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In the last piece from the 10th District debate, we go over each candidate’s answer when it comes to Virginia’s relationship with school choice. Should parents be able to take their child to any school they want, with their tax dollars following? Should the state be responsible for help pay for that decision, regardless of what kind of school it is? 

As a quick refresher, six of the seven Republican candidates running to fill the empty 10th District State Senate seat met on Friday, Nov. 22 for the only debate in the race. Gathering at Spruceberry Farm, each one answered questions and worked to explain why they were different than the rest and what made them the person Republicans in Buckingham, Cumberland and Prince Edward should cast a ballot for on Dec. 13. This marks the fourth in our series of Q & As taken verbatim from their answers. You can go on our website to see the rest of the series. 

In the 10th District debate, we had Cumberland County Board of Supervisors member Bryan Hamlett, current Louisa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Duane Adams, Chase’s former staffer and U.S. veteran Shayne Snavely, Prince Edward County business owner Luther Cifers, recent University of Richmond graduate Alex Cheatham and Gannon Appraisals owner Jean Gannon. The final candidate in the race for the Republican nomination, Amanda Chase, declined to take part, calling it a sham. 

Q4: Virginia continues to flirt with school choice. But Virginia’s public education lobby frustrates attempts at true reform. Do you support school choice as the 10th District senator? And if so, how would you envision that working? And if not, how can conservatives strengthen public education? 

Duane Adams: Whether you decide to send your child to public school, private school, parochial school or home school, we should empower parents to be able to make the best decision for their children’s education and we should provide the incentive from a tax side to let people make the decisions that are best for their children. I don’t believe you should be penalized if you decide to take your child to private school. I don’t believe you should be penalized if you decide to homeschool your child. I think that is your right as a parent to decide what the best education is for your child in your particular circumstance. And I think the state government should work to make all of those options financially feasible for anyone who wants to choose any of those different options. Gov. Youngkin and the State Board of Education just implemented a no cell phone policy in Virginia (schools), that by the way was modeled after Louisa County, which we’ve had since 2018. How in the world is it controversial to tell a child that while you’re in school, you shouldn’t have your nose stuck in this thing, you should actually be listening to the teacher that’s teaching you or studying?

The next time you’re out with your family at a restaurant, look at the tables around you. How many people are actually engaged in conversation with their family or how many of them have their phones out? I see some of you shaking your heads, you already know the answer. So when we have common sense reforms, that came under a Republican administration, like a no cell phone policy, that’s a step in the right direction. We have to also empower our school systems to re-instill discipline in children who are in school. If you’re trouble, you’re in trouble and there should be consequences for your actions. 

Alex Cheatham: I do support school choice as well. I believe your tax dollars should follow your child and your child should not be stuck in a poor performing school district. You should be able to get your child to the best way forward in their life and part of that is we need to focus on merit as well. There are a bunch of target high schools across the Commonwealth, one of them being Thomas Jefferson up in NoVa, recently they did some sort of affirmative action policy that the Supreme Court turned away despite ruling against college admissions. I believe whoever’s the best should be accepted, no matter what. This is the United States. The best rise to the top. And anyone can be anything they want if they work hard enough. It’s just disingenuous for those who work hard to accept someone else because of different circumstances. 

Bryan Hamlett: As a parent, as a parent of young children, if I want my child to have a phone as a way to contact me when they’re in need, because the school can’t protect them from whatever issue there is, I want my child to get ahold of me. I want to have that right as a parent. But that’s one reason why my children aren’t in public school. I believe in school choice. We homeschool our kids. It’s the best decision we ever made, other than sending them to their first seven years of education to a private Christian school. I live this answer, because this is a decision my wife and I made before we had children, that we had two options.

It was private, Christian education or it was homeschool because at the end of the day, we are responsible for our kids’ safety. We are responsible for our kids education as parents. I feel like more parents, being in charge and being in control of those decisions for their children, is a better thing. Furthermore, I support education savings accounts as a part of school choice, I support expanding charter schools, allowing the dollar to truly follow the student. It was said up here, if you’re sending to a private school or home school, you shouldn’t be penalized, because homeschoolers and private school attendees are taxpayers too. I think we should do more in those regards. Another thing is, you say we’re free to homeschool, well there are a lot of restrictions put on homeschooling and I think that could actually be taken away. We could look at a lot of policies that need to be updated and changed. When it comes to liberty and parental rights, I think we need to take a look at our homeschooling policy. 

