Christopher Lewis (Alexandria City School Board)
Ballotpedia provides comprehensive election coverage of the 100 largest cities in America by population as well as mayoral, city council, and district attorney election coverage in state capitals outside of the 100 largest cities. This board member is outside of that coverage scope and does not receive scheduled updates.
Christopher Lewis is the District C representative on the Alexandria City School Board in Virginia. Lewis sought another term in the general election on November 3, 2015.[1] Christopher Lewis (Alexandria City School Board) won the general election on November 3, 2015.
Elections
2015
Opposition
The Alexandria City School Board is a nine-member board elected by district to three-year terms. There are three districts on the board with three board members per district.[2] The general election was held on November 3, 2015.[3] The seats of all nine incumbents were up for election.[4]
Incumbents William Campbell and Karen Graf and challenger Harold Cardwell ran unopposed and won the three District A seats. District B incumbent Kelly Booz lost her seat after facing challengers Cindy Anderson, Mimi Goff, Margaret Lorber and Veronica Nolan. Anderson, Lorber and Nolan won the three District B seats. The District C race for three seats featured incumbents Ronnie Campbell, Patricia Hennig and Christopher Lewis and challengers Darla Dillard and Ramee Gentry. While Campbell and Lewis won re-election, Henning lost her seat to Gentry.
Results
| Alexandria City School Board, District C, General Election, 2015 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
 Christopher Lewis Incumbent |
25.4% | 2,808 |
| Ronnie Campbell Incumbent |
22.8% | 2,520 |
| Ramee Gentry |
17.5% | 1,938 |
| Darla Dillard | 17.2% | 1,910 |
| Patricia Hennig Incumbent | 17.2% | 1,900 |
| Total Votes | 11,076 | |
| Source: Virginia Department of Elections, "2015 November General", accessed November 3, 2015 | ||
Funding
Lewis reported $35,133.89 in contributions and $18,367.20 in expenditures to the Virginia State Board of Elections, which left his campaign with $16,766.69 on hand as of October 28, 2015.[5]
Endorsements
Lewis earned the endorsements of the Alexandria Political Action Committee for Education and the Alexandria Times.[6][7]
Campaign themes
2015
Lewis answered the following questions from The Connection about issues in the district:
| “ |
What is one issue that defines your call to serve, why does it matter, and how will you tackle it? Our top issue is academic achievement for all students. Serving all students is the charge of a public school division. This begins with closing gaps for our priority gap groups: students in poverty, students with disabilities, minority students, and English language learners. However, to support achievement for all students we must provide a broad and rigorous curriculum with targeted supports to the individual needs of all students. While ACPS is committed to this in theory and policy, the Board must continue holding administrators accountable to this task while giving teachers the support to meet these goals, including addressing overcrowding to keep class sizes small. What distinguishes you from your opponent(s) and why should voters choose you? My voice as an independent advocate. As the only childless board member or candidate, I represent the majority of Alexandrians who don’t have kids in the system but still demand a high quality school system. In 2012, I stepped up to run when we needed new leadership and few were willing. I have developed a reputation for open dialogue, accountability, and consensus building resulting in my colleagues electing me Vice Chair. I believe that to become a great school division, we must continue to rally support of the greater community which I represent. How can Alexandria address overcrowding within the current budgetary confines? What ideas and skills do you bring to solving this? To address overcrowding in the short and long term we must both redistrict to rebalance attendance zones across the city, and build new space to meet the agreed projections for enrollment by the city and school staff. Since my first month on the Board I led fights to preserve capacity building projects targeted in budget cuts. I’ve led the push to begin the difficult process of redistricting as soon as possible and to meet the capacity needs accurately projected in our CIP budget. Council must either work with the School Board to find new dedicated funds to pay for these needs, or agree to fall short of housing our students properly. All citizens, with or without children, must rally behind this goal and I will continue to work with City Council to build community support to meet these needs, with all funding options on the table. Our ability to meet this challenge will impact the City’s reputation for years to come. While the majority of Alexandria schools remain accredited, what can be done about continuing problems facing Jefferson-Houston? For incumbents, what lessons have been learned from the problem? For non-incumbent candidates, what would you have done differently? I’m proud our Board defended the rights of localities to control its own tax dollars in preventing the takeover of Jefferson Houston. Alexandrians must fix it, with support from the State Board of Education, and for 18 months this has been a model for success. As we learned in the successes at Patrick Henry and TC Williams, turnaround begins with leadership from the principal and a unified vision with staff and community over multiple years. Jefferson Houston has already begun these steps, hitting the two year benchmarks of a three year state-approved plan in one year. The school is on a path to full accreditation in the third year of the plan just as Patrick Henry did. We must see this turnaround to the end with full budgetary and community support. [8] |
” |
| —Christopher Lewis (2015), [9] | ||
Recent news
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms 'Christopher Lewis' 'Alexandria City Public Schools'. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also
- Alexandria City Public Schools, Virginia
- Alexandria City Public Schools elections (2015)
- Incumbency no guarantee of success in Nov. 3 school board elections (November 6, 2015)
- What happened in Nov.'s top board elections? (November 4, 2015)
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Virginia Department of Elections, "List of Candidates," September 9, 2015
- ↑ Alexandria City Public Schools, "School Board," accessed September 17, 2015
- ↑ Virginia Department of Elections, "2015 November Election Calendar," accessed January 27, 2015
- ↑ Alexandria City Public Schools, "School Board Members," accessed January 27, 2015
- ↑ Virginia State Board of Elections, "Campaign Finance Reports," accessed October 27, 2015
- ↑ AlexandriaNews.org, "Alexandria Educators Endorse Candidates," July 13, 2015
- ↑ Alexandria Times, "Alexandria Times Endorses Local Election Candidates," October 23, 2015
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ The Connection, "School Board–Alexandria District C: Christopher J. Lewis," October 26, 2015
