Does Lynchburg really want to improve student learning? Do city leaders value public schools or is it just rhetoric? City council members talk about how much they support public schools; yet their legislative priorities provided to members of the General Assembly for the 2025 session included the following: “The City supports legislation to promote school choice for parents and children. This should be accomplished through legislation that would allow education dollars and/or initiatives to follow the child to the public, private, or faith-based school of the parent’s choice.”
In fairness, I should share my bias about school funding. I am a strong advocate for public schools. I believe public schools are the foundation for strong communities. Since education funding is tied to student enrollment, I do not believe that we should siphon away funding from public schools to private schools.
If school choice is the real issue, public schools are capable of providing it. In fact, schools like Dunbar and Dearington are already schools of choice. There is irony in that while the city council was promoting legislation to expand school choice, the school board was closing T.C. Miller — a successful school of choice.
Former Superintendent of Schools Joe Spagnolo often argued that the only valid reasons to leave a public school were a desire for a religious curriculum or a family legacy at a specific private institution. During his tenure, he closely tracked every student who left Lynchburg City Schools for private schooling or homeschooling. He sent these parents a letter respecting their decision but firmly asserting that LCS should be equipped to meet the needs of every single child. Along with the letter, he included a stamped postcard featuring a checklist of reasons for leaving, complete with blank lines for write-in explanations. Parents were asked to note the specific public school they were leaving and check or write in their reasons for withdrawing.
Superintendent Spagnolo then compiled this feedback by school and met with principals to review the data. During my first year as principal at E.C. Glass, he shared our specific data and instructed me to work with the faculty and staff to address these identified issues in our annual school plan. Our leadership team did exactly that. I am very proud that during my eight-year tenure at Glass, we welcomed more students back from private schools than we lost to them. We need to recapture that proactive spirit today.
Part of that proactive approach requires deeply considering the policies we enact. During my first school board meeting as assistant superintendent, I presented what I thought was a straightforward policy change. School board member Tracey Shaw asked a question that permanently shifted my perspective: “Dr. Jones, what are the unintended consequences of this policy?” I could not answer that question. Since that summer in 1990, I have never made a leadership decision without considering the secondary effects.
Unfortunately, Lynchburg appears to be making decisions without weighing these unintended consequences. We have implemented policies or made decisions that have driven families away from LCS — leading parents to homeschool or pay tuition to attend schools in neighboring public school divisions or attend private schools. We have lost very good teachers to other school divisions.
The school board must look for ways to minimize behavioral issues, ensure that all schools are meeting expectations, address mental health issues, increase school-based teacher and administrative salaries, and challenge the sinking support of the community.
Furthermore, in my opinion, we are misidentifying our challenges. The achievement gap, below-grade reading levels, chronic absenteeism, and disciplinary issues — alongside community struggles like generational poverty and gang involvement — are not the core problems. They are symptoms of root causes. When we spend all of our time and resources treating symptoms, we rely on endless interventions. While these interventions are necessary stopgaps, they are insufficient.
Complaining on social media or writing editorials without advocating for real action undermines problem solving. Complaining rarely leads to productive change; instead, it escalates tension and entrenches opposition. I believe in a “complaint-to-solution” rule: Do not complain about a problem unless you are willing to help uncover and address its root cause.
Over the past six months, I have analyzed the research surrounding Lynchburg’s systemic issues and identified two root causes that connect them all: a lack of access to quality early childhood experiences from birth to age three, and our community’s failure to foster self-efficacy in our youth. There are other root causes, certainly, but we must start somewhere. Because I refuse to give up on the city and school division I love, I have engaged in more than 25 conversations with local stakeholders to address these two areas.
Starting in early 2027, we will launch a collaborative effort through the Owen Cardwell Center for Leadership at the University of Lynchburg to confront these root issues. Lynchburg is a city that is program-rich but network-poor. My recent conversations revealed a wealth of existing organizations already willing to work with parents of children aged zero to three.
Our initiative will not ask these groups to change what they do, nor will we compete with them or seek their funding. Instead, we aim to create neighborhood advocates and leaders to build a stronger network — particularly within the 24501 and 24504 zip codes — to connect more families to the excellent resources already available.
Real transformation does not happen in an echo chamber of complaints, nor does it happen by defunding the public institutions that anchor our neighborhoods. It happens when we stop managing symptoms and start connecting our community’s incredible resources. By prioritizing early childhood development and youth self-efficacy, we can build a stronger foundation for Lynchburg’s future. Let’s stop talking past one another and start building the solutions our children deserve.
Roger Jones worked for 32 years in the Lynchburg City Schools. His last 13 years in the division, he served as assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. At the University of Lynchburg, he worked fulltime for 20 years and half time for an additional two years. While a principal, he served as president of the Virginia Association of Secondary School Principals. For more than twenty years, he has directed the Virginia Foundation for Educational Leadership and VASSP Center for Educational Leadership.
