Beach School Board’s Clown Show

Update: The Virginia Beach School Board did, indeed, hire outside counsel for this morning’s hearing. The Board’s attorney requested a continuance and the judge granted it. The case is back in court Thursday at 11:30. Cha-ching.

It’s tempting to call the latest shenanigans by the Virginia Beach School Board a clown show. 

I probably shouldn’t, though, since that insults the proud tradition of clowning and implies that there is something humorous about the board’s ham-handed attempts to circumvent open meeting laws and its quiet determination to infect the schools with Critical Race Theory. 

The Beach School Board is not funny. It’s behaving in a way that is profoundly undemocratic.

We wrote last week about the board’s suspicious “special meeting” held June 1.

Despite being set weeks earlier, it was held without the usual public notice and was not broadcast.

At 8:30 this morning in General District court, a judge will decide if - as School Board member Victoria Manning claims - this was an illegal meeting. (Then again, there may not be a decision. On Sunday afternoon Manning told me that it appeared the Board was spending tax dollars on outside counsel to represent the body and might ask for the case to be continued.)

Sheesh.

Why not just apologize and promise not to do it again?

Even if this elected body technically complied with Virginia’s open meeting laws by posting notice of the June 1 meeting on an obscure website page, they most certainly violated the spirit of statute.

At that meeting - did I mention it’s been reported that the doors to the school administration building were locked and the meeting was not recorded? - the Board voted to move this week’s meeting from Tuesday, June 8th to Wednesday June 9th.

I’m sure it was just a coincidence that a resolution banning Critical Race Theory was on the agenda for June 8th and a rally by opponents of the controversial curriculum was planned for the same time.

But get this: Realizing that they might lose in court, the School Board scheduled another last-minute “special meeting” for last Friday morning. 

On the agenda: Cancelling this Wednesday’s meeting. 

They just can’t stop, can they?

The Virginia Beach School Board has been run for years by a woke group of members who march in lockstep with the increasingly powerful teachers’ association. In fact, some support giving teachers collective bargaining rights.

If you think this past year was bad, just wait till teacher strikes start.

The misguided board majority supported keeping kids out of school, while a handful of grassroots, good-government members - Vicky Manning, Carolyn Weems and Laura Hughes - advocated tirelessly for getting the children back to classrooms.

They saw that virtual learning was harming kids. The others didn’t seem to care. 

Fearing the wrath of parents who don’t want their children being turned into pawns in a race war ginned up by the left through Critical Race Theory, the School Board now seems is panicked as members hide from the public and madly schedule and reschedule meetings.

The Board may want to confuse members of the public, but it might find out it has merely angered them.