Readsboro residents voted against closing their town’s only school on Wednesday in a 166–91 vote, according to official election results.

The election, conducted by Australian ballot, was scheduled after nearly 40 residents of the Bennington County town’s 600 registered voters signed a petition calling for the school’s closure. The number of people who signed the petition exceeded the 5% minimum of 30.85 voters needed for the town to call a special election.

In the petition, which was sent to the school board on April 4, people expressed doubts about the quality of education at Readsboro Central School, which has 39 students enrolled in pre-K through sixth grade. 

Petitioners also raised concerns about staffing, emphasizing one instance in which two teachers were responsible for teaching three grade levels in one classroom. Since then, another classroom teacher was hired, according to Principal Robyn Oyer, returning the school to its standard ratio of two grades per classroom.

In April, Larry Hopkins, a former Readsboro school board member who was among those who drafted and signed the petition, told VTDigger that he did not think the town would vote to close the school but felt the petition was a necessary means of making “people aware of what’s going on” at Readsboro. 

Ahead of the vote, Readsboro administrators, school board members and many other town residents expressed a desire to keep the school open.

Last month, residents wrote a letter to the editor at VTDigger arguing that closing Readsboro and sending local kids to other schools would have a negative impact on the young students’ senses of stability. 

“The feedback we have received from the schools (that Readsboro graduates attend) points to the fact that we are properly preparing students socially, emotionally and academically to move forward and do well in other area schools,” Oyer wrote in an email to VTDigger in April. Oyer said many Readsboro graduates have made the honor roll at their current schools.

Following the vote that determined that the school would remain open, Readsboro residents discussed the election results on their town’s public Facebook page. 

“Great turnout!” one resident wrote. “Hopefully this community can continue to support each other in a positive way.”

Tiffany Tan contributed reporting.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Readsboro voters choose to keep the town’s school open.

As California closes three more prisons and downsizes six others, some prisoners aren’t ready to go. They are worried about the future of their education. 

For more than 1,500 prisoners who attend college in these closing facilities, closures mean they could transfer to a new prison where the courses may not line up, leaving some students a few credits short of a degree. Education can offer tangible, real-world benefits to prisoners: They can earn degrees and gain merit credits that chip off time from a sentence. Research shows that prison education also reduces recidivism.

California’s shrinking prison population — the state had 160,000 prisoners in 2011, down to just 96,000 as of May 10 — has also created an unexpected problem for the state’s community college system, which has developed special programs to help prisoners earn degrees. Palo Verde Community College in Blythe, for example, draws almost half of its students from the nearby prison. 

As the prisons close down, at least three community colleges stand to lose more than 10 percent of their student enrollment and millions of dollars in state funding, collectively. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom has been interested in closing prisons since at least 2019. Since then, the state has closed one in Tracy and nearly finished closing another Susanville.

Last December, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it would close a prison in Blythe and end the contract with a private prison company in California City. The corrections department also said it would close parts of six other prisons throughout the state. 

[READ MORE: When colleges are abortion providers and firefighters]

In a statement to CalMatters, the corrections department said that it is committed to preventing “academic disruption” for students at the closing prisons and pointed to the work of the Rising Scholars Network at the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, which oversees various higher education programs across all of the state’s 34 adult prisons. 

But local community college administrators say communication from the corrections department is limited and that they have few resources to help prisoners  who fall through the cracks.

Learning in D Yard

Former prisoner David Zemp, a self-described nerd, gets wistful when he talks about prison education. 

He spent seven years locked up in the D Yard at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi. By the time he was released in 2022, he said the prison unit looked more like a college campus than a prison. 

Prisoners made their own salsa at the nearby garden and covered the white walls with murals: a dinosaur fossil, an astronaut, and at the entrance, the March of Progress in which a monkey evolves into man with a cap and gown. 

“It was falling apart, but the people who were investing in it were in love with it,” he said. He earned five degrees while incarcerated, which ultimately knocked off roughly three years of his twelve-year prison sentence.

Before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cerro Coso Community College taught over 35 in-person classes inside the D yard of the Tehachapi prison.

In addition to its murals that covered the walls and gardens outside, the college was also working with the prison to build portable classrooms on-site. 

In December 2022, that all came to a halt. The college learned that the corrections department  planned to close the D yard in Tehachapi this summer as well as the California City Correctional Center, another prison where Cerro Coso also teaches, by next year. 

Dropping out in California prisons

Professors and administrators were in a bind. Almost 20 percent of Cerro Coso’s students were incarcerated at one of the two prisons. At the time, Anna Carlson, the program director for the college’s incarcerated education program, had little information about the timeline for the closures, except a promise from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that students would be able to stay throughout the spring semester.

“That just didn’t happen,” Carlson said. “Some were able to stay, and some were not.” Her office at Cerro Coso, a trailer that abuts the local school, is at the epicenter of the prison closures, fielding calls and sorting files from students and professors who are frantic or frustrated.

Throughout the spring, professors arrived at the prisons only to find that some of their students were gone. 

Peter Fulks, a professor at Cerro Coso, spoke to over 100 people who are imprisoned and who told him  continuing their education was consistently a top concern. Some men broke into tears because they were so worried about what might happen next, Fulks said. 

Over 400 of Cerro Coso’s incarcerated students left prison before they could finish their semester. Of those students, 126 have been paroled; the rest are scattered across at least 27 different state prisons, according to data from Carlson’s department at Cerro Coso Community College. 

Others dropped out of school even before they were transferred, said Fulks, resulting in an enrollment dip before the spring semester, right as news got out about the prison closures. 

Bureaucratic coordination

The corrections department said in a statement that it is committed to preventing prison transfers during the semester, but that it does happen. The corrections department also said that the special credits awarded for classes — the ones which can give people who are imprisoned years off of their sentence — will transfer to the new prison, too. 

