COMMENTARY: School Split Saga Stretches Nearly Two Years
WJCC joint school contract remains unresolved
At this point, there’s little doubt the Williamsburg City Council stepped into unexpected trouble when it voted in 2023 to explore creating its own independent school system. Ultimately, the City announced over a year later that they would continue to support the joint school system with James City County. But in between those announcements, there was little public communication — and perhaps even less since.
Now, the public is left wondering why a contract with four years remaining devolved into a contentious issue in the first place. Questions remain about the City’s choice to act in isolation, rather than pursue a collaborative approach from the start. What is known is that the contract negotiations are still unresolved and the outcome unclear.
It’s hard to see how the uncertainty created by a series of cascading decisions and reactions by local leadership could do anything but hinder outcomes for students. Until the contract is settled, the lack of a new joint school contract makes choices about student services, teacher and staff pay, as well as facilities even more difficult than necessary.
Currently, only a few people know where contract negotiations stand. But as reported by Sam Schaffer of the Daily Press, when the City revealed the results of its feasibility study of an independent school system in March 2024, Mayor Doug Pons said, “I want to make sure that I’ve heard from our residents, and clearly, this has to be an extremely transparent process.” Yet, my research of meeting agendas and minutes found that since Pons made that statement about transparency in early March 2024, the Williamsburg City Council held only three public hearings or forums about the school issue - once in late March 2024 and twice in May 2024. After those public events, they held 7 closed door meetings about schools. Records indicate that since June 2023, Williamsburg City Council has discussed schools 18 times, but only 6 of these deliberations were open to the public.
Later this week, the Williamsburg City Council and James City Board of Supervisors will meet jointly with the WJCC School Board in public. As of the time of this writing, the meeting agenda had not been posted on the school sytem’s website. So, I decided it might make sense to take a look back, in order to see what might lay ahead. Below is a timeline of events based on government documents and local reporting which tries to lay out how we got here.
It’s still a head scratcher why Williamsburg and James City County dragged the local school system into uncharted territory, stringing along its students, teachers and administrators, all just to wind up behind where they started. But more importantly, why is the resolution still unknown?
Key Events in The Timeline
May 2022: Contract Renegotiated
City Council adopts Resolution #22-13 extending the school contract another 5 years. The City negotiates a few changes, including changes to surplus fund distribution, management of sales taxes and a call for a required School Board supermajority on issues such as budget, capital improvements and hiring the Superintendent. No mention is made of student test scores or academic achievement gaps in the resolution summary.
June 2023: Williamsburg City Council approves studying school split
Sian Wilkerson reported that the Williamsburg City Council directed the City Manager to explore creating its own independent school system. Ryan Murphy of VPM reported that James City County Administrator Scott Stevens indicated that Williamsburg had informed the County of their potential study and added there was “no animosity between us.” Murphy notes that Williamsburg City Manager Andrew Trivette said responses to community surveys had prompted the City to take the step of reevaluating the joint school system, though as we’ll learn from later reporting, things are not always what they seem.
The City leadership often frames its actions with labels like “courageously leading,” which is how they justified commissioning the school split study. And though the City claims that resident input drove the decision to study the school system, Brett Hall of WAVY.com reported that “there had been little public discussion about the proposal prior to the vote.”
July 2023: James City County votes to split system
Apparently, Stevens wasn’t speaking for the Board of Supervisors. Nour Habib and Sian Wilkerson report in the Virginia-Pilot that the James City County Board proactively voted to let the school contract expire, breaking up the joint system. Chair of the JCC Board at the time, Michael Hipple, wrote an Op-Ed that appeared in the Daily Press. “Our Board of Supervisors was particularly caught off guard by the city’s resolution because within the past year, we approved the most recent restated contract with no mention of a potential study,” he claimed. “We need to be proactive because it would be irresponsible of us to do otherwise,” he added. In the Virginia Pilot article, Williamsburg Mayor Doug Pons contends that he informed the JCC before announcing the upcoming study. “It wasn’t to surprise them and certainly it was less of a surprise than what we got today from the county.
September 2023: James City County signals willingness to renegotiate
The JCC Board decided to revisit the issue of the school split in Spring, according to the aforementioned reporting by Brett Hall at WAVY.com. Hall wrote that the County’s expectation was the City would decide “whether it wants to continue with a joint school system or to operate their own separate one.”
March 2024: Williamsburg releases independent schools study
Williamsburg’s study of the feasibility of running an independent school system was conducted by a team led by Jeffrey Smith, former superintendent of Hampton public schools. The reporting by Sam Schaffer of the Daily Press also stated, “council members appeared surprised Monday by some of the statistics in the report, including that when Standards of Learning performance rates are separated, pass rates for Williamsburg students are lower.” Schaffer also reported that the cost per pupil would rise as would the total operating budget.
April 2024: Survey results questioned
Early in the process, both Williamsburg Mayor Doug Pons and City Manager Andrew Trivette pointed to community surveys as the impetus for studying an independent school system. Yet reporting by Laura Philio of WHRO based on a FOIA request indicates that the question was never actually asked on any City surveys. The article states that “Pons acknowledged the survey didn’t ask residents if they wanted to split from James City County, but he said he thinks more people in the city are interested in doing so than not.”
May 2024: James City County releases its own feasibility study
The Board of Supervisors commissioned their own feasibility study conducted by consultant David Gaston, according to reporting by Ellen Ice of WTKR.com. The County’s study indicated that costs would include building a new $100M middle school. A report by Nick McNamara of WHRO laid out the arduous task should the jurisdictions choose to move forward with separation, which would span years and require State approval.
August/September 2024: James City County sets deadline for Williamsburg decision
Tired of waiting on Williamsburg to make a decision about the school split, James City County sent a letter to Williamsburg Mayor Doug Pons for a final decision by October, according to more reporting by Nick McNamara of WHRO.
October 2024: Williamsburg announces intent to stay in joint school system
Almost a year and a half later, the Williamsburg City Council finally made a decision to stick with the joint school system. Ryan Murphy of WHRO reports that “The city says the studies it had done while exploring the break-away revealed problems with the way the joint district operates. It wants to address those issues in a new contract.”
February 2025: Still working on it …
To my knowledge, since its announcement in October of 2024 to stay in the joint school system, the Williamsburg City Council has held no public forums specifically to gather public input on the system. Digby Solomon at Williamsburg Watch reported on the progress of negotiations. Mayor Pons is quoted as saying conversations “have been productive and ongoing.” Solomon reports that JCC Board Chair Jim Icenhour “said his goal is to reach an operating agreement this spring.”
Solomon also noted a comment by Williamsburg City Manager Andrew Trivette, who said, “In this situation, I think the best (course) is to do the hard work and answer the question, how can we make this better?” Note that neither Pons nor Trivette have any specialized training in education or school administration, so their expertise to resolve any student achievement gaps is unclear.
March 2025: Budget season
Despite ongoing negotiations between Williamsburg and James City County, the school system still needs to keep operating. James Robinson of Virginia Pilot reported on the latest proposed school budget totaling over $213M. One might assume that the costs to improve student achievement is likely the biggest hang-up to working out the final contract.
Whether the upcoming meeting will contain any information about the negotiations is doubtful based on prior behavior. So for now, we’ll just have to remain in the dark while our leadership is “courageously” leading us somewhere eventually.
George Arbogust is Founder and Editor of the Williamsburg Independent.Consider buying him a cup of coffee.