Shane Snavely: Here’s where experience matters. Policy matters. Knowing policy matters. I want to touch on the HJ1 (the abortion bill). Hope’s not lost. It’s not passed next year and goes on the referendum to be voted on. With a constitutional amendment, it has to go through two years of legislation and has to be passed both times by the House and the Senate. And the second year, it has to go through the House and the Senate and has to be passed. So luckily, we have a way to save that. We need someone who knows how to do that. That’s why it’s important, we can’t plan on winning the governor’s race, the Democratic challenger is going to be very good. What we have to concentrate on is winning the House. We’re not going to take the Senate. Everybody needs to get out and we have to take the House.

On the cell phone issue, the governor’s done a wonderful job with that. Education is just going crazy with phones. The big main policy is they’re allowed to keep those phones in their bookbag, they’re just not allowed to bring them out in class. If they bring them out in class, they’re reprimanded a couple times and eventually the parents have to come get it and that usually solves that problem. School choice. 100% for school choice. Parents need to be involved in everything that their children are doing. This stuff of the school not even contacting the parent when there’s an issue of the child not knowing whether they’re supposed to be a boy or a girl, this stuff where you have boys and girls sports need to go away, the issue with not being able to call your parent and tell them, because the counselor says it’s not allowed, that needs to stop.

Those policies will be put forth by me. The homeschooling, I’m actually supported by some homeschoolers that are here today. I actually think we need to support them more and give them some of their money back, since they’re not put into the school system. We also need to find how to do it in a way that doesn’t take away. If you’ve ever been around homeschoolers, we need to start adopting some of these things. That’s why I’m talking to homeschoolers. They spend two to three hours and get more done than the entire school day. 

Jean Gannon: I’m very much in favor of school choice and there are three components to this issue. The first one is the public schools are the center and the core of our communities, especially here in the 10th. We already have alternatives. We have private and parochial schools and we have homeschooling. Our current administration has set up tax credits for these alternatives. We have seven private, parochial schools right here in Senate 10 District. Scholarships are available for students whose family income does not exceed 300% of the federal poverty guidelines and up to 400% of family income for students with disabilities.

These tax credits are critical. One thing we need to be keenly aware of though is President Trump’s appointments and the efforts of those appointments and how they affect the states. There’s a proposal to eliminate the federal department of education, with specific categories of students with special needs to be classified under other federal agencies. This will bring a renewed responsibility to the General Assembly. And if you remember, and some of us are old enough to remember this, back in the late 70s, Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education. Back then, our level of education was up there. Today, our level of education is down here. So I’m fully in favor of abolishing the department of education on a federal level and bringing responsibility down to the states. We’re ready to move ahead. Let’s bring education back to its expected standard.

Luther Cifers: As a homeschool kid, as a homeschool kid that credits most of my success to being homeschooled, I absolutely support school choice. I heard the comment that the dollars should follow the student and I agree with that 100%. If memory serves me well, out of our $84 billion budget, I think something like $24 billion goes to the school system. That’s a lot of money. I don’t think we have a money problem, I think we have a Department of Education problem.

But I don’t think just offering school choice is enough. I think a lot of parents don’t have the opportunity to homeschool their kids or send their kids to private school, that’s just a fact. And we know we’re spending more per capita, more per student than most countries with much worse results. It tells me there’s some work we need to do in the education system. I think part of the problem is that we’ve shifted from teaching the fundamentals to teaching this ideology. We’re not teaching our kids how to have the basics so they can make their way through life, we’re teaching them how they should think about life and how they should think about social issues and these political issues.

We embraced this concept, this construct made out of thin air, this separation of church and state, but we don’t have separation of ideology and state. It can be as radical as you can change your gender at the same frequency as you change your clothes and it’s ok. Teachers can teach their views and its ok. I think we’ve got a lot of work to do in that area.

To go through the other questions from the debate, click here and click here.