CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – During a tumultuous time in the school division, the Albemarle County School Board is once again preparing to fill an open seat, just weeks since David Storm was appointed as the board’s at-large representative.

This time, the vacancy is in the Rio seat, which is about to change for the fourth time in the past three years. When a member resigns, the board appoints a replacement to finish their term.

Katrina Callsen, now Charlottesville’s representative in the Virginia House of Delegates, resigned during her second term as the Rio representative in September 2023, after first being elected in November 2017.

Following Callsen’s resignation, Chuck Pace was appointed to the Rio seat in December 2023, serving on the board until his death a year later. The board appointed Leslie Pryor to finish his term. She served and then ran for the position last November, when she was defeated by Jim Dillenbeck. Dillenbeck resigned on Oct. 7 following a controversial town hall he held Sept. 30, opening up the seat once again.

“I hope that we can pick someone that has a diversity of opinion,” Callsen said. “I do think one thing that I can reflect on about my time on the board is that there needs to be, I think a little bit more open discussion or debate, and there’s been so much turnover and changes happening right now. I would appreciate a board member that brought that kind of energy.”

This time around, three applicants have applied for the open seat, a stark contrast from the 23 who applied to replace Allison Spillman for the at-large seat in August.

They are Pryor, former co-chair of the school board’s Long-Range Planning Advisory Committee Daisy Rojas, and ACPS Family Council co-representative for Albemarle High School Jennifer Ortuno. They will each be interviewed by the School Board during a special meeting Thursday at 6 p.m. The board will announce its selection Nov. 12, following a public hearing on the candidates on Nov. 5.

Pryor, who spoke to Cville Right Now last week, before she made her decision to apply for the current opening, expressed hope that whoever is Rio’s next representative would be able to end the revolving door in the seat and help address the division-wide issues the school system is currently dealing with. 

“I hope that whomever is appointed will be able to bring some stability and consistency to the Rio District, but more importantly, I think overall, I hope the collaboration with the others on the Albemarle County School Board will aid in strengthening Rio as well as Albemarle County as a whole,” she said.

While the Rio District has seen its seat change hands regularly over the past few years, Albemarle County Public Schools as a whole has been in a state of crisis since the arrest of former Hollymead staffer Michael Swiney on June 3. That arrest led the board asking for ACPS Superintendent Dr. Matthew Haas to resign the following week.

More recently, the same day Dillenbeck resigned from the board, ACPS’s Deputy Chief Human Resources Officer Brodie Downs and Assistant School Division Counsel & Title IX Coordinator Erin Stone, as well as former Hollymead Elementary School Principal Joe McCauley, were all charged and arrested with three counts of failure to report a case of child abuse.

The recent events in the division also caught the attention of another former school board member — Albemarle Board of Supervisors Chair and Rio representative Ned Gallaway. His board passed a resolution earlier this month, calling on the school board to tighten its mandated reporting policies and improve its transparency with the public.

That resolution was also sent to the Virginia Department of Education, which earlier this week, instructed ACPS to “hire a high-quality independent consultant that can conduct a thorough and timely review of ACPS policies, practices, and organizational culture related to mandatory reporting required by law.” Gallaway praised the VDOE’s actions on Wednesday in a statement, calling the steps taken “significant.”

As for the School Board’s search for his district’s next representative, Gallaway shared what he was hoping to see in Rio’s newest board member after the Supervisors’ passed their resolution on Oct. 15.

“I want someone who understands what the governance responsibility is going to be,” he said. “I mean, the Virginia Code is very clear what the charge is to school board representative, and I want that individual to understand fully what the charge is and is ready to meet that in a serious way.

“The Rio District has definitely … not been stable for a few years, for a variety of different reasons. And as the representative of that same district, yes, I want to see a stable qualified person who’s ready to rise to the challenge of doing the serious work of an elected school board member, and hope that if they’re appointed to do so, even if they decide not to run down the road, that that will be what drives them in the time that they have filling that role.”