City, County Still Hashing Out Joint School Agreement
Disparity between city and county public school students a continuing issue
Williamsburg and James City County still haven’t reached agreement on the main issue that threw the management of their joint school system into limbo 18 months ago – the disparity between the results for city students compared to students from the county.
The future status of the Williamsburg-James City County school system could complicate the schools’ search for a new superintendent to replace Olwen Herron, who retired last month.
The school board voted last week to begin advertising for a replacement with a goal toward finding finalists by April. During the meeting, they heard from their search consultants that the lack of an operating agreement came up often during interviews they held with teachers, parents and other stakeholders.
Elected officials from both the city and the county keep expressing optimism: Williamsburg Mayor Douglas G. Pons said conversations “have been productive and ongoing,” and County Chairman Jim Icenhour said his goal is to reach an operating agreement this spring.
But the city is adamant the school system needs to update its programs to help city students’ performance match their counterparts in James City County.
“In this situation, I think the best (course) is to do the hard work and answer the question, how can we make this better?” said City Manager Andrew O. Trivette. “And that may take more time, I don’t know.”
Icenhour said he has trouble understanding how schools would be able to treat students of the same economic and racial background, who are in the same classroom, differently based on their home address.
A feasibility study conducted for the city two years ago showed only 65 percent of city students met the standards of learning for reading, a double-digit gap from the 77 percent of county students who did.
Math scores for city students were nearly 20 percent lower than students who lived in the county.
On-time graduation rates were also lower for city students, the study reported, and they suffered from chronic absenteeism across all grade levels.
The study suggested the larger percentage of minority students in the city “suggests a potentially greater need for target support and resources.”
More than half of James City County school students are white, compared to a third of Williamsburg public school students. Black and Hispanic students made up more than half the city’s school population, compared to 32% of the county’s.
But in absolute numbers, there are nearly six times as many black and Hispanic students who live in the county studying at the public schools . The city report showed James City County had 1,823 black students, 1,617 Hispanic students and 957 multiracial students. The city had 299 black students, 286 Hispanic and 119 multiracial.
The city and county have operated schools jointly since 1955, when both localities were roughly the same size.
Over the past 70 years James City County’s population – currently estimated at more than 82,000 in the U.S. Census estimate of 2023 – has outstripped the city’s, estimated at just under 16,000 people that same year.
The county’s share of local funding for the school system has grown to nearly 90% and it also has a majority of the system’s school board members. James City County has five school board members, who are elected, while Williamsburg has two, who are appointed by the city council.
In June of 2023 Williamsburg said it was studying the feasibility of splitting from James City County to create its own school district.
County supervisors responded a month later by voting unanimously to terminate the joint agreement, a process they predicted would take four years or more to complete.
The dissolution would have cost both localities heavily, with both having to build new schools to replace facilities they are currently using. Last October, Williamsburg City Council released a statement saying it had decided to stay in the school system.
Last week, the National Assessment of Educational Progress released its national report card on student achievement across the country, showing Virginia students had stayed about level with the last report. The report card is a different test from the standards of learning tests Virginia students take and did not include results from Williamsburg-James City County schools, said a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education.
A particular area of concern cited in the nationwide study was the decline in reading scores for 8th graders nationwide. Virginia was in 29d place for 8th grade reading results, below Maryland, Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee but ahead of North Carolina.
“Last year's Eighth Graders were in Fourth and Fifth grade during the pandemic,” said Todd Reid, a spokesman for the state department of education. “Those years are real building blocks for moving forward into middle school and higher-level studies and if the students did not get that foundation, it's going to impact them going forward.”
James City County Considers Solar Farm
James City County will consider approving a fifth solar panel farm in the county later this spring.
There are already four such solar farms in the northern half of the county, although most of them are hard to spot from the road, said Paul Holt, the county’s Community Development Director.
The largest facility is on Don Hunt farm off Richmond Road and Rochambeau Drive.
County supervisors will get to review the application for the fifth installation, off Route 60 west of Anderson’s Corner, sometime this spring, Holt said.
Holt said supervisors have adopted a policy to minimize any new solar farm’s environmental impact.
“They want them smaller in size” and prefer areas that are not prime farmland and are already cleared of trees, he said.
“They want to know if it’s going to affect any natural or cultural resource,” Holt added, and make sure there are provisions for storing broken panels safely so they area not left on the ground to leach contaminants into the soil.
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Williamsburg James City County School Board
Tuesday, Feb. 4: 4 p.m. Closed door session to deal with personnel issues.
4:30 p.m. Work session will discuss, among other items, the potential renaming of James Blair Middle School. Room 300 in the Annex at the School Board & Central Office, 117 Ironbound Road, Williamsburg.
James City County
Thursday, Feb. 6: Board of Zoning Appeals. 5-7 p.m. James City County Board Room, 101 Mounts Bay Rd., Building F.
Friday Feb. 7: Board of Supervisors retreat. Noon. Fire Administration Building Training Room, 5077 John Tyler Highway.
York County
Tuesday, Feb. 4: York County Board of Supervisors work session. 4-6 p.m. East Room, York Hall, 301 Main St.
Friday, Feb. 5: York County School Board. 3:15 p.m. Closed door sessions to get legal advice on disciplining a school board official, and discuss a student.
Passings
Carolyn Marie Smith, 82, Feb. 3.
Andrea Sean Grimes, 61, Feb. 2.
Ann Huber Crandall, 79, Jan. 29.