Some students who leave in the middle of a semester strike special agreements with their teachers to finish the rest of the class via mail, but not every professor is willing or able to do that. Unlucky students must withdraw or take an incomplete.

In general, educational options for students vary depending on which prison they are sent to, according to the statement. Some prisons only offer classes via email, known as “correspondence-based” courses; others have partnerships akin to Cerro Coso’s model and focus on in-person instruction.

The statement said it is up to the community colleges, with the state’s help “if needed,” to ensure the students’ credits transfer.

While the corrections department later clarified that it tracks where it moves each prisoner, administrators at two community colleges told CalMatters that they don’t have access to that information and said there’s no coordinated system among community colleges to communicate which students have transferred where. 

Moreover, colleges need the written consent of the student before they can communicate with one another due to privacy laws. 

Correspondence classes push on

Cerro Coso Community College is more vulnerable to the effects of prison closures because its classes are primarily in-person. 

Statewide, most college classes in prison are by mail, where students communicate through letters with a community college professor they have never met.

That’s the case at both Palo Verde College on the Colorado River and Lassen College near Northern Nevada, which also face looming prison closures.  

Palo Verde College expects to lose about 10 percent of its student body — about 520 people — when nearby Chuckawalla Valley State Prison closes in 2025, but President Don Wallace said the college can easily make up the lost enrollment by gaining correspondence-based students from other colleges around the state. 

All told, nearly half of Palo Verde’s current students are incarcerated, a number that has more than doubled since 2016. The vast majority of those students are correspondence-based.

While the college will find other students, Wallace said the transfers will have a “horrific impact” on the current ones, who he worries may never finish their education. “It’s a stop-out point,” he said. “Even among people that are not incarcerated, when they have to change from one college to another or they move from a community college to a four-year university, those are points where people quit.”

Lassen College, whose nearby prison began closing last year, has been able to continue educating about three-quarters of its 200 students at their new prisons via correspondence, said Colleen Baker, interim dean of instruction. She did not respond to questions about the fate of the 50 of students who did not continue their education via correspondence. 

To Fulks at Cerro Coso, who recently defended a dissertation about prison education, the difference in prison between in-person instruction and correspondence-based classes is stark. “Correspondence success rates are extremely low, about 68 percent compared to face-to-face, which was about 81.6 percent,” he said, adding that the performance for correspondence classes may be even lower since some of the remote classes he studied had professors stop by occasionally. 

But for colleges, who receive state money based in part on the number of students they enroll, correspondence classes bring in a lot more revenue. “Each one of their students counts the same as a face to face. You don’t have to pay for location, materials for students, they limit how much support they provide to students and that money goes in,” he said. 

Millions lost as degrees delay 

Once the prison fully closes, Cerro Coso will lose just over 900 students, more than 10 percent of its total enrollment. The college’s vice president of finance, Chad Houck, said the college did not know how much funding would be lost. Palo Verde and Lassen College will each lose an estimated $1.7 million this academic year, according to an estimate by CalMatters using the state’s funding formula. While Lassen College was able to continue educating most of the prison’s students, it lost nearly 1,800 incarcerated students who were studying at the fire training center adjacent to the prison.

But unlike Lassen and Palo Verde colleges, Cerro Coso Community College will not offer any additional correspondence-based classes as a result of the prison closures, said Houck. He said the “quality is not the same” and that neither students nor faculty prefer it. Instead, the college will focus on recruiting more students from the local prison units that will remain.

As for the incarcerated Cerro Coso students who are leaving, they will need to connect with a new college at the prison where they go next. 

Carlson has few options to help them and typically must wait for the prisoners to contact her office and request a transcript. As of May 11, roughly 60 students from the D Yard in Tehachapi and the California City prison have reached out to her team to request a transcript, and most people reached out before their transfer, at the moment they knew their destination.

Carlson and her colleagues predict those numbers will go up as more people settle into their next prison, but they also know some may never finish their degrees. 

Adam Echelman covers California’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education.

Nicholas Cobb teaches fourth-grade math in Arcadia, Louisiana. But he didn’t grow up expecting that he’d end up in a classroom. 

It was the influence of an administrator at his high school that set him on the path. Edmond Donald was the dean of discipline while Cobb was at Glen Oaks High School in Baton Rouge in 2014. 

Donald looked out for Cobb, particularly during the rough weeks after Cobb’s parents divorced. Cobb started acting out — and Donald would bring him out of class and take him to his office. But instead of punishing Cobb, Donald would offer support and kindness. Donald made sure Cobb stayed in school and didn’t get suspended. 

“The patience he showed was more than what anybody else had,” Cobb said. “He just saw me and he saw something in me.”

Donald and Cobb talked regularly about college — including sports, Greek life, and traditions like Pretty Wednesday. Each summer, Donald drove Cobb to TRIO programs — federal support aimed at disadvantaged students — where he took ACT prep courses. Eventually, he scored a 27 on the exam, well above Louisiana’s state average. Dozens of colleges admitted him.

Cobb is just one example of the influence Black male teachers can have on Black students. Their presence is decidedly rare: In Louisiana, just 5% of teachers are Black men — something the state’s education commissioner has said is a major concern. The profession is very white nationally, too. And, further complicating matters is a nationwide teacher shortage. 

Louisiana, for example, had more than 2,500 open teacher spots as of last fall. The state’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) hope to ease that shortage and, in particular, the share of Black men entering the profession. Already, HBCUs educate half of the nation’s Black teachers.

