Includes instructional assistants, reading and math specialists
By Heather Michon
Correspondent
In one of the first public comments of 2025, a citizen complained the members of the School Board do not engage enough during their monthly meetings.
“I think a couple of you are athletic coaches, and I hope you’re not bringing the same enthusiasm to whatever you coach as you are here, because it’s not enough,” he said. “I believe there needs to be more dialogue amongst you all. There’s a couple who really voice their opinions.”
Whether because of this comment or the issues under discussion, most of the members did have some vigorous debate throughout the meeting on Wednesday night (Jan. 8).
Funding sources
Director of Federal Programs Gemma Soares gave a presentation on support staff positions – including instructional assistants and reading and math specialists – that had been funded under a COVID-era federal program that ended in mid-2024.
How to fund the positions for the long-term showed an ideological split among some board members.
None of the members argued that the support positions, particularly reading specialists, should be eliminated.
Fluvanna currently has three reading specialists in the elementary schools, one in the middle school, and a part-time position at the high school. While this meets or exceeds the number required by the state, Fluvanna lags behind neighboring districts.
Charlottesville schools, with a student population not much larger than Fluvanna, have 24 reading specialists. Louisa County has six reading specialists and 15 licensed reading interventionalists.
“Obviously Albemarle and Charlottesville have way more money than do, but I feel like we’re just scraping by with these positions,” said Danny Reed (Fork Union).
He encouraged the district to ask for the number of specialists they thought were needed and see if they could quantify what increased support could do for school test scores and other metrics.
This could put the board in a strong position to ask for additional funding from the Board of Supervisors in the upcoming Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) budget.
Chair Andrew Pullen (Columbia) and James Kelley (Palmyra) debated the merits of grant funding and state funding versus local funding.
“I would much rather fund one of these positions with local funding than accept the state money and hope that it works out in years in the future,” said Pullen.
Kelley argued the value of taking grants or state money in the short term and then figuring out long-term funding as needed. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t put the money where the need is,” he said.
Library review committee
Questions about the appeal process for a book removed from circulation at the high school led to a debate over whether or not to even keep the book evaluation committee going forward.
The Learning Resources Review Committee (LRRC) spent much of 2024 evaluating more than a dozen challenged books and eventually voted to retain all books except one. They also made some recommendations on how to handle future book challenges.
Since the LRRC technically lapsed at the end of 2024, the board would have to vote to reappoint the citizen representatives.
Rather than have a dedicated committee, there was some discussion of just handling challenges at the board level.
Kelley argued that getting all members to attend the monthly meeting was hard enough. “How on earth do we think that we’re going to get all the board members here to read the books?”
An alternative would be to disband the committee. The type of mass challenge of multiple titles presented in 2023 had not recurred in 2024 and seemed unlikely to happen in the near future.
Reed, in particular, saw the committee as a “whole waste of time” and any further discussions about the committee was a distraction from their core mission as a board.
“This conversation has nothing to do with education,” he said.
“Actually, it has everything to do with education,” countered Kelley.
With no motion on the table, Pullen closed the discussion and put it on the agenda for the February meeting. “Everybody needs to come ready to decide whether they want to keep the committee or not.”
Organization
At the top of the meeting, Pullen and Andre Key (Rivanna) were reelected as chair and vice chair. Meetings will continue to be held on the second Wednesday of each month and begin at approximately 6:30 pm.
Board members will participate in a half-day seminar on the FY26 budget on Jan. 24 from 9 a.m. to noon at the administration building auditorium.
