Closed door update on school negotiations scheduled Tuesday afternoon.
Good morning! Two years after the future of the joint school system came into question, James City County supervisors and the school board meet behind closed doors for an update.
Negotiations on the future of the joint Williamsburg-James City County school system have been running longer than some television dramas, and the next installment takes place Tuesday.
That’s when the James City County board of supervisors will meet with county representatives on the school board behind closed doors, away from parents and taxpayers, to update them on negotiations with the city of Williamsburg. Virginia law requires meetings of three or more officials on the same governing body to be announced ahead of time and to be held publicly, although they can then invoke exemptions in the law to withdraw from public view to discuss contracts, legal issues and several other matters.
“We’re still talking,” County Administrator Scott Stevens told us. “We don’t have an agreement in place, but as long as we’re talking I think we’re good.”
The issue surfaced in June of 2023, when Williamsburg City Council voted to study running its own school system. County supervisors, who said they were taken by surprise, retaliated a month later by unanimously voting to terminate the joint operations contract at the end of the 2025-2026 school year.
“They…invited us to a meeting on Tuesday to announce that Thursday, they were going to do a study, so then we heard comments from state legislators (that they had been consulted)… So it felt like a done deal,” Stevens said. “That's why the board took the action to terminate the contract.”
The incident created a trust issue that has also impacted talks on the joint Williamsburg Regional Library system, which both James City County and York County have said they may leave.
“We lost a lot of confidence and trust because of the way that was rolled out,” Stevens said. “Whether it was meant that way or not, it shocked us. And when you lose trust in somebody, it takes a little while to regain that.”
Stevens said the two sides really began negotiating in earnest last October.
Both sides have said they are negotiating to come up with a new agreement that keeps the school system together.
The joint school system was created in 1955, when the city and county had fairly comparable populations. Since then the county’s population has soared to five times the city’s and so has its share of students in the school system.
The city has said its main concern is the lower achievement rates of its minority and poorer students, while the county says it wants the city to pay a higher share of costs for the 11,000-pupil system.
The discussion involves the two localities’ respective local composite index – the formula the state uses to determine what a locality can afford to pay for schools based on a variety of factors.
Stevens said Williamsburg is paying 14% higher than its local index would require, but the county is overpaying by a larger factor, because its index is lower.
“We can't figure out how it was calculated, and it hasn't been recalculated probably in 10 or 15 years,” Stevens said. “So part of what we we’re trying to do with this…(is) have a formula that I could explain to you how we got there, it would make sense to our residents, and I could argue we're paying our share and the city is paying their share, and we both get some benefits of being in a joint system.”
The supervisors and school board will meet at 5:30 Tuesday afternoon in the Work Session Room of the James City County government center, 101D Mounts Bay Road.
Selling James City to new business is his job
Two of James City County’s largest employers are the school system and the county itself. Christopher Johnson’s job is to change that.
As economic development director, his job is to sell the county to new businesses looking for a place to set up a factory or distribution center.
It involves responding quickly to requests from anonymous companies, then waiting for months or longer to hear back. If the company chooses another location, he may never know why, or what company it was.
Johnson told Williamsburg Watch there are more industrial and distribution companies here than most people realize, usually because they are screened from public view in an industrial park.
One of them is Coresix, which manufactures precision products including wafer glass for the Starlink satellites.
“Every Starlink and SpaceX satellite that goes up in outer space has products on it made here in James City County.,” Johnson said.
Walmart employs 1,000 people at its 3-million-square-foot distribution center in the Greenmount Industrial Park, importing goods through the port of Virginia and trucking them to stores within a 500-mile radius.
Navien Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of a Korean company that manufactures water heaters, operates a distribution center in the northern part of the county and plans to eventually manufacture there.
Konsberg Defence and Aerospace was the county’s latest win. The Norwegian company makes missiles for the U.S. Navy and wanted to be close to the Naval Weapons Station. It is keeping its James City County location secret until this fall, Johnson said, when it completes its site planning work.
Most new arrivals start at the same place – their site selection services reach out to Virginia, which then sends their requirements to the state’s 17 economic development alliances.
James City, York and Williamsburg are part of the 15-member Hampton Roads Alliance, which sends out a list of requirements to localities that its officials think can meet their needs.
“ They have a list of criteria…(like it needs a building that) has to be this big, and expandable to that size and accommodate storage, or it's dealing with different chemicals or air permits,” Johnson explained “Or they need access to water or rail, or they're a high water user… Then there's all the subjective ones. You know, how many executives from the company are going to be coming with them? And is this a place they want to live? And is it a good quality of life and good schools and those kind of things.”
The county may even pass up on some opportunities that require too much water for its aquifer to handle or might want to store hazardous chemicals outside.
Johnson said Hampton Roads is very attractive to industries because of the skilled employees that leave the military, the port of Virginia, and its location along the East Coast.
Once the localities submit their information, it gets relayed back to the potential new business, which narrows down its search to a few finalists.
“In most cases, you never find out” why a business passes you up, he said. When a business does show interest, the economic development group usually gets only 24-48 hours to provide detailed information.
“It doesn't matter if it's on a Friday, doesn't matter if it's a day before Thanksgiving, doesn't matter when, and what else you have going on, they have their timeline and you're on it,” Johnson said.
Maryland man dies in I-64 accident
A Maryland man died when his truck ran off the road and struck a tree on I-64 in James City County Sunday morning, state police said.
Walter David Castillo Amaya, 32, of Germantown, Maryland, was traveling westbound in the left lane when he drifted and struck the jersey wall near the 232 mile market, according to a state police release.
After that happened he over-corrected, running off the road and striking a tree on the driver’s side, killing him on impact.
Amaya was wearing his safety belt at the time of the crash and was the only occupant in the vehicle, state police said.
Police said he was not speeding and alcohol had not been a factor.
Passings
Evelyn G. Bratton, 83, July 24.
Doris Sjostrom Gilfillan, 84, July 26.