Taxes, school grades, green space top JCC candidates' forum discussion
Good morning! Candidates discuss path for James City County...York slams agency for abrupt cancellation of recycling collection...WJCC schools detail gap between city and county students.
Taxes, school grades and preserving green space were top of the agenda at a forum Wednesday night for candidates to the James City County board of supervisors and the school board.
The candidate forum, sponsored by Williamsburg Watch and WHRO at the Williamsburg Library, featured Supervisor Jim Icenhour, Democratic incumbent in the Jamestown district; Tracy Wainwright, the Republican running to replace retiring Supervisor Michael Hipple in the Powhatan District; Kimberly M. Hundley, incumbent school board member for Powhatan, and the two candidates for the Jamestown school board district: incumbent Sarah G. Ortego and Democratic challenger Ty Hodges.
Democrat Ti’Juana Gholson, who is running against Wainwright, and Republican John Slokovitz, Icenhour’s opponent, were not able to attend. Hundley is running unopposed.
The event drew more than 130 audience members to the library and was streamed on the WHRO website.
Both candidates for supervisor’s seats agreed the county needed to have controlled housing development so that it retains its semi-rural character, while diversifying the economy for tax revenue to ease the burden on homeowners. They said they would favor lowering tax rates as home prices continue to rise.
But they differed on the need to build the county’s proposed government center and library annex at a cost of $200 million or more. Icenhour said the space was needed to serve county residents, but Wainwright said she would oppose its construction.
All the school board candidates said they were concerned with improving reading scores, which have continued to drop so that only 67% of students passed the Standards of Learning test last year.
“We are…accountable (for that failure),” Hundley said. “Our reading curriculum was not very robust. We made changes. This is our second year into that. We need to provide resources to lower socioeconomic school children.”
Hodges, who favors recognizing the teachers’ union, said schools needed to double down on getting students the help they need and needed to give teachers a say in developing the school budget.
Ortego said the improvements made in the last two years to curriculum and providing help to under-performing students should start to show results in the next few years.
Hundley and Hodges said they did not support the state education department’s recent decision to raise the bar on testing, saying not all students do well with tests. But Ortego said she supported raising the bar to make sure students are ready for a career or higher education after graduation.
WJCC schools highlight results gap between city and county students, promise fixes
Williamsburg-James City County’s school administration provided details on the significant disparity in achievement between key groups of city and county students -- and steps being taken to help them -- just days before the two localities are set to sign a new school operating agreement.
School Board Chair Sarah G. Ortego said the disparity in results for black, Hispanic, disabled and low-income students, and those learning English, was meant to show where the schools are putting emphasis on improvement rather than to call out one group of students or a locality.
“You can’t fix anything you don’t acknowledge,” Ortego said at the school board’s work session Tuesday evening.
Williamsburg officials commissioned a study two years ago looking into the disparity in achievement and toyed with the idea of setting up their own school system. That led to James City County giving notice they would be leaving the 55-year-old joint school system this year.
Following two years of discussions the two localities and the school board are set to meet Friday morning to sign a new contract, according to the meeting agenda.
School Superintendent Daniel Keever said the most recent test results showed an improvement in city scores since the first study in 2023.
But black, Hispanic or low-income students who lived in the city underperformed county students from the same demographic groups by 13 points or more in the latest reading tests. Students with disabilities fared relatively the same, while those for whom English is not a first language were six points apart. Science scores were even further apart for some groups, while math scores were closer, with English learners in the city edging out county English learners.
Keever outlined steps the schools have been taking to help improve student scores, including more emphasis on core subjects, more frequent testing to identify faltering students in time to give them more attention, and more tutors and literary intervention teachers to help improve reading scores.
Schools have lowered the ratio of pupils to teachers at three schools – James River, Matthew Whaley and Clara Byrd Baker – to help students. He said 66% of the English language students at Matthew Whaley have “little to beginning” knowledge of English.
The schools are also setting up programs to help families work with their children, he said.
Keever said the school system would convene a group of school and city representatives to continue analyzing results and make recommendations and will gather feedback from parents and teachers.
