Without even trying, Colonial Beach Schools have made headlines again. Unfortunately, no accolades are being thrown at the school division but rather, it seems, just more criticism and demands for improvement.
Colonial Beach High School is now identified as one of the state’s persistently underachieving schools. Just take a look on the Internet at schooldigger.com and see Colonial Beach High school listed as one of the 10 worst in the state.  The question begs to be asked: Why?  And a sister question should be: what needs to be done to fix it and what can the newly elected School Board do about it?

It is often claimed that Colonial Beach has problems because it is so small.  It is small, but it is not the smallest School Division in Virginia.  There are two that are smaller, Highland County with 259 students and Lexington City with 499 students as well as one that is slightly larger, Bath County with 701 students.  If you look at the ratings of those schools, you will find that Lexington City is 2/120 and Bath County is 22/120.  It appears that size is not the issue for this local school set in one of the most sought after areas of Virginia.
Some say students are not educated properly because Colonial Beach does not have a middle school.  The new Superintendent is blaming the dismal record of the high school on the fact that the eighth grade is taught at the high  school.  Phooey.
This is an old song that has been played before.  The school division tried to borrow money with a literary loan four years ago to build a middle school.  It was a good deal then, a 2% loan with the payback beginning the year after the school was in operation.  The Town Council, after first approving the loan, turned it down less than a year later.  The School division at that time could not justify the numbers to make it a viable project.  It seems like the current Superintendent is now trying to sing the same tune and to do the same thing. This time, they are only planning to use $229,000 to rent trailers (notice that there is not a cost estimate about the annual cost from here on out) and again doing the fast shuffle for a fix that does not have the numbers to support it.
What the School Board doesn’t realize is that the horse has left the barn on this one, and it should not bother closing that door again. With so few students in the system the School Board should be looking at some innovative ways to get the middle school-age children educated where older students can bring the younger ones along.
Enough of that. So what would it take to fix the Colonial Beach School Division?
Colonial Beach has the potential to be an elite, premier school division, one where people want to live in town because of the school.  From an outsider’s perspective looking in there appears to be a twofold problem which the Commonwealth of Virginia has already told the school system it must address.  The first problem is the teachers and the second is the administrators.
With all of the turmoil surrounding the school division for the past four years, it is understandable that morale would be at an all-time low. While the School Board has been agitating about its administrative and financial procedures, the Commonwealth has been looking at its teachers and principals. Innovative teaching strategies have fallen behind and their students’ test scores reflect it. However, all of that needs to change if the school division is to do a complete turnaround and become one of the top ranked school divisions rather than one of the bottom-ranked ones.
Come July, there will be a new School Board, two of whom are former teachers who were around when Colonial Beach schools were in their heyday. One easy fix would be to put teachers on notice that they need to be kept current in new and innovative ways to teach and motive students and then give them the tools to be able to do so.  Let them have opportunities to observe other teachers in top-ranked schools to see how they are effective in the classroom.  Encourage mentoring with experienced teachers to provide the guidance needed to have success in the classroom.
Administrators at the schools need to be experienced in order to be a resource for the classroom teacher and the Commonwealth brought that to the attention of the School Board.
For Colonial Beach School Division much is riding on decisions that are going to be made in the next three years. First on the School Board’s agenda should be the selection of its newest member who will replace Anne Congdon. Let’s hope they make a choice which will get Colonial Beach schools on the high road again. We have no dog in this fight, but the Board’s selection will be one of the most important ones it will make for the next few years.  Let’s hope they select a person who will make Colonial Beach the premier school that it could be.
Let’s get Colonial Beach High School in the right top ten list - the one which talks about the top ten best.