The influence a Black teacher can have on a Black student can’t be overstated. Black students who had at least one Black teacher in elementary school are more likely to graduate high school and attend college. And, one study from the University of North Carolina School of Education found that when Black male students have a Black teacher in elementary school, high school dropout rates declined by 39%.

Jenna Bernard, now a junior at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, thinks often about the enthusiasm of her Black male high-school history teacher, Zealon Solomon.

He made otherwise routine details — like the number of terms a president served, or how they died — seem interesting. His lectures on the World Wars were engaging and, sometimes, fun.  Solomon died in 2021. 

His kindness sticks with Bernard.  He would often counsel students on how to approach the challenges of adulthood. 

“He was very impactful to me and every other Black kid at my school because he was like a father figure to us. He was always so warm, kind, sarcastic, and he made my love for history grow a little bit more,” she said. 

Helping Black students ‘see themselves’

There are a range of initiatives underway at Louisiana HBCUs to increase the number of Black male teachers. 

In 2018, the School of Education at Southern University and A&M College received a $1.5 million grant as part of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association’s effort to increase the number of men of color in the teaching profession. 

Currently, the School of Education has 19 male candidates and the ShEEO Project has 10 participants, including newly elected Student Government Association President Brandon Horne. The project begins recruiting as early as 10th grade.

And, Southern University New Orleans runs a college-prep summer program for male high-school students of color. They receive mentorship and ACT prep, and spend a week on campus over the summer. 

SUNO’s Honoré Center for Undergraduate Student Achievement also hosts Manhood Monday, one of many weekly events that allows Honorés 10 male students to network with professionals in their field of interest.

“Black students can see themselves when they have a Black male teacher,” said Morkeith Phillips, director of the center. “I’m a family member. I’m not just someone that just works at the school. It’s different.” 

‘Needed in the classroom’

There are also several initiatives underway, in partnership with Louisiana HBCUs, that aim to increase the number of Black men in teaching.  

One example: Brothers Empowered to Teach is a teacher recruitment, development and placement program based in New Orleans. To date, they have worked with more than 175 students, predominantly at Louisiana HBCUs — including Dillard University and Xavier University in New Orleans. Representatives aim to recruit an additional 60 students in the fall, and they have plans to work in other states as well.

“Black men are needed in the classroom because Black father figures are needed as surrogates,” said Larry Irvin, the founder and CEO.

There’s also Call Me MISTER, a national initiative that aims to increase the number of teachers of color in public schools. (MISTER stands for Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role models.)

Ja’Deric Talbert, a junior studying Elementary Education at Grambling State University, is the president of the university’s Call Me MISTER chapter. He has been interested in teaching since he worked as a reading interventionist at Crawford Elementary School in Arcadia during his senior year of high school. 

“Seeing the impact that was made in their reading scores, and the relationships that were formed and that I still have. That is what drove my attention to education,” he said.

Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., helped Grambling State receive $2 million dollars in federal funding, which bolstered the program, said Director George Noflin. There will be at least 25 students in the program next fall. 

Participants in the program get their tuition and fees covered in full. In exchange, the program requires all participants to teach in the state of Louisiana for as many years as they received the funds. 

Completing the cycle

Call Me MISTER helped Cobb, too. 

In 2017, he enrolled at Mississippi’s Alcorn State University on a basketball scholarship. But he promptly transferred to Louisiana Tech University — a predominantly white institution — after Noflin called him, and told him about the funding available there through Call Me MISTER.

Cobb graduated from Louisiana Tech in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in education. As the only Black man in his 72-person program, Cobb found the peer evaluation process to be particularly frustrating.

“Imagine you teach a lesson to fake students — student teachers — who are white, and the feedback that you get isn’t pertaining to what you taught, it is pertaining to the way you talk,” he said.

The critiques “failed to realize this is the way I connect with African American kids,” he said. 

Not only is Cobb now in the classroom, but he’s also a graduate student at Grambling State University. 

Becoming a teacher was part of the cycle that Donald started for him. For Cobb, Donald was more than a teacher — he was an educator. 

What’s the difference? 

“His definition of being an educator was taking the kid, investing in them and expecting nothing in return so that the only thing you can do to repay him was to be successful.”

This story was co-published with Verite News.

Patterson is an inaugural fellow in the HBCU Student Journalism Network, a project of Open Campus. Support the program here.

Stark disparities continue to exist in how Black students and low-income students are disciplined in West Virginia schools, according to data released Wednesday by the state Department of Education.

As Mountain State Spotlight reported last year, Black students in West Virginia have been suspended twice as often as their white peers for the last two decades. And a lackluster report was given to lawmakers last summer that showed disparities still exist but did not include a plan to address them.

But this week’s report came with a six-slide plan to start tackling the issue and a different tone from state education officials.

“This has got to be a complete overhaul,” said Board of Education President Paul Hardesty during the meeting. “We’ve got to do something different.”

State education officials said almost 178,000 instructional days were lost over the last school year due to school suspensions.

In that time period, Black students continued to be suspended twice as often as their white peers. Low-income students, foster care students, homeless students and students with disabilities were also suspended at disproportionately higher rates.

The data also showed students who were suspended performed worse in reading and math proficiency than students who were not. Last year, West Virginia schools had their lowest-ever performance on standardized reading and math tests.

“We have a problem of epic proportions,” Hardesty said. “It’s no wonder we’re in a position we are on proficiency.”

On Wednesday, state education officials presented the Board of Education with a plan to increase training, create a public dashboard with school discipline data and recommended the board revise its discipline policy.

They recommended ending zero tolerance policies, encouraging alternatives to classroom exclusion and revisiting discipline levels.

This could mean a departure from a 2019 change that made it easier for students to be suspended, allowing schools to punish students with out-of-school suspensions for minor offenses like cheating, “disruptive conduct,” “inappropriate language,” “inappropriate appearance” and “disrespectful behavior,” without being held accountable by the state system that grades a school’s performance.

