Have Kids? Get a Job.

Portsmouth is Tidewater’s most dysfunctional city. It has suffered for years from drunks and weasels in public office.

And this is peak Portsmouth: According to The Virginian-Pilot, a school board member there recently asked a judge to slash his child-support payments. He claimed he was unemployed due to his school board job.

Portsmouth’s school board meets twice a month. Twice! For a couple of hours on Thursday nights. Members are paid a whopping $5,500 a year for their exhausting duties.

Yet this jobless man, with a master’s degree, asked the courts to allow him to cut child support payments to his oldest offspring because he now has either five or six kids, depending on whether you believe what he told The Pilot yesterday or what he wrote in a court filing last spring.

This story was reported by Scott Daugherty, who petitioned the court to be allowed to see the child support orders, which were not public.

Excellent work by my former colleague.

According to Daugherty’s story, De’Andre Barnes fathered a child in 2005 and was ordered to pay $236.07 a month. 

In April, Barnes was ordered to pay $193.25 monthly for another child. He fathered this one in 2011 with another woman, according to the story.

Also in April, Barnes asked the court to slash the first kid’s money, because we all know that middle schoolers really don’t need to eat or wear clothes. And the court complied, cutting the older girl’s support to $169.15 a month. That’s $42 a week. For food, clothing, school expenses and a roof over her head.

In court papers, Barnes claimed he now had a total of six kids. When he spoke with Daugherty yesterday, the school board member said he had five kids.

Doesn’t matter if he has 15. He needs to take care of them. Men who shortchange their kids because of their job or family situation place a terrible burden on the mothers of their children .

Of course this is just the latest Portsmouth public official to behave badly. 

In 1984, the city elected the first black mayor in Tidewater. Three years later, James W. Holley III was recalled after his fingerprints were found on the envelopes of racist letters sent to community leaders.

Portsmouth voters are very forgiving. Holley was re-elected in 1996. As outlandish as it seems, he was recalled a second time after he was accused of mistreating aides.

Then there was the case of the longtime sheriff, Gary Waters, whose 24-year tenure was cut short in 2005 after he was caught driving drunk and lost his license.

Now we have a dude who’s fathered multiple kids and claims he’s struggling to support them. And he’s serving on the school board, of all places.

Since Barnes is the youngest school board member ever in Portsmouth - he’s 33 - I’d like to give him some advice:

Resign from school board, Mr. Barnes. Immediately. And get a damn job so you can take care of your kids. All of them.

They need you. The Portsmouth schools will continue to underperform without your help.