Tuesday June 27, 2023

THE NEW DOMINION PODCAST: Gaila Sims | THE WHY BEHIND THE WHY: Carol Medawar |

THE NEW DOMINION PODCAST - Dr. Gaila Sims

Dr. Gaila Sims is the curator of African American History and Special Projects at the Fredericksburg Area Museum (FAM), who opens up about our hidden jewel in the heart of the city, the complicated history of Fredericksburg landmarks such as the Auction Block and Goolrick's Pharmacy, and the mission of historians to bring our past into the present.

---

THE WHY BEHIND THE WHY

An interview with school board candidate Carol Medawar

This series offers Q&As with public officials and community leaders. Our aim is to give our readers an opportunity to get to know those who lead and shape the region in a more-personal way.

Carol Medawar is running for the Spotsylvania School Board in the Courtland District. F2S is extending invitations to each of the candidates for school board in Spotsylvania, and we look forward to bringing you their stories in the weeks ahead.

F2S: Tell us a bit about where you’re from and your professional career.

CM: I’m from southern West Virginia, where I was raised, and earned by bachelor’s degree from West Virginia University in Elementary Education and Special Education. I moved to the Fredericksburg area in 1995, where I started teaching in Colonial Beach. From there I moved to Stafford High School and then Gayle Middle School. Math is my first love, and I taught both those students who struggled, and those students who were identified as gifted.

I became a foster mom, and then was able to adopt my oldest in 2000. I took some time off from teaching and then had two other children. I returned to teaching at North Stafford High School, and then back to middle school in Stafford.

We moved back to Spotsylvania after my kids graduated from high School, which was always our plan.

F2S: When you lived in Stafford, you previously ran for school board, and lost both races. What did you learn from those races?

CM: I ran in 2015 and 2019. The 2015 race I ran against Dewayne McOsker. We became friends through that, and he would call me for advice after he won that race. He also encouraged me to run in 2019, and helped me put up signs.

In 2019, I ran against Susan Randall. She and I were friends, though we see the world in very different ways. But it was also a friendly campaign, and she appointed me to committees afterwards.

I consider both those races successful failures. Both of my opponents who won the election tried to look at both sides and discover different options for their constituents.

F2S: So why did you decide to run for school board here?

CM: As soon as I moved back, people began encouraging me to run. This was when things were bubbling up in the county around book banning and burning. I started paying attention and attending meetings, and just decided that this was very concerning and that someone needed to be paying attention to this.

I’ve always been interested in education policy, attending school board meetings when they were boring. Education is my jam, and I just want kids to have the best education possible. It’s why I was a teacher, why I support teachers, and why I went to school for my master’s degree in instructional technology. I’ve always been about school improvement and how to make things better for families and kids and teachers.

F2S: You talked about how the two races in Stafford stayed friendly. None of the four races for school board in Spotsy are likely to be as genial as your Stafford races were. How do you deal with that?

CM: School board races should be nonpartisan. I really feel strongly about that, because you’re not running to represent Democrats or Republicans. There’s no caucus meeting on the school board. But at the same time, it’s important to understand both of those lenses, and what they are bringing to policy.

Unfortunately, I feel like our local school board here in Spotsylvania has become very partisan.

I was one of those persons the first time I ran who said I didn’t want an endorsement from either party. I learned that it makes it very hard to win and have access to volunteers and help.

In many ways, I’m not blue enough for the Democrats or red enough for the Republicans, which makes me an independent. In fact, my voting record attests to this, as over the years I’ve voted in both Democratic and Republican primaries. But no one gets to be an independent anymore. You’re painted into a box.

I don’t fit neatly in anyone’s box, because I really want what’s best for kids. And we don’t ask kids if they identify as Democrat or Republican.

F2S: Is that the problem we have today?

CM: Yes. We are just trying to put everybody into this box - “They’re conservative or they’re liberal.” I don’t think most people fit neatly into any box.

In many ways, I’m not blue enough for the Democrats or red enough for the Republicans, which makes me an independent. But no one gets to be an independent anymore. You’re painted into a box.

There are single-issue voters out there. I’m an education voter. I have to align with who’s going to support education.

F2S: Certainly the extreme wing of the conservatives in Spotsylvania is trying to put you in a box. They’ve labeled you “Crackpot Carol.”

CM: It’s so sad. As long as we keep yelling past each other, nothing is getting done. And that’s my frustration with the school board. The real work isn’t getting done.

F2S: How do you appeal to those on the far right?

CM: It’s not the right wing I have to appeal to. It’s the sane middle that I have to appeal to. The people who really want an educated community, the people who want good public schools in their community.

The only way I know to break things down is by conversation. When I speak with someone and say “I’m just a teacher who loves education, who is running for this job because I like education policy, I like thinking deeply about it, I like researching it, and learning about it from all angles, and then using that information to make good decisions.” Suddenly, then, I because a teacher, and a parent, instead of this crazy person some are making me out to be.