Since then, the state Superintendent of Schools and the Board of Education President have both changed. Hardesty was appointed to the board in 2021 and named president last year. Superintendent David Roach was appointed in August of last year after several years at the head of the School Building Authority.

While the data released this week came with strong words from the state Board of Education and an outline for addressing the issue, it is far from the first time that the state has looked into this.

In 2013, researchers with the state Department of Education conducted the first statewide study of the impact of school discipline and found some of the same disparities shown in this week’s data.

Black students were being suspended more, students with disabilities were being suspended more, and students who were suspended were more likely to do poorly in school or drop out.

In 2020, state lawmakers required the department to collect and report data related to school suspensions. They also required officials to develop a plan to deal with issues raised in the data.

The first report was delivered to lawmakers last summer with data missing in one place and inaccurate data in another. And it did not include a plan to address the issue.

During this year’s legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill to give teachers in grades six through 12 the authority to remove a student from the classroom who is being disruptive.

Republican supporters of the bill said it would give teachers an extra tool to maintain a safe learning environment while Democrats said it would lead to more school suspension and exacerbate the issue.

New data shows racial, economic disparities persist in West Virginia school discipline practices appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

A recent Lynchburg high school production of the musical “The Prom” met with controversy from one Lynchburg City Council member, who called for the show to be canceled over what he said were anti-Christian sentiments depicted — but the show went on to become Heritage High School’s best-attended production post-COVID. 

The theater departments at Heritage and E. C. Glass High School collaborated on the production, becoming one of the first high school drama groups in Virginia to put on “The Prom,” a musical that tells the story of discrimination faced by a lesbian couple trying to go to their high school prom together. 

“The Prom” is based on the true story of Constance McMillen, a high school senior from Mississippi who wanted to bring her girlfriend to prom, and also asked to wear a tuxedo. The couple ended up banned from the event, and the school division withdrew its sponsorship of the prom.

The musical by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin follows an Indiana high school senior as she requests to bring her girlfriend to prom, but the couple gets banned. The PTA instead sponsors a different prom elsewhere for other students. Four fading Broadway stars who are desperate for anything that might propel them back into the spotlight hear about the case, and make their way to the Midwest to involve themselves in a bid for attention. 

The real-life case from 2010 made its way to court. The Itawamba County School District was sued with assistance from the ACLU, and it was found that the district violated McMillen’s First Amendment rights, according to ACLU’s records of the case. Ultimately, McMillen won the case. 

The play is relatively new. It first debuted in 2016 and hit Broadway around 2018. “The Prom” got a Netflix adaptation in 2020, and last year, the play became available for theater groups to buy the rights to produce it. Since then, high schools in multiple states have put the show on.

A Charlottesville high school performed the show earlier this year, according to Larry Hart, artistic director of Heritage’s Pioneer Theatre for the past 30 years. A Woodbridge high school theater group also put on “The Prom” this year.

The show at Pioneer Theatre ran April 21-23 and April 26-28. It featured 27 students from the two schools and a technical crew of 10, Hart said. The show was directed by guest director Jeff Krantz, a longtime area director and actor who has contracted with Pioneer Theatre for the last several years.

The first weekend of performances went smoothly, Krantz said. 

Then, during a city council work session on April 25, Lynchburg City Council member Marty Misjuns raised the topic of the production, which he said was brought to his attention by “constituents concerned about the content of the play.”

Misjuns’ objection to the show was what he perceived to be anti-Christian sentiments.

“It’s absolutely appalling to me that the publicly funded Lynchburg City Schools would put on a production with children that openly mocks the vast Judeo-Christian majority in our city,” Misjuns wrote in a public social media post on April 26, the day that the final performance weekend of “The Prom” began.

Reading selected lines from the play’s original script during the work session, and later sharing them on his Facebook page, Misjuns demanded that Heritage’s Pioneer Theatre cancel the remaining performance of the show immediately, and said the city school board should ask for the superintendent’s resignation for permitting production of “The Prom.” 

In both his work session comments and his public post, he asserted the content of the play contributed to student behavior problems. 

“We’ve got behavior problems in our schools, and when we’re teaching kids completely disrespectful garbage like that, that’s the problem,” Misjuns said at the work session.

“Lynchburg City Schools should immediately cancel the rest of these productions out of respect for those that believe in, prescribe to, and practice the Christian faith. Teachers came out in droves last night discussing behavior problems in schools. If our school superintendent does not cancel the rest of these plays for the offensive content, the school board should ask for her resignation,” he wrote in a public statement. 

In further comments to Cardinal News last Friday, Misjuns reiterated his primary issue with the show. 

“The only concern that I ever stated was about the anti-Christian sentiment in the performance,” he said in an email. “It is completely unacceptable for publicly funded facilities to be used to promote anything that openly mocks any race, religion or creed.”

During the work session, Misjuns read a portion of lyrics from one of the original songs to illustrate his concern, in which some Christians from the small town are described as: “Those fist pumping, Bible thumping, spam eating, cousin humping, cow tipping, shoulder slumping, tea bagging, Jesus jumping losers and their inbred wives, They’ll learn compassion…”

Misjuns said such sentiments were “completely disrespectful and marginalizing” to the city’s Christian population. 

“Imagine if that was the other way around. Imagine if that marginalized some other segment of the population other than the Judeo-Christian part of our community? This woke mind virus has infected the school system so much that they think it’s OK to do that,” he said during the work session. 

As for relating the musical to student behavior issues, Misjuns added, “I cannot see how promoting disrespect of someone’s faith will teach the children in our schools how to respect one another.”

