Five of the six members of the outgoing Loudoun County School Board bid farewell Dec. 13 during their final Tuesday meeting of their term.

Chairman John Stevens (Potomac), Vice-Chair Priscilla Godfrey (Blue Ridge), Bob Ohneiser (Broad Run), Tom Marshall (Leesburg) and Robert DuPree (Dulles) were all given the chance to bid farewell to the county during the board member’s comments portion of the meeting. Representative Joseph Guzman (Sugarland Run) was not present at the meeting.

Four of the six members were defeated in the November election, including Stevens losing to Debbie Rose, Godfrey losing to Jill Turgeon, Ohneiser losing to fellow board member Tom Reed for the At-Large seat and Marshall losing to Bill Fox.

DuPree and Guzman chose not to run for re-election.

Godfrey took the chance to thank her constituents for the opportunity she was given to serve them.

“To my constituents I say thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you in ways small and large. I believe I was accessible, approachable and very visible in our community at school and group events,” Godfrey said. “I will continue to stay informed about school issues in an effort to use the experience I have to the benefit of our students.”

Godfrey did note that she has some concerns with the upcoming board.

“The issue that concerns me the most as the school board changes over is that except for returning members the new school board members have so much to learn about the school system before deciding on next year’s budget in just three or four months,” she said. “The new board members ran on a platform calling for cuts to the school budget despite the fact that our budget this year is the same we had three years ago when we had 9,000 fewer students to serve.”

In his comments, Ohneiser said the county will benefit greatly from the next board.

“The competence level of the new board members is substantial so I have no concern about their ability to manage at least as well as our board did and more likely quite a bit better,” Ohneiser said. “Eric Hornberger and Jeff Morse have been involved in school boundaries and school construction for years as well as being exceptionally qualified individuals with families in the school system. Jill Turgeon and Bill Fox were both employed by LCPS and seem quite motivated toward making LCPS a better school system. Kevin Kuesters and Deb Rose have children in the school system, high levels of professional background and are exceptionally qualified persons.”

“The new board does not have the conflicting agendas I had to deal with during my eight years on the board where members had to recuse themselves due to obvious conflicts of interest,” Ohneiser said. “The overriding issue that all boards will have to deal with is the continued pressure on being able to make infrastructure investments due to the unwillingness of Loudoun County to stop approving high density, student generating residential developments until the proper balance with high quality job producing commercial tax base is achieved and that doesn’t mean more strip malls.”

After his eight years of service, Ohneiser did have a message for his constituents.

“I offered to represent the entire county at considerable expense to my family and my law practice while almost [75 percent] of you didn’t even bother voting. If in the future Loudoun does have a severe problem those who chose to enjoy the first Tuesday in November without taking a few moments to participate have no right to complain,” Ohneiser said. “Almost 18 percent of the voters in my category didn’t even bother to make a school decision as they filled out a ballot. The community is frankly lucky such qualified new persons step up to serve as we will see sworn in on the school board in January.”

For his final board member comments, Marshall pointed out that he has had a wonderful four years working with the current board.

“Nothing can take away the fact that I had these wonderful four years working with this very diverse and interesting board members,” he said. “I will miss all the interactions and I will continue with public service and thank you very much for being my friend and thank you very much for being dedicated to the children of Loudoun County.

As the School Board’s former chairman, DuPree said it is important to remember it is not what the board did, but how the students benefited.

“All of us need to remember that it is not what we did, it’s what we enabled the students to do working with the professional staff here and in the schools,” DuPree said. “I would like to thank my colleagues on staff who tried to make for constructive board meetings for constructive policy discussion. We have put our children in a position to succeed,” DuPree said.

As the final speaker, Stevens thanked the entire board for allowing him to serve as their chairman.

“I want to thank all of my colleagues on the board for the opportunity to serve as chair for the last two years and special thank you to Ms. Godfrey for being a full-fledged and reliable partner as my vice-chair,” Stevens said. 
Stevens also gave a special thanks to former chairman DuPree for initiating the policy review the board has been working on for months.

“It was tedious work and I want to thank all the committee chairs who devoted their time and the staff who had to do an enormous amount of work as well,” Stevens said. “Because of this initiative, we leave this school system in much better shape for the next board based on that.”

Stevens closed his remarks with a final farewell.

“It’s a great school system and I can’t take credit for that,” Stevens said. “I wish the best to the next board. And with that this meeting and this board is adjourned.”
The new school board will be sworn in Jan. 3.