CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – With questions swirling around recent Albemarle County Public Schools developments, School Board member Jim Dillenbeck, the Rio District Representative, held a candid town hall meeting Wednesday, sharing some significant details of what is going on in the school division.

Dillenbeck told a gathering of Rio residents that, to his knowledge, at least 15 staff members have been placed on administrative leave in the past 30 days, including the three principals that ACPS announced would be “out of the building for an extended period of time,” on Monday.

Dillenbeck said the other 12 employees include teachers, teaching assistants and bus drivers. As a school board member, Dillenbeck said he is notified by email by Acting Superintendent Dr. Chandra Hayes when leaves go into effect.

Wednesday’s meeting was organized by Dillenbeck, as a way for him to share updates on the division while also hearing concerns directly from parents. While the first-year board member told Cville Right Now that he recognized he may be “stepping out of bounds” from what other board members think is best, he ran on a platform focused on communicating with parents and teachers.

“If we’re ever gonna regain the trust of the county citizens, we have to be more transparent. We have to be more communicative,” he said. “Because a lot of stakeholders don’t feel like they’re being heard, whether it’s teachers or parents.”

At times, Dillenbeck expressed his own concerns over the fact families were not explicitly told that the three principals, including Principal Christie Isaiah of Woodbrook Elementary, which sits in the Rio District, were placed on administrative leave.

Dillenbeck also agreed with concerns from parents about the impact these unexpected leaves could have on students and staff, as well as concerns over the fact that Isaiah was, to his knowledge, not told why she was being placed on leave when it happened.

“If I were her, I would get an attorney and pursue that,” Dillenbeck told the parents. “Because that can be damaging for her career.”

He said afterward that, while he understands these are HR decisions, the number of people on leave at the current moment almost constitutes “a crisis situation.”

“As far as I know, our pool of available people is getting pretty thin,” he said afterward.
”And that’s impacting in tangible and intangible ways the effectiveness of what we’re doing. We exist to educate students and that’s being interrupted by all of these people being placed on administrative leave.”

These recent leaves come as Acting Superintendent for Strategic Planning Dr. Patrick McLaughlin is still on administrative leave, according to Dillenbeck. He has been on leave since July, after sexual harassment allegations were brought against him during a school board meeting. Dillenbeck also said McLaughlin is still being paid by the county, much to the concern of those in attendance.

Dillenbeck also said that, in his opinion, the current wave of employees being placed on leave may be a response to the arrest of former Hollymead staffer Michael Swiney on sex crimes in June. He later said that Hollymead Principal Joe McCauley, who resigned in July weeks after being placed on administrative leave, was “let go” due to, among other things, failing to properly adhere to his reporting requirements.

Dillenbeck said he has requested a special session be held by the school board to address the unusually high number of leaves, and he will be discussing that with Chair Dr. Rebecca Berlin, the White Hall representative, on Thursday.

“My hope is that we can strike the right balance between privacy of staff members and consistency of keeping the staff in the schools,” Dillenbeck said afterward. “And if there are clear violations of the law or inappropriate behavior, then yeah, we need to replace the staff.
But this notion that people are out on leave, without knowing why and for how long? To me, that doesn’t serve anybody well.”

Dillenbeck also discussed the upcoming third-party investigation into the division, being conducted by Richmond-based Harman, Claytor, Corrigan & Wellman, which has represented ACPS in past cases. Dillenbeck said he told the board during the closed session of the August meeting in which the firm was selected that he believed it presented a clear conflict of interest.

“I’m still pursuing the possibility of some outside, truly independent agency to look at not just the Swiney investigation, but all of our policies and practices, especially those that involve safety of students,” he said after the meeting. “Whether that’s at a state level or it’s possible that the Office of Civil Rights or Federal Department of Education might have a group to do an investigation as well.”

During the meeting, Dillenbeck said in defense of the current investigation that the firm will be planning to look beyond just Swiney’s case. Like many parents, Dillenbeck said he wants to know why Swiney was transferred from Woodbrook to Hollymead in 2023.

The school division has said the transfer was due to a conflict between Swiney and another staffer.

Dillenbeck shared details of a staffer’s transfer from one middle school to another that he flagged as concerning.

“There’s a term that’s come up recently, ‘trash transfer.’ It’s something along the lines of, somebody does something inappropriate at one school, we transfer him to another school,” Dillenbeck said. “I can tell you there’s a staff member at Burley (Middle School) right now who demonstrated some inappropriate behavior with the staff at Henley (Middle School) last year. He’s now at Burley.”

With regard to that teacher, Dillenbeck said he has expressed his concerns with Hayes, Chief Human Resources Officer Dan Redding and Deputy Chief Human Resources Officer Brodie Downs.

“This is the kind of thing that I find it unacceptable,” Dillenbeck told the parents. “And so even though I’ve been told many times, ‘That’s operations, that’s not what a school board member is supposed to be doing.’ My response is, ‘Look, if operations are going well, students are learning and teachers feel good, there’s safety. I’m fine with staying out of operations. 
But operations are not going well.'”