Poll opposes changing James Blair name; school board still seeks alternatives

Good morning! York County taxpayers can sound off on proposed budget tonight...WJCC schools face cuts as localities turn down an $11.5 million funding increase...NCIS comes to William & Mary.

Apr 03, 2025

Stakeholder poll of James Blair students, parents, staff and local residents

Corrected version to show accurate tally of committee vote

Visibly uncomfortable -- and sometimes close to emotional -- school board members agreed to solicit new names for James Blair Middle School, even though a majority of school stakeholders responding to a poll opposed changing the name.

Williamsburg-James City County School Board members spent more than half of their public meeting Monday night reviewing the recommendations of a special committee set up to study and make recommendations on the controversial name. The 15-member committee included one James Blair student as well as two board members and parents, staff and residents of the school’s attendance zone.

The committee report presented the results of a stakeholder poll showing only 37% of the 1,724 people who answered voted to change the James Blair name, but recommended moving ahead with a name change anyway.

Board Chair Sarah G. Ortego then kicked off a discussion of options that concluded with her asking the committee to bring other names for consideration to the board’s May 6 meeting, while stressing the board had not yet voted to change the name.

“We will not entertain names of any human beings, alive or dead,” Ortego said, cautioning the name change process should be deliberate and give stakeholders enough information to help them buy in.

Proponents of the name change say James Blair -- founder and first president of the College of William and Mary -- should not be associated with the middle school because he was a slave owner.

The committee voted 11-0, with one abstention, to recommend a name change because of Blair’s past. But only 37% of the 1,724 students, parents, staff and residents who responded to the poll said they favored changing the name. A majority of 53% opposed the name change, and 10% were unsure.

There was considerable discussion among board members that people responding to the poll might not know the history of James Blair, or how the school bearing his name opened as a whites-only high school during Virginia’s mass resistance to school desegregation in 1955.

A majority of the board members also signaled they worried about taking a step that, while morally correct, would imply to the community their opinions were ignored.

“I think the survey really gives a voice to the community and in my opinion the community has precedence over the (naming) committee,” Roberts District representative Daniel R. Cavazos said.

Powhatan representative Kimberley M. Hundley and Williamsburg Representative Amy Chen said they wanted more time to educate the public on the rationale for making a name change. Hundley said she was concerned that not following the wishes of the survey would lead stakeholders to conclude their opinions did not matter.

But several of the board members said taking a moral stand against a slaveholder should take precedence over the community poll.

“When I saw the results, I was disheartened because I think I naively believed that our community would understand that having the name of an enslaver on a K-12 building is not something we should do,” said Vice Chair and Williamsburg Representative Andrea M. Donnor.

Donnor seemed to be struggling to remain impassive as she described reading student responses from the survey that favored retaining the name, including one who said “almost everyone had slaves back then and it was basically equivalent to us having pets.”

“My child will come to James Blair next year, I’m really concerned that she would sit in a classroom next to someone who thinks that owning someone like her is just like having a pet,” continued Donnor, who is black.

Berkeley Representative Randy J. Riffle agreed, saying changing the name was the right thing to do. His emotions showed as he urged board members to vote to move forward with the name change, saying not doing so based on survey results “is passing the buck.”

Stonehouse Representative Michael T. Hosang said slavery was wrong, but “I don’t want us to start erasing history based on our moral values of today, compared to something that happened 350 years ago.”

“We will continue to grapple with this,” Ortego said, noting that giving the community time to buy into a name change was critical to avoid hurting the morale of school students and staff.

York County budget listening session is tonight

York taxpayers will get a chance to speak out on the county’s proposed budget and tax increases at a listening session tonight, from 7-9 p.m., at the Law Enforcement center at 159 Goodwin Neck Rd.

County Administrator Mark Bellamy proposed a $200 million operating budget for the fiscal year starting in July that increases spending by 5.8% and raises taxes by $8 million, including the first real estate property tax hike in nine years.

Supervisors spent nearly a third of their meeting Monday night grilling county staff about a proposed pay package for county employees included in the budget that features a 4% pay hike and a $500 one-time bonus.

Rose McKinney, the county’s human resources director, said York County’s compensation package was well behind other Hampton Road cities and counties in the competition for scarce labor.

“We are in a climate where we are battling inflation,” she said, and “battling nationwide recruitment challenges.” She said the county also needed pay hikes to retain its current employees, who can be lured to nearby communities offering better pay and benefits.

McKinney showed the supervisors several examples of jobs at James City County and Newport News advertising 8-10% more pay than York County offers for similar positions.

Several supervisors pushed back on Bellamy when he said the county should also consider a regional compensation study to better guide its pay policies.

“It’s gonna cost you, not only for the study, but when you come out of the other end of it” to pay the recommended pay raises, District 5 Supervisor Thomas G. Shepperd, Jr. said. But Shepperd later also said he was concerned about finding and keeping good county employees.

District 3 Supervisor Wayne Drewry recommended county staff look at what their top competitors are offering in pay and benefits and come up with a pay plan without the expense of a compensation study.

Bellamy said he would not recommend doing a compensation study if the county is not prepared to pay the higher salaries that could be recommended because it would hurt staff morale.

Before closing for the evening, the supervisors agreed to hire a vendor who will use artificial intelligence to map repair work needed along the county’s 300 miles of underground sewer pipes.

Using artificial intelligence will save the labor costs of manually reviewing 150-200 hours of video inspections of the sewer pipes to spot areas needing repairs, Bellamy said. The vendor’s AI process prioritizes repair needs and maps the locations that need attention, he said.

The county agreed to pay vendor Burgess & Nipple $78,904 for the first year of work, with an option to renew for four more years for a five-year total project cost of $394,520.

Supervisors also approved staff recommendations to proceed with two stream restoration projects to handle flooding at Celestial Way and at Larkin Run Stream.

WJCC schools face tough budget choices, acting superintendent warns

Williamsburg-James City County schools will have to make some tough decisions about staffing, pay and benefits to deal with the gap between what they asked for in their new budget, and what the county and city seem willing to pay, the acting superintendent said.

“There’s a stark contrast” between the $11.5 million in additional funding the schools sought, and the $4.2 million raise being offered in the localities’ current budgets, Acting Superintendent Daniel Keever told the school board Monday.

Keever said the continuing negotiations between the two governments on how they will run the joint school system made the situation even more difficult because they are not aligned on their capital and operating contribution process.

He said if Williamsburg and James City County can’t be persuaded to pay more, the schools will have to look at a variety of options to close the gap. This could include freezing planned hires, not proceeding with staff raises planned for next year and paying a smaller share of employee health insurance, Keever said.

The two localities’ proposed budgets also lack enough money to keep all the school construction projects moving forward, he warned.

Williamsburg and James City County pay 62% of the school system’s budget, which was planned to rise to $197.1 million in the fiscal year starting this July.

“We wouldn’t have brought it forward if we didn’t think it was critical to our community’s prosperity and student success,” Keever told the board.

W&M hires NCIS executive for security role

Cliff Everton (Photo by Stephen Salpukas)

William & Mary announced Tuesday it hired security specialist Cliff Everton as its first Associate Vice President for Public Safety, starting June 10.

Everton, class of ’96, has 25 years of law enforcement experience and is currently executive assistant director of global and Atlantic operations at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, according to a university press release.

The NCIS is the civilian federal law enforcement arm of the Navy and Marine Corps.

As the university’s senior safety and security official, Everton will coordinate the work of the W&M police department and emergency management, risk management and threat assessment.

Everton will report to Ginger Ambler, the university’s senior vice president for student affairs and public safety.