Tag: Rabih Abuismail

Battle over Spotsylvania Superintendent Spills into Virginia Board of Education Meeting

Eric Burk

RICHMOND, Virginia – The Virginia Board of Education postponed certifying Greene County Administrator Mark Taylor for Spotsylvania County supervisor in its August 17 meeting after parents and school board members offered public comments criticizing Taylor’s qualifications and his ties to school board chair Kirk Twigg. School board member and former chair Dawn Shelley said Taylor hadn’t received a recommendation from the school board, which hadn’t voted in public meeting to select Taylor out of the two finalists.

“Whatever the Department of Education received from the chairman of the Spotsylvania school board was fraudulent. The application was incomplete,” Shelley told the BOE.

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Virginia’s Spotsylvania School Board Reverses Vote on Removing Explicit Books

Eric Burk

The Spotsylvania County School Board has rescinded a vote to begin removing explicit books from its libraries just a week after unanimously passing the motion. The 5-2 vote came after public outcry and an hours-long public comment period.

“I admit that we may have made a hasty vote to remove sexually explicit materials without the appropriate discussions about what was already in our policy,” member Lisa Phelps said in WFVA video of the meeting.

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Spotsylvania County School Board Passes Motion to Remove Sexually Explicit Material from Libraries

Eric Burk

The Spotsylvania County School Board voted six to zero, with one member absent, to remove “sexually explicit” material from school libraries. During public comment in the Monday school board meeting, parent Christina Burruss called attention to content on school library web app Destiny Discover.

“My daughter is a freshman at Riverbend High School and it was just brought to my attention of the books they have online there for the children to read. I went on there by accident and found that the first page that all of the books were listed was broken down into mostly LGBTQIA related fiction stories,” Burruss said.

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