School staff also showed how local schools stack up to their neighbors in a report from the Comprehensive Instructional Program, a consortium of public school divisions in Virginia working collaboratively to improve their rankings.
It showed Williamsburg-James City County schools had improved their ranking from 30th to 27th place. York County schools were in fourth place in the state for the second year in a row.
But Keever said the two counties were not demographically comparable, saying 35% of WJCC students are low income compared to 30% in York, and 9.3% are learning English compared to 5% in York.
York supervisors slam abrupt end of recycling
York County supervisors expressed frustration Tuesday night with the regional recycling authority for its abrupt termination of recycling service to 17,000 county homes.
The Virginia Peninsula’s Public Service Authority decision to terminate its contract with a collection service on a week’s notice “was a gross overreaction and ended up with us not doing any recycling at all,” groused 5th District Supervisor Thomas G. Shepperd at the board of supervisors’ work session.
VPPSA voted on Sept. 23 to terminate its recycling contract with Tidewater Fiber Corporation effective Sept. 30. That contract serviced customers in James City and York Counties and the cities of Williamsburg and Poquoson.
The group cited “significant performance issues” including lack of documentation from Tidewater Fiber to back up its billing, missing records, failure to meet performance standards and increasing amounts of spilled trash and fluids due to what it said was the poor condition of vehicles.
Executive Director Jennifer Wheeler told Williamsburg Watch the authority repeatedly asked the vendor to fix the problems, and completed a non-compliance report backed by a third party auditor.
Shepperd said the audit was not easy to understand, and the contract had never clearly explained how to manage the records. County Administrator Mark L. Bellamy Jr. agreed some of the discrepancies called out by the authority were minor.
VPPSA’s abrupt termination caused some scrambling among the four affected localities.
The City of Williamsburg was able to continue its service with another vendor. Poquoson signed an emergency temporary contract directly with TFC to continue service for several months until a replacement is found. York County is paying its curbside garbage collector an additional $5 per month to empty recycling bins, although that refuse will be disposed of as trash, not recycled.
TFC also offered to sign up James City County residents directly at a $9 monthly rate, below the $10.50 they were charged by the authority.
York District 4 Supervisor G. Stephen Roane Jr. said that lower price was counter-intuitive to the “economies of scale” to be expected from a regional contract. But Wheeler said the lower pricing could allow TFC to keep its recycling bins in James City County homes rather than collecting them as required under the agreement.
VPPSA’s board may choose a new vendor as early as next week, Bellamy said. He said the board met Tuesday to speak with Republic, which he said would only bid if all four localities were included.
But some localities may decide to go it on their own. York is receiving bids from vendors for its curbside garbage pickup program, and has invited them to submit additional pricing to add curbside recycling.
Williamsburg library closed this weekend
Williamsburg Regional Library will be closed Oct. 10-12 while it upgrades to a new catalog system. The new catalog officially launches Oct. 13.
The library said all of its services will be unavailable during the closure, including access to the Libby app, Kanopy, and online resources such as newspapers and magazines.
Requests for purchase of new materials are on pause until Oct. 13.
The library also noted that preferences for receiving alerts about overdue items and holds will not transfer to the new system. All users will default to email notifications. WRL will also be upgrading its notifications to allow more customization, which will become available later in the fall.
Passings
Karen Davis Buckson, 57, Oct. 3.
Sharon Lytton Kojcsich, 74, Oct. 5.
Lucy Eason Ringler, 99, Oct. 6.
Stephen Michael Gamby, 68, Oct. 6.
Dr. Robert Arthur Vaul, Jr., 71, Oct. 5.
But Slokovitz was not there. He used the typical politician’s excuse to avoid accountability. “Prior commitment.” More important than his one chance in this election cycle to publicly state his case to the entire county re why we should elect him?
At the forum, Icenhour sought to shift blame for the 21% property tax increase over the last two years to the rest of the Board, saying they did not agree that the tax increase was too high. But in the end he voted for the increase to keep "consensus," as he put it. That isn't the leadership we need. Slokovitz has said he will not support increased taxes.