Tom Marshall Seeks School Board Re-Election

Leesburg resident Tom Marshall is seeking re-election as a member of the Loudoun County School Board, which he was first elected to back in 2007. He was appointed as Chairman of the Personnel Services Committee during his first term in office and is a thirty year veteran after serving as an educator in Fairfax County schools.

Marshall was the first PTA President of Smarts Mill Middle School, a former member of the Loudoun Education Alliance of Parents and of Loudoun County Advisory Council on Youth. Due to his experience, Marshall believes he has what it takes to win.

“I really believe in public education,” Marshall said. “I’ve become an expert, really, on personnel issues and I can move things forward because I have that background.”

Marshall said he passionately believes that our democracy is dependent upon an educated society. Without it our democracy is weakened, he said. If re-elected, there are a number of issues he would like to continue working on. The most important would involve building more schools.

“We’re growing by 2500 to 3000 students every year. We have been doing so for the last five years and so we have to have space for our schools,” Marshall said. “The other thing is we’re the only large school system that doesn’t have a full day kindergarten and it’s not because we don’t want it or that it’s not a goal of the school board. We simply don’t have the space to have it in our schools. So, that’s one of our biggest things is trying to keep up with the building of the schools and trying to have enough space.”

According to Marshall’s campaign website, Leesburg is approaching enviable stability within the County with Loudoun County and Heritage high schools, including the new Tuscarora High School.

The county has provided “direct feeds” from the three middle schools, Simpson, Harper Park, and Smarts Mill, making the best transition to high school for students and the local community. Overcrowding in some of the elementary schools will be addressed with the new Frederick Douglass ES opening in the fall of 2012, which he hopes to be a part of after this week’s election.

Another item on Marshall’s agenda includes a better evaluation system for teachers. Marshall said he would like to propose a new way to find out who the county’s best teachers are and to have a different scale other than just satisfactory and unsatisfactory.  

The State of Virginia has published guidelines for the "Uniformed Performance Standards and Evaluations Criteria for Teachers”, he said, and he would like to apple the state's evaluation model, using the teacher ratings that have been suggested: Exemplary, Proficient, Needs Improvement, Unacceptable. 

“I want something more effective,” Marshall said.

When asked what his opinion was on charter schools, Marshall said he doesn’t think they will solve any problems, especially when it comes to overcrowding.

“Taking 300 students [out of the school system] is not going to make any impact on our overcrowding situation. You take 500 and they’re not going to make an impact on our overcrowding situation,” Marshall said. “Whatever they are doing is an experiment. If the experiment doesn’t work at the end of three years they walk away. We’re out that much money for the three year period.

“If a charter school can bring something that we can’t offer then that would be fine. But most of the time in a school system like ours we can offer whatever it is that they think they can provide," he continued. "The second thing is that all the research on charter schools is very mixed. Usually charter schools are more attractive in underperforming school systems. This is not an underperforming school system. This is a performing school system.”

There are a number of other issues that Marshall would like to take care of but his first priority is winning this week’s election. Marshall said he looks forward to the competition and hopes that he is able to continue serving the county. Visit www.friendsoftommarshall.com.