Misjuns did not attend any of the performances. Fellow council members did not weigh in heavily on the topic of the play, but listened to Misjun’s remarks. 

Lynchburg Mayor Stephanie Reed, a fellow Republican, said she was not aware of the production prior to Misjun’s work session comments. 

“I had not heard about it from any voters, from any parents, from any citizens, nothing. I hadn’t actually even ever heard of the play,” she said. After Misjuns’s comments spread publicly, Reed said the only messages she received from constituents were ones in support of the play. 

“I still, to this day, have not received any calls or emails from any parents or citizens that were against the play. I’m not saying that there weren’t; I’m just saying I never personally received them,” she said. 

Certain lyrics and lines from the original script were revised in a bid to be less divisive, according to Hart, Krantz, and the production’s musical director, Heather Brand, in a public Facebook comment.

“What you are reading is the original script and not what is being presented on stage. Anticipating backlash of this nature, every effort has been made to remove divisive language, while still providing a place and space to speak about the subjugation and denial of basic rights and common sense considerations a large portion of our society faces each day,” Brand said.

The very line Misjun quoted from the play’s original script during the work session was another portion revised slightly for the high school production, Hart said. 

“One of the rhymes that changed was putting Forrest Gumpin’ instead of cousin hump in’. And instead of Bible thumping I think it was something like Bible Lovin’,” he said, adding this line was delivered by a “very liberal” Broadway star, when they first heard about the discrimination.

“Once the Broadway stars got to Indiana they found the humanity of people who actually live there and everybody grew some. But they represent one aspect of the antagonist when they arrive to the small town in Indiana,” Hart said. “Not everything antagonists say is pretty. Gaston does not say nice things about women, Pontius Pilate does not say nice things about Jesus Christ.”

Reed said city council’s legal department informed the council through an internal email about the revisions made to the original script, although she clarified she had not seen the performance personally.

“Anything that you see, in or out of context can make a huge difference. I really can’t comment to the show since I haven’t seen it. I have not watched it; I haven’t read the script,” Reed said.

Hart said that students initiated the production.

Several seniors had begged to do “The Prom” since they were freshmen, Hart said. After the rights became available last year, the students chose the show.

“I read the script and loved its overarching messages of love and acceptance because I know so many students past and present that this story speaks to,” Hart said.

The theater group obtained the rights to produce the play and set about producing it.

“This year these students were tired of the children’s theater and wanted something with relevance,” Hart said. “In the recent past we have performed ‘Les Miserables’ about the injustices of post revolution France and Ragtime which dealt with prejudices in early 20th Century America.”  

A production of “Cabaret” last February dealt with the rise of Nazi Germany. 

“When you deal with the ‘Wizard of Oz’ or other children’s shows, your villain is the Wicked Witch of the West. But, for non-children shows, the ‘villains’ as well as the ‘heroes’ are real people,” Hart said. “The interesting thing about a villain is that you cannot play a villain as if he or she knows they are evil.  A villain thinks they are acting for the good.”  

After Misjuns’ comments, other community members came out in support of the school and the show. Numerous people responding to Misjuns via social media, many of whom said they had either seen or read the play, commented on a lack of context surrounding Misjun’s selected lines and lyrics. 

“I believe that politicians should actually do their due diligence before taking a stand against something. The arts have always been and always will be a place for exploring ideologies, this should be encouraged, especially for those against indoctrination. I am against indoctrination on either side,” Amber Carderelli wrote in a public response to the Facebook post from Misjuns.

Describing herself as a Christian and “staunchly pro-life,” Carderelli pointed out how often Christians fail to obey their greatest command to “love thy neighbor” and continued, “It is clear sir, that you really don’t know the city you represent, because the 2 things Lynchburg loves most are Christianity and Theatre… and you have greatly disrespected both.”

Hart said this isn’t the first time someone criticized a play selected for Pioneer Theatre; the principal of Heritage High School received a letter from a disgruntled individual over a production of “Cinderella” two years ago. 

“I am sorry that someone took offense to the show — someone who didn’t see the show,” Hart said. 

Krantz said he did not go into the production intending to cause controversy. 

“I didn’t go into it thinking, ‘Hey, I’m going into it to upset people,’” he said. “I went into it thinking, ‘This story needs to be told, and it needs to be told in Lynchburg.’”

Krantz said he began acting in community theater groups at age 5, and is currently on the board of directors for Lynchburg-based Renaissance Theatre Company. In his long theater career, Krantz said he has never seen reactions quite like the one drawn recently. The backlash lately seems to come from a vocal minority.

“It didn’t surprise me that some people made comments. What surprised me was that it was an elected official, who’s elected to represent all people,” he said.

Hart and Krantz both said they were proud of their students, and their school division. 

“The  audience size tripled on the last night from the outpouring from the community.  Lynchburg has a deep tradition of gentle, intelligent and educated people. Our town is uniquely traditional and creative,” said Allison Daugherty, director of E.C. Glass theater. “I am proud of the students involved who are especially kind, accepting and loving people. They worked, and used their talent to tell someone’s story. Happily, many came to enjoy and appreciate it.”

Pioneer Theatre’s production of “The Prom” is not the only one that faced backlash. 

While in Lynchburg the outcry came from primarily one individual, Cedar Grove High School in Essex County, New Jersey, initially scrapped plans to perform the play after facing similar community backlash. The controversy was primarily driven by concerns over what was called “inappropriate content.” When supporters of the show pushed back, however, the school came back and announced it would put on a “high school version” of “The Prom” that was made available through the play’s licensing organization, according to an article from NJ Advance Media last October. 

Such a trend is not isolated to Lynchburg and its surrounding counties. School theater is one of the latest platforms to be targeted in cultural wars playing out in schools nationwide. 

