria Carlineo
In the early morning hours of May 10, 2024, after a meeting that lasted almost 7 hours, the Shenandoah County School Board voted to restore the names of Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary.
My decision to vote for restoring the names of the schools simply came down to the process of how the names were changed by the previous school board in 2020. I listened to the meetings and constituents and have studied the timeline of the events and the evidence extensively. While the national media, driven by the Leftist goal of weaponizing race relations, has ignored the facts and focused only on manipulative emotional reactions, there is absolutely no question that the previous board abused its powers. It was done intentionally, in the space of about 7 days, during the 4th of July holiday weekend, and under the cover of COVID, purposely ignoring the feedback from the community.
This was NOT an innocent mistake by some inexperienced school board; no, this was the carefully choreographed machinations of a school board colluding to ignore the people they represented. While many of those school board members have subsequently tried to obscure and embellish the facts, the proof can be found in their own school board emails that were subsequently obtained by FOIA. Here’s the indisputable timeline and their remarks (my emphasis in bold) that leave very little up for interpretation:
• May 25, 2020- George Floyd dies in Minnesota. Riots ensue in other parts of the country though not Shenandoah County. Also in the weeks that followed, schools around the Commonwealth (Fairfax, Prince William County) began changing the names of schools named after Confederate leaders.
• June 10 2020- then Superintendent Mark Johnston releases a memo stating in part: “It is not the name of a school that matters as much as the culture of that school.” After speaking to discrimination not being tolerated in our schools, he added: “At this time, I believe that we should be coming together rather than finding things that push us apart.”
• July 2, 2020- One week before the vote to change the names, a flurry of emails between school board members and the superintendent clearly shows the collusion. The first is an email from the chairman of the school board Karen Whetzel where she asks superintendent Johnston if he has a “[m]otion ready for action once we have surveyed board members?” Johnston replies soon after with the language to be used in the motion to change the names of both schools as well as the Rebels mascot at NFMS. In a response with the heading “Sorry for the delay. I like the wording,” vice-chair Cynthia Walsh responded “[j]ust got off the phone with (board member) Shelby and (board member) Andrew. Both are firmly on the “yes” category for renaming. Shelby is ready to do it in July. Andrew is hesitant about the timing because he worries that the public will be angry that we rushed it through without giving them the chance to weigh in.” This is interesting as the superintendent’s original response twice suggested that the motion would be considered at the August 13, 2020 meeting and not the July, 2020. In response, Ms. Whetzel agreed with Ms. Walsh’s suggestion that the meeting be moved up to July, thus avoiding public input. In an email at 7/2/2020 @ 1:56 PM, she stated the following: “Although I was originally in favor of doing info in July and action in August, you two convinced me that we need to just DO IT! If we now have four (Karen, Cyndy, Michelle, Shelby) in favor of acting in July, I say let’s go ahead and put on the agenda. Mark mentioned several instances of divisions going ahead and acting immediately. Otherwise, if we wait to vote in August , it will take focus away from reopening schools (and some board members might change their minds!).” As if Ms. Whetzel’s words and actions were not sufficiently outrageous, she then consults with Mr. Johnston and Ms. Walsh about keeping fellow school board member Marty Helsley in the dark about their plans claiming that she was “not trying to be secretive but to condense the time that folks contact us!” Both Johnston and Walsh agree.
• July 3, 2020- On Friday night, after the agenda has been set and made public, school board member Keller emails Johnston to raise his concerns about the timing saying: “Nobody wants to pull of the band-aid (sic) off any faster than me, but do you think, given the volume of emails we have received, that it wouldn’t be best to delay the action until August and give the community an opportunity to be heard.” To this, Mr. Johnston argued that it was best to not delay claiming that “outsiders” would otherwise get involved. Ironically, virtually every “outsider” who spoke at our most recent 2024 meeting to reverse the name was in favor of the Johnston-Whetzel school board’s decision.
• July 9, 2020- Less than a week after making public the agenda that disclosed the intention to change the names, the board decided on a virtual meeting to follow through on the vote. Before the vote was taken, Mr. Helsley offered a motion to delay the vote until the August 13 meeting specifically for the purpose of allowing the public to make their feelings heard. That motion failed 5-1 without the courtesy of ANY comments from the other school board members who summarily rejected it. Instead, the board quickly moved to change the names, with the school board members going through the theatrics of how hard the decision was for them, likely unaware that their true feelings would soon be exposed by the FOIA request of a community member. And while our recent meeting to reverse the names lasted well past midnight as we listened to every single constituent and “outsider” who wanted to speak on the issue, the 2020 meeting without the public input was a very short one. In fact, by 9:30 PM, Mr. Johnston and one of the constituents who led the movement to change the names, were celebrating via email the board’s decision. In what will perhaps be one of the most ironic exchanges of the entire process, the constituent celebrates how he was “proud that representative democracy worked.” Mr. Johnston promptly agrees.
Sadly, this is how the Left in this country has redefined “representative democracy:” as a system where decisions are made behind closed doors and opposition is silenced.
THIS is political indoctrination, where a very small minority imposes their ideology on the majority. In their comments supporting the name change that night, at least two of the members echoed the superintendent’s words in his memo, admitting that they weren’t aware of any instances of racism at either Stonewall Jackson High School or Ashby-Lee Elementary. Tellingly, after the process was exposed, some tried to argue that even if the process was “flawed” we should have ignored it in favor of the outcome. Not only does the end NOT justify the means, but the process is an integral part in our nation of laws. Ignoring this would only encourage our leaders and other rogue boards to act against the wishes of their constituents with the hope that their mistakes will be ignored and never rectified. Instances like this erode the citizens’ trust in our governmental systems and must never be accepted. And while I don’t believe keeping the original names is racist, has anything to do with segregation or, worse, with George Floyd’s situation in Minnesota, the main reason I voted to reverse the names was to rectify the irresponsible and tyrannical decision of the 2020 school board.
In a final twist of irony, I will end with Superintendent Johnston’s own last words in an email that Thursday night where he ended with the following statement: “Amazing that in little Shenandoah County this got done.”
Indeed.
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