As it became clear that Spotsylvania County School Board member Lisa Phelps’ motion to authorize a third-party investigation into an incident at Cedar Forest Elementary School last spring was going to fail, the tenor of Tuesday night’s meeting shifted.
Board Chair Lorita Daniels called for an emergency recess while Phelps and Berkley District representative April Gillespie accused Superintendent Clint Mitchell and five other board members of lying to cover the Cedar Forest administration’s handling of a case that led to last month’s conviction of a behavioral interventionist for assaulting a kindergarten student with a shoe.
As Phelps and Gillespie pushed for an investigation, Mitchell and the five board members insisted that since the administration and staff had been overhauled since last school year, an in-depth inquiry would be fruitless.
“The truth is the staff is still there,” countered Phelps. “The leadership is still at Cedar Forest. Let’s be true and transparent. The leadership is still there … So, you don’t want the public to know. Dr. Mitchell, you need to tell the truth … The kids are not safe, and neither are the employees.”
Former Cedar Forest Principal Scott Orth is no longer with the school division, but Assistant Principal William Kuhnert — who teacher Brandi Clark said was unresponsive to her pleas for help before the April incident — still holds the same position.
Clark said she declined to return after human resources personnel asked her to sign a memo stating she did not appropriately report the incident to administrators. Two paraprofessionals who witnessed the episode and testified during the trial remain employed by the division — one at Cedar Forest and the other at Lee Hill Elementary.
The latter, Katie Vega, told the Free Press she was transferred to Lee Hill on the second day teachers returned in August because administrators believed she was still traumatized by the events of April 10.
Phelps told Mitchell and the five dissenting board members “You’re all lying,” about the staff changes, while Gillespie expressed concern that the HR staff who investigated the matter have a conflict of interest because they are friends with the administrators they hired. Phelps’ motion failed 5-2.
“We cannot find out the facts without having an investigation, and the least we can do is find out the facts,” said Phelps, who along with Gillespie departed the meeting early. “That’s it. That’s all I’m asking for.”
Vega endured ‘A living hell’
Mitchell and the five other board members reiterated that the sheriff’s office investigated the matter, charges were filed and it resulted in a conviction for misdemeanor assault and battery. Mitchell also said he has not received any complaints from Cedar Forest since this school year began last month.
Mitchell said instead of an immediate third-party investigation, he will review data on the climate at Cedar Forest from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice survey that is taken every two years and should be released in the first quarter of 2025. He will then decide whether an investigation is warranted based on data from the climate survey.
Mitchell lauded the most recent report, released in 2023, as “overwhelmingly” demonstrating that the concerns about the climate at Cedar Forest are unfounded and can be limited to isolated incidents. He said he also reviewed the 2021 report “and again I don’t see those concerns raised in either one of those surveys.”
The 2023 survey does not include the incident from earlier this year, but the school still did not score highly across the board as Mitchell hinted.
Cedar Forest scored a 3.4 out of 7 in working conditions for teachers; a 3.3 out of 7 in overall climate for staff; and a 4.2 out of 7 in overall climate for students, all below region and state averages.
Only 53.3% of staff said they planned to return to Cedar Forest compared to 83.1% in the division, 84.8% in the region and 86.3% in the state.
Also, nearly 25% of classroom instructors said they planned to leave the school after 2023 which was higher than the division, region and state averages. Bullying and student aggression data were also higher than the state average.
Vega, the paraprofessional who was transferred to Lee Hill, said last school year at Cedar Forest “was a living hell.”
Vega began a stint on short-term disability this week as medical issues arose related to stress and anxiety. She said the stress intensified after she was called to testify in the assault trial last month.
“I’m going to be doing treatment and testing for all kinds of stuff,” Vega said. “This has been life-altering and life-changing for me.”
‘It’s just part of the job’
Cedar Forest isn’t the only elementary school in the county facing safety concerns for students and teachers.
Kiriaki Karvelas, a former interim first-grade teacher at Courtland Elementary School, addressed the board Tuesday, stating that one student regularly assaulted her and other students in 2023-24. She said it often took seven minutes for a response from administrators while students were “injured, traumatized and crying hysterically.”
“Dr. Mitchell, at your last listening session [at Spotsylvania High School], you mentioned how you were assaulted as an educator … and I’m going to quote you on this. You said: ‘It’s just part of the job,’” Karvelas said. “No, it isn’t. Getting assaulted by a student is not just part of the job. How many times did you call for help after getting assaulted by the same student? I called for five months.”
Karvelas said she documented 17 incidents, including two reports to the sheriff’s office. She said on Dec. 13, 2023, the school resource officer recorded one of the alleged assaults. She had her classroom practice evacuation drills that it needed to use on several occasions.
“On April 22, I was assaulted for the last time by the same student,” Karvelas said. “I had been telling administrators that I will leave, that I will not be assaulted at school every week, and I cannot keep 24 students safe from one student.”
Karvelas said she planned to let parents know what was going on, but an administrator requested she not send an email because first graders were likely to remain quiet at home. Karvelas said she spoke to HR about her concerns and was told to either return to the classroom or stay home. She previously requested a paraprofessional to help with safety and was denied.
“No one came to the rescue,” she said.
Karvelas said she also asked for a different assignment to finish out the school year and was turned down. She learned last month after Daniels forwarded her an email from HR that she was terminated for abandoning her duties.
Karvelas, who was previously a paraprofessional before she was offered a position to help fill the teacher shortage, said in an Aug. 19 email to Mitchell that she feels like she was punished for “simply requesting a student’s special needs be met, a safe working environment provided to me and a safe learning environment for my students.” She asked Mitchell for an internal investigation and added that she may take legal action if necessary.
Mitchell noted in his Aug. 21 response that he was not superintendent last year, and that “we will respond accordingly” to any legal actions.
“Dr. Mitchell, your attitude with the email that I sent, ‘It wasn’t on my watch, I wasn’t superintendent, so it’s not my problem.’ That’s not how you start a new job,” Karvelas said. “It doesn’t matter if you weren’t superintendent. It should be your concern. These are children and you all need to stop using the schools as a platform and a stepping stone to climb that political ladder.”