Book banning and censorship efforts that target material dealing mostly with sexual orientation, race and what some call “sexually explicit” material have been ongoing, along with pushes to alter certain curriculums. These movements within school systems are led primarily by conservative groups and individuals including local chapters of Florida-based “Moms for Liberty.” Across the U.S., school administrators have had to contend with the turmoil. Responses vary from division to division. 

Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Florida — in these states and more, The Washington Post recently reported, musical theater productions in high schools have been targeted. These instances, too, predominantly deal with queerness or address race and racism, or contain what those who object call “inappropriate content” like language or mature themes. In some cases, scripts were edited to appease disgruntled community members and groups; other times, a high school theater department ended up putting on a different show altogether.

“Art by its nature begs criticism. And everyone is a critic,” Hart said. “The most important thing to remember about critiquing is when one critiques something they most generally say more about themselves that they do about the thing they are critiquing.” 

The post A high school musical starring LGBTQ characters draws criticism from a Lynchburg city council member. It’s part of a trend. appeared first on Cardinal News.

Squire Miller Henry is at rest now.

The 50 years he put in at Emory & Henry College carrying suitcases and trunks from arriving trains, hauling coal to heat dormitories and classrooms, ringing the nightly dinner bell and advising students on matters moral and material earned him an eternal respite beneath the broad boughs of God.

He lies in repose on a wooded hilltop in Glade Spring, Virginia, just up from the Mount Zion Baptist Church he helped establish 149 years ago and a short hop across Interstate 81 from the college campus he first set foot upon Feb. 13, 1868.

The man traveled a long way to get there.

Squire Henry was born into slavery on a plantation in Rockbridge County on Sept. 13, 1845. Shortly after the Civil War he headed not north, but south, to find work as a farmhand.

At the entreaty from a Washington County resident named John Buchanan, his journey stopped at Emory & Henry, a small liberal arts college founded in 1836 in the tiny community of Emory by the Holston Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and named for Methodist pastor John Emory and firebrand legislator Patrick Henry.

For 50 years, he served the campus and surrounding community with distinction.

Upon Squire Henry’s death in 1923, college officials solicited donations from students and alumni to pay for a headstone placed at the dearly departed gentleman’s gravesite.

The final epitaph has yet to be etched in stone.

Saturday, a full century after Squire Henry’s fire went out, the college is honoring its 50-year employee in a remarkable way.

During the school’s 2023 commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. at Fred Selfe Stadium on campus, Emory & Henry will confer a posthumous honorary Doctor of Divinity degree on the old porter, furnace stoker and tree-stump philosopher.

The school also will rename one of its existing dormitories in honor of the former slave, making it the first building of any kind on the growing campus named for a Black person.

Squire Henry’s descendants — some now eight generations removed and ranging in age from 90 years to 2 months — will be guests of honor at the ceremony honoring their ancestor.

And for one day, maybe for an hour or two, the ground that old Squire walked just might be called Emory & Henry … and Henry.

* * *

One hundred thousand bushels of coal hauled up and down the hilly campus.

A bushel of coal weighs 80 pounds.

Do the math.

The man carried 8 million pounds of coal — that’s 4,000 tons — in his five decades of service to Emory & Henry College.

Limber of back and clear of mind, the son of Woodroe and Francis Henry arrived in Southwest Virginia in 1868, soon to get to work at the college which was founded 32 years earlier as an all-male school and once served as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War.

He never left, serving all but the very first Emory & Henry president until his retirement in 1918.

Squire Henry might have been the first person an arriving freshman encountered after stepping off a train at the Emory station.

” ‘Trunks, gen’l’min, trunks! Trunks took to the college for 15 cee-unts,’ ” was the old porter’s shout, according to the author of a profile on Squire Henry in the 1901 college yearbook “The Boomerang.”

Squire Henry piled several trunks at a time into his trusty wheelbarrow. In cold weather he was “conspicuous” for carrying “two large coal buckets made of lard cans fastened on wire balls strapped with rags.”

He maintained a ledger containing the sums owed by individual students. The pocket-sized book was as ever-present as the dusty old hat atop his head.

Daily, Squire Henry rang the large dinner bell, stymied only once when campus pranksters swiped and absconded with the clapper.

He was fastidious in duty and free with advice. Whether pontificating from a porch railing on the rural campus or offering personal advice to struggling scholar or lovelorn soul, he had a seemingly endless supply of homespun homilies and hope.

“Squire Henry’s work is not only carrying coal and ashes, gathering rubbish and trundling a wheelbarrow,” the 1901 yearbook reads, “but bringing into the room of the home-sick boy or ‘busted’ Senior, cheer and hope and sunshine — a word of encouragement or advice, which no less serves its mission by often provoking a smile.”

* * *

Squire Henry had more than one mission on his mind.

Three years after arriving in Emory he married Mary Brown, a 14-year-old local girl. The wedding took place inside the home of Ephraim Emerson Wiley, the college’s second president and the first full-time faculty member.

The young couple settled in an area in Washington County known as “Blacksburg.”

The community, mostly located along Indian Run Road just off U.S. 11, was given its name because it became a Black enclave within the largely segregated county and state.

“After slavery, a lot of Black people in the area moved here,” said Gaynelle Heath, a fifth-generation descendant of Squire and Mary Henry who now lives in Bristol. “It was a long time before there were any white people on this end [of the road]. It was called Blacksburg because it was a little burg where a lot of Black people stayed.

“It was not my chosen name.”

Some printed accounts state that Squire and Mary Henry had 14 children. Surviving descendants can account for 11, several who might have died at a very young age, according to family members.

Nevertheless, the family tree has sprouted wide branches, beginning with the couple’s first child in 1871, Benjamin Franklin Henry, and continuing through the 11th child, Ephriam Wiley Henry, named for the old Emory & Henry president and born in 1894.

