"When Linda Seaman’s older daughter started at Greenbrier Elementary School in the mid-1970s, there was no after-school care program for the students. So Seaman started one in her house.

At the time, Greenbrier also lacked a parent-teacher organization, and as a result Seaman helped found one. As her daughter grew, so did her involvement in the school system. She was instrumental in starting PTOs at Walker Upper Elementary and Charlottesville High School.

“There was clearly a need for parents to be more involved with the education of their children … and someone had to take the lead,” said Seaman, 62, sitting in her sunroom overlooking her well-manicured garden.

For three decades Seaman has been an advocate for the city’s school system, serving as a member of the School Board for nine years and working for an array of educational organizations. Now, more than a decade after retiring from the School Board, Seaman is looking to return to public office as a city councilor.

With her educational credentials, Seaman’s task has been to convince Democratic voters that she is more than a one-issue candidate. Instead of banking on her schools experience, she has built her campaign around the need to improve regional transportation, boost economic development, preserve Charlottesville’s green space and address the city’s shortage of affordable housing.

“This is a time when the issues that are important to the city are issues I’m not only willing to address, but can have a positive impact on,” Seaman said.

Though Seaman had been mulling a run for council for some time, it was the March mass rally of the grassroots Interfaith Movement Promoting Action by Congregations Together that helped push her into the race.

Seaman is a member of IMPACT’s housing committee, and had been spearheading the group’s research on affordable housing. The March meeting - during which IMPACT received pledges from some Charlottesville and Albemarle officials for housing and transportation initiatives - crystallized Seaman’s belief that she could accomplish more for the community as a policymaker than as an activist working from the outside.

“I had been out of public life quite a while, and [the IMPACT rally] made me remember how I like doing that,” she said.

In candidate forums, Seaman has spent much of her time discussing the confluence of what she believes are the city’s two most intractable challenges: housing and transportation. The lack of affordable housing has pushed many residents away from the city, the region’s employment center, exacerbating congestion on the roads, Seaman said.

She would like to create a regional transportation district to help solve the area’s traffic woes, and wants to find new ways to get public safety officers and teachers to live in the city.

Another centerpiece of her campaign is the need to promote work-force development. Seaman is calling for every high school student to participate in an internship with a local business before they graduate.

“Too often we assume that schools have the total responsibility for bringing up our children,” said Seaman, who until last year was the executive director of the Charlottesville Area School Business Alliance. “But it’s the whole community that has to be engaged in that.”" (Seth Rosen, The Daily Progress, May 31, 2007)