The Roanoke City Council appointed Donna Littlepage and Derek Kaknes to the city school board during its Monday afternoon meeting.
The vote was unanimous, with Terry McGuire and Vivian Sanchez-Jones abstaining due to conflicts of interest — both are employees of the school division.
The two open seats are currently held by Christopher Link, who was appointed to serve an unexpired remainder of a three-year term from February 2025 through June 30, 2026, and Eli Jamison, whose term also ends June 30.
Link and Darlene Burcham also had sought the appointments. Burcham was a city manager in Roanoke for 10 years, and Link is a project manager for a fall protection design-build contractor and a current school board member.
The school board has seven members who are appointed by the city council for a three-year term. Roanoke is one of only a dozen localities in the state with an appointed school board. All four candidates were interviewed by the city council on April 20.
Kaknes is the principal of operations and finance at Foundry Realty, which is currently redeveloping the Walker Foundry site in Roanoke.
According to Foundry Realty’s website, Kaknes specializes in operational and financial strategy and aligning project and community objectives with available funding.
During his interview with the council, Kaknes spoke on the school division’s financial constraints and said in general, the school board needs to “fit into” the city’s priorities and is not “independent of them.”
“I’m grateful to the Councilmembers for this opportunity,” Kaknes said in an email Monday. “I look forward to working with new Trustee Littlepage and the rest of the School Board and Administration. I’m excited for the opportunity to contribute to this critical component of our community.”
Littlepage, who is now retired, was the founding chief financial officer for the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and was a business and finance professional with Carilion Clinic for 35 years. She has served on multiple boards, including Family Services of Roanoke Valley and DePaul Community Resources.
She unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the House of Delegates 40th District seat last year against incumbent Joe McNamara, a Republican.
“This got my attention because all of a sudden it felt like we were litigating the budget through the newspaper,” Littlepage said during her interview. “That is one of the parts I would like to be involved with…how do we work closer together in a way that it’s not adversarial in the newspaper?”
The two new school board terms begin July 1 and end June 30, 2029.