The name of Wiley Henry is one of distinction in Washington County, particularly in the halls and haunts of Abingdon’s famed Martha Washington Inn.

Before the inn became a destination that attracted the likes of Harry Truman, Clare Booth Luce and Tennessee Williams as guests, it housed Martha Washington College. It was a women’s school that operated from 1850 to 1931. Upon the school’s closing, some of its students transferred to Emory & Henry, which first admitted women in 1899, according to the E&H website.

A 1964 Bristol Herald Courier article called Wiley Henry “Abingdon’s king of Southern hospitality.” Following Squire Henry’s blueprint, he served the former women’s college and inn for five decades from 1918 until his death in 1967 “without stint and far beyond the limits usually deserved.”

In 1969, alumnae of Martha Washington College endowed the Wiley Henry Memorial Scholarship, given to a deserving African American student at Emory & Henry. Rachel Sheffy, a great-great-granddaughter of Squire Henry, was the recipient in 1998, graduating from E&H in 2001 as a history major.

Heath was the first of Squire Miller Henry’s descendants to graduate from Emory & Henry. She completed a degree in elementary education in 1972, four years after the college produced its first Black female graduate.

She attended on a scholarship named for her grandfather Jim Foster, who was the grandson-in-law of Squire Henry.

“I knew about [Squire Henry’s] history with the college, but I didn’t know I could get a scholarship,” she said. “I only paid a hundred dollars to go to Emory.”

Heath’s cousin, Mary Lampkins, also became a teacher following her graduation from Emory & Henry. So did Carolyn Foster Doss, a 1986 E&H graduate who was inducted into the college’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1999 after a women’s basketball career that still has her ranked No. 1 on the school’s all-time list for rebounding average.

Foster’s daughter, Taylor Doss Dean, played softball at Emory & Henry, graduating in 2016.

When the surviving descendants convene for Saturday’s ceremony, 23-year-old Chandler Foster will have a unique perspective … in more ways than one.

The youngest great-great-grandson of Squire Henry, he is the only descendant currently enrolled at Emory & Henry. The mass communications major also has another distinction.

He has been totally blind since birth.

A lack of eyesight hasn’t stopped Chandler from his studies or from activities such as co-hosting a blues show on the college’s radio station, WEHC (FM 90.7).

“I’m not a blind person, I’m just a person,” he said. “My blindness might be total, but I sure can see through people.”

The Emory & Henry junior also doesn’t need eyesight to see the footsteps he is following.

“I feel honored to know that my great-great-granddaddy took pride in something that we have in common, Emory & Henry, the students, the people and the well-being of the campus,” he said. “That makes me feel connected to him.

“To see Emory & Henry, focusing on my family … I feel very respected. That says a lot to me. It speaks volumes.”

* * *

Emory & Henry held an inaugural Juneteenth Celebration on campus in 2022 when assistant professor of library science Rebecca Grantham delivered a brief address on the life and times of Squire Miller Henry.

The presentation piqued the interest of the college’s associate vice president for advancement, Shannon Earle.

Earle did the math.

The year 2023 would mark a full 100 years since Squire Henry’s death. Why not find a way to honor the old porter with a posthumous honorary doctorate during the May commencement exercises?

Earle, who has spent 23 years working in higher education, certainly got no argument from her husband, current Emory & Henry president John Wells. She drafted a document and presented it to the college’s board of trustees, who voted unanimously in favor bestowing the honor upon the old coal hauler.

Precedent had been established in 2021 when Emory & Henry conferred an honorary Doctor of Food Sciences degree on Willie Thompson, a chef at the college for nearly 60 years.

Earle contacted Squire Henry’s family to gauge their interest in participating in a ceremony connected to Saturday’s commencement. As of Thursday, 70 descendants had pledged to attend, ranging from the oldest, Rose Marie Lampkins, 90; to the youngest, 2-month-old Dawson Anthony Dean who might need a boost to view the tribute from a distance of seven generations from his ancestor.

“We’re all standing on his shoulders,” said Earle, who will join her husband in serving the family for lunch at the college’s student union. “He did so much work to ensure this institution [survived] through some of the hardest times. Not all schools were able to stay open in that time after the Civil War. Without the work of Mr. Henry, I wonder how students, faculty and staff would have functioned.

“There was no discussion on ‘Should we do this or not?’ The discussion was on why we haven’t done this before. Every time I think about the institution honoring Mr. Henry, I get teary. I get a lump in my throat. It’s so special. He obviously carried a lot of weight.”

* * *

Squire Henry is buried in a small, rough-hewn cemetery in Glade Spring dotted with scattered headstones, small markers and unmarked graves.

The old campus caretaker’s official death certificate shows that he died Dec. 6, 1923. Shortly thereafter, Emory & Henry professor J.L. Hardin took care to make sure Squire’s final resting place would not be lost under layers of anonymity.

Hardin issued a circular letter a month later to former students and other “sons of Emory & Henry,” in an attempt to raise $350 for a proper burial and headstone. The professor placed a limit of $5 per donation so the campaign was vigorous. The sum of $350 in 1923 money would equal nearly $6,200 in 2023.

Despite the princely amount, Hardin did not miss the mark with his missive.

The response was swift.

Letters and enclosed funds flooded the post.

The return addresses included the likes of the University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce; University of Maine, Orono, Maine; Ear Nose and Throat of Akron, Ohio; Dallas Sanitarium of Dallas, Texas; and Methodist Episcopal Church South of Nashville, Tennessee.

Emory & Henry maintains a file folder full of the return letters at its Kelly Library on campus, available to the public.

