"The ostensible topic of last week’s Charlottesville City School Board meetings was the $58 million budget that controversial superintendent Dr. Scottie Griffin has sent to the seven-member appointed body. But a student of human behavior could have gleaned lessons in more than just fiscal management. Nearly operatic, the Q&A budget forum on Tuesday night, February 1, and the public hearing on Thursday featured impassioned pleas, political speeches, Scripture-citing sermons, and the kind of race-baiting finger-pointing that shuts down dialogue everywhere. By the end of Thursday night’s three-hour hearing, the frustration in the packed Charlottesville High School media center was soaring. His voice shaking with emotion, Greenbrier Elementary special education teacher Charlie Kollmansperger finally told the board, “I resent being labeled a racist because me and my colleagues oppose cuts to P.E. and guidance.”

Indeed, Thursday’s hearing seemed like a huge step backward after the tentative moves toward reconciliation that Griffin and the board seemed to make on Tuesday. At the budget forum, parents and teachers not only asked questions, they got instant responses from the often-uncommunicative superintendent. Jeanne Inge’s remark that night was typical: “I’m glad to have open, face-to-face dialogue. It’s a pleasant change.”

Not that everyone left satisfied. Repeatedly, questioners asked Griffin and the board as they have all along to specify the principles underlying her radical budget, which features large increases in travel and administrative spending and severe cuts in guidance counseling and physical education instruction. Additionally, Griffin proposes virtually no pay increases for school support staff. Griffin faces the unenviable challenge of meeting federal and state learning benchmarks. Prior to her appointment, Washington sanctioned one city elementary school; Buford Middle School risks the same fate now. But Griffin offers few guidelines when it comes to explaining her budget and how it will close what’s known as the achievement gap between poor and middle-class students.

Speaking to C-VILLE last week, Griffin said she aims to put together a strategy. “We are going to develop a strategic plan, and that plan is going to be based on the vision we have for this school division, which is we are expecting that all of our students will achieve on an exemplary level. That cannot happen unless we have input from staff and community. It has to be a yearlong process.”

By Thursday night, the subject of why Griffin would massively restructure school administration before that yearlong process is complete was a distant second to charges of racism that had resurfaced. M. Rick Turner, the divisive UVA Dean of African-American Affairs, had again labeled as uncaring bigots the white parents and teachers who question Griffin’s leadership. (Black teachers also testified against Griffin’s budget.) And others invoked Charlottesville’s strained racial history, too, albeit in less caustic terms.

“No other superintendent has had to put up with this,” said Raymond Mason, a lifelong city resident. “This is the last stronghold of the South. White people run everything and they’re not used to having a black person in charge.”

It’s been clear throughout weeks of budget meetings that few believe the city school system is functioning up to par. And as one pastor reminded listeners Thursday night, “no one can change this system by doing what has always been done.”

But that statement could just as well apply to the communication disaster over which Griffin and the board have presided. During a break Thursday night, Griffin kept a tight orbit among board members and her Central Office staff—as she usually does. Observers were left to wonder what the effect would have been if instead she had walked into the crowd to thank teachers and staff, not to mention parents and pastors, who had given up yet another evening to passionately discuss the fate of city schools.

The board must send a budget to City Council by March 7, with at least two more public meetings scheduled between now and then. If they and Griffin really want to shake things up, they might try this line on the public: “We’re sorry, we’ve really made a mess of this process. Let’s start again. Together.”" (Cathy Harding, C-Ville Weekly, February 8, 2005)