After over 15 years on the Buckingham County School Board, representing the New Canton and Arvonia areas of the county, District One representative David W. Christian has stepped down.

The pharmacist, elected in November 1999, was only the second person voters chose to represent the district. Until the mid-1990s, school board members were appointed.

For many years, Christian was the longest-serving sitting board member.

Christian didn’t seek re-election in November.

On the horizon when Christian took his seat in January 2000 were the implementation of Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL) and much-needed capital improvements to several of the buildings, which, years later, would lead him to make the hardest decision he’d make while on the board.

“I think you can out stay your usefulness in politics,” Christian told The Herald when asked about his reasoning for the decision not to

seek re-election. Change is good as far as people, he said, especially bringing new ideas. “I don’t have any new ideas,” he said.

He said that serving on the board had become very cumbersome to juggle everything he was involved with.

Accomplishments

The proudest accomplishments during his time on the school board included upgrading the school buildings and facilities and transitioning into the state-mandated SOL system.

“Upgrad[ing] the facilities and put[ting] an emphasis on making sure that facilities were in a condition that were conditioned to learning,” was the first accomplishment he cited.

“The way we transitioned into and through the SOLs when they first came out,” was his second.

In 1999, when he was elected, Christian said, SOLs hadn’t been fully implemented into Buckingham’s schools.

When the standards were first introduced, he said that Buckingham’s schools “didn’t look too good,” but, in time, the schools rode the ship, and eventually changed the landscape of how the division was viewed at the state department of education.

“That comes from good leadership,” Christian noted. “They were hard to live through, but, I think as a board, we came together on that … Instead of cursing the darkness, we found a way to turn on the light.”

Looking back over the years, he said, “What I see now is that everyone understands the SOLs. We understand what they’re looking for … If you don’t have a standard, then it’s hard to judge if Buckingham is doing as well as Henrico versus Petersburg versus Bristol. So, yeah, it’s changed a little bit on that.”

The struggle

Besides being the most tenured school board member for many years — until this month — Christian was also the only remaining board member that was involved in the struggle between the school board and the board of supervisors over new school construction and existing school renovation plans.

“That struggle for power, if you will, [was] based on a couple things. One is that, by state law, the school board is mandated to provide a quality education for all the students … That’s not on the board of supervisors. However, the school board does not have taxing authority,” he said.

Like any agency, the school board has its own needs, he said. “Used to, what would happen is we would go [with] hat in hand to the board of supervisors and say ‘We need this, and it’s going to cost …��� They voted up or voted down. We just decided that if it’s important enough to bring to the board of supervisors, it’s important enough to fight for it.”

Christian thinks that part of the years-long struggle’s core were the goals of the two boards. While the board of supervisors looks to take care of the needs of the entire county, the school board looks to education, students and identified major needs, such as a new middle school, he offered. “That’s kind of where it all started from.”

Just by design, Christian explained, it put the two boards at odds from the start. “The last thing that an elected official on the board of supervisors wants to do is … raise taxes. The way it’s set up. It’s almost a guarantee that we’re going to have those head-butting sessions.”

His first eight years on the board, Christian said, was where when the two boards really had the most clash. “And, it was basically the school board saying … we won’t be moved. We’re going to keep coming to you until we figure out how we can get this … [The] board of supervisors on the other side, saying we don’t have it.”

Not every member of both boards were at odds, he said.

“What we found out, as a county, is that we have a lot of people who care about the county and [the schools.]” Good things came because dialogues opened up, even if some of them weren’t good, he said.

Closing Gold Hill

“By far. By far,” Christian said when asked if the closure of the former Gold Hill Elementary School was the hardest issue he faced while on the board.

“I agreed that it had to be done … I ride by [the school] and think about it every day.”

It was a hard decision, Christian said, because he liked community schools. “When you look at Gold Hill … [it] was a community. Everybody kind of brought their kids to a small place, which is right near home. There are a lot of emotional ties to schools, to buildings.”

Christian said he had friends who were on polar opposites of his thinking, which “caused some rifts.”

Christian said he saw Gold Hill closing “five years before it happened, because I saw the handwriting on the wall with the money that was coming in.”

He says that there’s more uniformity in teaching and learning in the county now with the consolidated elementary and primary schools.