E.T. Cecil, M.D., of Bramwell, West Virginia. included the following handwritten note:

“I am glad to make a contribution for a nice burial and monument to the memory of ‘Squire Henry.’ I remember him very well though it has been 30 years since I came to Emory to enter college. I am enclosing you a check for $2.00 and if you don’t have enough you can call on me again. Very truly, E.T. Cecil.”

A Dec. 14, 1923, Roanoke Times article stated that Professor Hardin sought to have the funeral service inside the college’s auditorium, but Squire Henry’s family preferred the confines of nearby Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where he was a founding member in 1874, later becoming a deacon.

The church held a 41st anniversary celebration in 1915. Deacon S.M. Henry, Esq., delivered the Sunday morning address titled “Our Church.”

The small white chapel at the mouth of the road leading to old Blacksburg remains the family church, although attendance on recent Sunday in April numbered 10 souls.

“We have about 11 every Sunday morning and we just do what we have to do,” said Debbie Foster, a great-great-granddaughter of Squire Henry who worked in the dean’s office and the Office of Residence Life at E&H from 1976-86.

Foster said that when she worked at the college, “Nothing was ever mentioned about Squire Henry. Nothing.”

So she went to find out for herself, poring through the file at the E&H library and recoiling at some of the 1920s-era descriptions of her proud ancestor.

Along with the willing contributions for Squire Henry’s headstone came a few stark reminders that racial differences remained part of the equation. One gentleman’s response offered an illustration:

“I am enclosing a contribution to the fund for the purpose of erection [sic] a memorial at the grave of my friend, ‘Squire Henry.’ He was a man whose skin was black but within his body beat a white heart.”

“It was sad,” Debbie Foster said.

Things can change over the course of 100 years.

When Squire Henry’s descendants numbering 70 strong take their place of honor Saturday, there will be familiar Southwest Virginia names: Foster, Cato, Lampkins, Carter, Preston, Pender.

They will come in all shapes and sizes and yes, colors.

“Let them see the diversity in our family,” Debbie Foster said. “We had a lot of different colors in our family, but we are family. We stick together no matter what.”

* * *

The last word belongs to Squire Miller Henry himself.

The former slave who came to Emory & Henry College as a janitor, who hauled coal and ash in and out of school buildings, who counseled frightened freshmen and gave sage advice to departing seniors, who raised a family on a meager pittance, who founded a church that still serves parishioners today, who left a legacy of fair play and honesty on generations to come … his words alone will be the epitaph.

Old Squire addressed Emory & Henry’s student body on Feb. 3, 1920, exactly 52 years to the day from when he first showed up at the college to work.

His remarks were printed verbatim in the school’s “The Weekly Bulletin,” a weekly publication by the Emory & Henry Athletic Association.

Here are the excerpts:

“I am in a strange country this mornin’, but you don’t know how glad I am to be here on this occasion. Fifty-two years this mornin’ I came on the College place to make a home worth livin’; and I have been here some way, somehow or ‘nother ever since. But this mornin’ I can’t see the face of no one a tall that was here when I came; no one. When I begin runnin’ it over in my mind to see where they all are, pretty nigh all of them have gone to the other world, only one of our professors, who was here, is livin’ now; only one. All the rest dead and gone, and somehow or ‘nother the Lord saw good enough to spare me for some purpose, some purpose, or nuther.

“When I first come here and got settled down Professor Buchanan was so good to me and so kind to me, that I had a direct talk with myself to make a man out of myself. I was way out in a strange country by myself without free schools and no money. I tried to fight it off, but it stayed in my heart, still come to me; and I decided to make a man somehow or ‘nother — did not know how in the world I was goin’ to do it — and I started out.

“Just nature or somethin’ told me what to study: ‘You study RIGHT FROM WRONG.’ Well, now, I went to work at that. I studied the same as the students studied their books, RIGHT from WRONG, and kept on studying it for about three of six months and another spirit came to me: ‘Now, you studied that pretty well, study HOW TO DO BETTER.’ Well, I studied in that and that was a lifetime study. Did not have any books, don’t have to have books. … I graduated in 44 years and got my diploma …

“This is another thing that come to me. I was a man with a family, and now if you want to be –- if your want your children to grow up in the world and be something you take care of those other people’s children. That was the reason I was so kind to the student bodies. I may never see their mothers and fathers –- they live thousands of miles away, maybe. But when my children go through the world they will be remembered by them parents. …

“If I want my children to come up and be protected, I am to protect the children of other people, and they was here, and I done it the best I could. I don’t know, I have tried in every way, not only in this student body but in the student bodies from the day I come here until today. They ought to say that ‘Squire Henry gave me good advice.’ …

“I thank you for the privilege of talking on my [anniversary] at the college, fifty-two long years, fifty-two long years. Supposin’ I was to go on fifty-two more years. You would be gone as those before you. … If you come in the world and don’t do the world some good you had better never been in it. So, gentlemen, I thank you for what I’ve said in a broken manner; obliged to do that. I thank you for your attention, only hoping that you all will be Christians and will meet where congregations never break up and where Sabbaths have no end.”

The post He hauled 4,000 tons of coal for Emory & Henry. A century after his death, he’ll now have a building named after him. appeared first on Cardinal News.

The small, private liberal arts school is among just 13 colleges in the country to achieve net-zero so far.

Catawba College becomes first campus in North Carolina — and the Southeast — to go carbon neutral is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Individuals apparently associated with a white nationalist hate group painted OU’s graffiti wall and pasted stickers in Uptown Athens. Experts said the activity does not necessarily mean the group has active members in Athens County, despite an Ohio presence.

The post ‘Small, fringe’ neo-Nazi group paints Ohio University graffiti wall first appeared on Athens County Independent.