By Brianna Hatch
The Kerrs Creek district has two contested races in the Nov. 2 elections. The Rockbridge County School Board has two candidates running for one open seat, while two others seek the one seat on the Board of Supervisors.
Morgan McCown, a former teacher at Rockbridge County High School, and Catie Austin-Brown, a teacher for 17 years in Rockbridge County schools, are both running to represent Kerrs Creek on the school board. One of them will replace Heather Hostetter, the current Vice Chair of the Rockbridge County school board.
Scott Guise, owner of a shooting range called Quail Ridge Sporting Club & Boarding Kennels, is challenging incumbent Daniel Lyons, retired superintendent of Lexington City schools, to represent Kerrs Creek on the Board of Supervisors.
The Rockbridge Report asked the candidates why they’re running, as well as their top three issues in the race. Here are their edited answers:
Catie Austin-Brown: School Board
Austin-Brown answered the following questions via email.
Why did you decide to run for school board representative of Kerrs Creek?
I decided to run for school board to bring a reasonable, experienced educator and parent voice to the table. After teaching in our schools for half of my life, having my husband currently teaching, and our three kids in our county schools — I have a daily bird’s eye view of our schools. The investments I have in our school system are invaluable for a school board position.
What three issues do you care about most, and what do you plan to do as a school board member to address them?
1. Teacher Salaries
I would love to see teachers’ salaries be raised not only to a competitive level with other districts in our state, but to a level that is indicative of the cost of living for our area. Currently, salaries and the cost of living don’t align.
This places our school system at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting and retaining highly-qualified candidates for employment. While we have many amazing teachers in our schools, the number who move to neighboring districts with higher pay is much too high. We need to be more competitive.
2. Mental Health
I would also like to ensure our school system has the resources to identify and address mental health issues among our student community. Prior to the pandemic, mental health concerns were becoming more evident in school settings. Most school systems, including ours, had guidance counselors in place as a resource for those concerns.
We can all agree that the pandemic has exacerbated those needs among our students and within our school systems. Despite the need for mental health services becoming more apparent, we are still operating with the same resources we had in place pre-pandemic. We need to reassess the mental health needs of our students and ensure the services in place are able to meet those needs.
3. Floyd S. Kay Facility
I also support updating our facilities, such as the Floyd S. Kay facility (a career and technical education center available to Rockbridge County High School). I feel strongly that we need to prepare our students with marketable trades for 21st century jobs.
We need to continue to build a CTE (Career and Technical Education) program that supports our students’ futures and our community needs. Focusing on our students’ preparation for the professional needs in our community keeps them here for the long term — not because they will feel like they have to stay, but because they will want to.
Morgan McCown: School Board
McCown answered the following questions in a phone interview.
Why did you decide to run for school board representative of Kerrs Creek?
I really felt like there was a huge disconnect between the public and the school system. When I was speaking at the school board meetings, I realized that a lot of them had no idea what I was talking about in reference to what the VDOE (Virginia Department of Education) was doing.
So, I wanted to bridge the gap in between the public and the school system. And I also wanted to inform the public as to what was going on, because we get virtually no correspondence from the school system in regard to any initiatives that the school systems are taking part in.
What three issues do you care about most, and what do you plan to do as a school board member to address them?
1. Transparency
Our meeting minutes are extremely vague. Each citizen has to state their name and their district, but when you refer to the minutes, there’s probably a one-sentence summary of what that citizen stated, and it doesn’t say where they’re from or who they are. It’s very vague. So, we need detailed minutes.
I’d also love for the school board to record each meeting and post them, so the public can go back and watch them. Because right now, there’s only a Zoom live option, and there have been complaints forever about the sound quality, and then about the fact that a lot of parents can’t tune in at 5:30, because that tends to be the time when they’re running kids to and from practice.
Also, whenever the school systems are taking part in the equity initiative, instead of just stating that in a school board meeting, maybe we could send more letters or just be more active in regard to the public’s understanding as to what is going on. For example, our transgender policy. Parents have asked for clarification, and there’s not an actual policy to look at with the exception of the nondiscrimination policy. There’s not really a set protocol; there’s a frequently asked questions sheet and that’s it.
It really all starts with being able to have open and honest communication. I would love to be able to have town halls, or Q&A sessions, and we could even submit those questions ahead of time so that they would know that this is what the community wants to know. And then direct us to the right resources.
What’s happening is citizens are being told ‘just email us’ and then sometimes they don’t ever receive a response, or they receive a very vague response. There’s a lot of frustration and I see that it’s growing, instead of us just addressing the issues.
2. Mental health
Our kids are absolutely suffering when it comes to mental health. Anxiety rates are through the roof, depression rates are through the roof, and we are now seeing such a shift in our education system.