F2S: If you win this election, however, you will have to deal with those voters on the far right who are not interested necessarily in a conversation. How do you work to hear and represent them?

CM: It starts with finding some common ground. Take the book burning example. They’re really concerned about content, as well as parental rights and choice. The flip side of that is by advocating that there’s only one way to think about it, you’re really taking away other people’s rights and choice.

So we have to look into content, but it isn’t the board’s place to get into the weeds of the books that are on the shelves. The board’s role is to handle process, and to make sure those processes and policies are working. And if they’re not, we update them.

There’s a lot of room between banning and burning books on the one hand, and reviewing them and taking them off the shelves on the other. We can put warning labels on books. We can have parents say they don’t want their children reading certain titles.

When you’re setting policy for 20,000 families, you have to be flexible enough to know not all 20,000 families are going to have the same set of values or worldviews or willingness to get involved. Some parents want to trust librarians and educators and curriculum specialists.

Creating that flexibility is parental rights.

F2S: Is the focus on parents’ rights missing the real reason teachers and administrators and board members exist? How do we make sure that we’re doing what’s best for the kids?

CM: The bottom line for kids is this. If a parent, a teacher, and the school staff are all working toward the same goal and are communicating, it is the best thing educationally for the kid.

And that’s the point, right? We should all be working to move things forward educationally for the kid. And sometimes that means dealing with mental health, or social and emotional, or disabilities. We have to deal with those things to challenge the student to move forward.

Right now, the scariest thing isn’t the Democrat vs. the Republican, it’s the parent vs. the teachers. And this is going to be a long-term problem if we don’t fix it so that parents aren’t against teachers and teachers aren’t against parents. We all need to be on the same page to help kids in school.

F2S: Part of what drives this parent vs. teacher battle is concern over what’s in the curriculum and who gets to decide what’s in and what’s out. How do we do that?

CM: Battles over curriculum go way back. There’s nothing new about this, right? So we get back to the question of what are we preparing kids to be? We want them to be critical thinkers. We are preparing them to be young adults. So we have this responsibility to present information that is challenging to kids, and they then have a safe space to wrestle with challenging ideas.

That’s what it is to be an adult and a critical thinker, right? You have to wrestle with hard things.

It should be seen as a good thing that we present challenging things to kids and let them figure it out in a safe environment and in their homes with their families.

F2S: So many of these curriculum battles are based in fear. Fear of what someone might learn and how it might change them. How do we move people past fear?

CM: Learning requires reflection. I’m a math teacher, and I know a lot of people who talk about what a struggle math is. If you’re doing it right, however, math is uncomfortable. It’s in the struggle that you’re really learning.

If I only present information that you know, you don’t have to struggle.

F2S: One charge that you are going to be hit with in the campaign is that you have served on the boards of the state and national education associations, and been active in the local association. For the hard right, that makes you a part of the education establishment they are fighting. What’s your response to that?

CM: My response is that it illustrates that I’ve been interested in education policy and improving education policy, as well as improving things for kids and educators.

Student learning conditions are educators’ working conditions, and if you have good conditions for learning, both groups are doing better. Period.

The people who say they love teachers but hate teachers unions don’t make any sense, because all the members of that organization work in schools and are trying to make things better.

I’ve been in the national meetings with thousands of participants having tough discussions about education issues. They argue their case, we take a vote, and a decision was made, and we kept trying to move things forward.

F2S: What troubles you the most when you’re out knocking doors and campaigning?

CM: What breaks my heart more than anything else when I’m out knocking doors is when a mom comes to the door with a little one on the hip and says, “I just don’t know if I’m going to put my kid in the local schools, because of the stories and the things that have come out about Spotsylvania County Schools.” Not things they’ve heard from the level of the classroom, but from the chaos on the school board. The board has created and sown this level of distrust among parents.

We have to earn this trust back, so that parents feel safe sending their kids to school and that their kids will get a good education.

I’m also troubled that we are not moving forward. We are losing teachers.

We know what makes good schools. Well-resourced schools that have highly qualified educators who are supported and have professional development. I don’t know that very many Spotsylvania teachers feel supported right now.

F2S: What about teaching do people not understand, but need to?

CM: Few understand what teaching takes out of you emotionally. Not every kid comes to school every day ready to learn. And they’re the ones that keep you up at night.

You’re constantly struggling to figure out how to reach the kid who is not emotionally ready to learn. And if you’ve never experienced that, you may think all kids come to school ready to accept knowledge.

That’s an important lens to have.

F2S: If you had to sum up what you believe, what would it be?

CM: I think our kids deserve public school champions.

That’s why I chose the slogan “Focus on the kids.”

And right now, the focus at school board meetings is not on what is best for the kids.