Johnny Redd Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
Some contributors and commenters on Bacon’s Rebellion who have recently expressed distress over schools and society in general should be able to take solace in the views of Johnny Redd, who is the newly appointed member of the Hanover County School Board. (Hanover County is one of the few jurisdictions in Virginia in which the governing body appoints school board members.)
In an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Redd explained, “ [I] made myself available to serve as a conservative, Christian voice on the School Board.” He went on to elaborate, “A biblical worldview will be the lens that I use to analyze policies and curriculum. Our country was established under the framework of biblical principles, precepts and commandments. Our freedoms are given to us by God, not by government, but we have been complacent and have let the distractions and ungodliness get a foothold in our society, our government and our schools. We have strayed from godly principles and are reaping the consequences of disobedience.”
Sterling Daniel Photo credit: Richmond Time-Dispatch
Sterling Daniel, the school board member not reappointed, along with another board member similarly denied reappointment two years ago, made the unforgivable sin of voting to strip Confederate names off two Hanover County schools.
Redd, who has no children in the county schools, will replace the only member of the current board who has children enrolled in the county schools. As of July 1, none of the members of the Hanover County School Board will have children attending county schools. Obviously, the Hanover Board of Supervisors does not feel that school board members need to know what is actually going on in the schools.
(Disclosure: I worked with Sterling Daniel for several years at the Department of Planning and Budget. [He is currently the associate dean for business and administration at the MCV School of Nursing.] He is young, intelligent, thoughtful, and outgoing. Hanover County schools will be worse off as a result of his not being reappointed to the school board.)