It’s all over the media, the whole CRT (Critical Race Theory) thing. I think that it’s important, when we’re teaching accurate history, we’re not doing it in a way that makes any child feel less than because of the color of their skin.
We absolutely have got to look at our curriculum again, and also at the methodology with which we’re teaching it, the resources we’re providing. We have to make sure that when we’re teaching kids what happened, we’re giving them the whole story. That doesn’t necessarily have to involve making a child feel guilty because their skin is white or making them feel oppressed because their skin is brown or black or what have you.
And so, protecting the mental health of our children, and our teachers – because the teachers are affected by this too – that is extremely important to me.
3. CTE (Career and Technical Education)
I was a CTE teacher. I know that trades are the backbone of our community. We cannot live without plumbers; we can’t live without electricians.
And so, I want to see our CTE program talked about with as much enthusiasm as our athletic programs. We see volleyball games and football games posted about. I really just want to see those kids get acknowledged just as much as the other kids.
Scott Guise: Board of Supervisors
Guise answered the following questions via Facebook Messenger.
Why did you decide to run for Board of Supervisors representative from Kerrs Creek?
I have held positions near the end of my career as a Marine, at the executive level dealing with military consolidated memorandum reports (the handling and budgeting of hundreds of millions of dollars and finances at the regimental level as an operations officer) for roughly 150,000 Marines . . . as well as serving as an officer responsible for identifying and procuring what is for those serving in austere areas.
As a government contractor the same was required of me as well. In the civilian community, I have served as both firefighter and rode rescue for many years prior to moving to Lexington from Richlands, NC.
I along, with my wife, are business owners of two successful businesses with a loving family of three children, and many pets.
What three issues do you care about most, and what do you plan to do as a Board of Supervisors representative to address them?
1. Property Taxes
The first thing is to reign in the wasteful spending and literally account for all of it, which is not currently done. Line items listed in the budget are not itemized items that explain exactly what is happening with the money. Trust is one thing, but it’s another to have no oversight into all of the aspects of taxpayer-funded projects to include employment or new hires, and just rubber stamping it is not the answer.
2. Critical Race Theory
We [need to] establish actual oversight of taxpayer funding to the school district and hold them accountable for wasteful spending, by not giving any funding or withholding funding for any “equity expert” seminars, or “training.”
That said, if someone is thinking of calling me out as a racist for this stance, they should perhaps know I am the only white person in my household.
3. Economic Development without added taxpayer expense so this county can stop dying on the vine and preserve our workforce, in that order, because one leads to the other and the successes or demise of each.
I feel actively reaching out to companies is the way to go, to change the attitude of Rockbridge County from being a “no” to a possibility for investors or businesses. My eye is on the success of folks here and preserving all they care for.
We have troubling times ahead, all by design from the current White House administration. You cannot have your head in the sand for what is on the way, and we cannot afford to be hiring people for issues the Board of Supervisors could literally handle on their own.
The Board of Supervisors should not serve just to be briefed and vote on issues, they should be driving the train and aware of any obstacles that might plague us in the future.
Daniel Lyons: Board of Supervisors
Lyons answered the following questions in a phone interview.
Why did you decide to run for Board of Supervisors representative from Kerrs Creek?
I finished things that we hadn’t accomplished. So, we’re moving in the right direction.
We’ve done a lot of things as a board. We kept things going during a pandemic, we were able to open a huge vaccination site in the county so that people wouldn’t have to travel so far to get the vaccine — and we just secured that again so people will be able to get their boosters.
We expanded our paid firefighters and first responders. We’ve tried to increase the salaries of our law enforcement officers, and we’ve held a pretty tight budget. We made a lot of cuts last year in anticipation of less revenues.
We’re working with the school board to renovate the [Floyd S. Kay] vocational center so that we can make sure we’re providing a proper education for our students that want to go right into the trades and making sure they’re lining up with the employers in the county that need them.
And I think people should always have a choice. There should always be at least two candidates.
What three issues do you care about most, and what do you plan to do as a Board of Supervisors representative to address them?
1. Economic Development
We need to continue our economic development, and we need to act regionally rather than locally. What’s good for one locality is good for all of us, so we have to pool our resources and make sure we’re working with each other and not competing with each other.
2. Public Safety
We can no longer strictly rely on our volunteers. There just aren’t enough of them anymore. But on the same token, we need to find ways to show our appreciation for all their work and volunteer hours.
We need to keep expanding our programs, like we started an EMT program in the high school so that we can train our own. We need to make sure our salaries are competitive so we’re not putting all this money into training for law enforcement or fire officials and then have them leave to go somewhere else for a few extra dollars.
3. Working with the school board
We need to continue to work with our school board to make sure that they have the funds they need to recruit quality teachers, and that our facilities are what they need to be so that all our students can progress the way they should.