Sandra Evans recall, Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia (2018)

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Fairfax County Public School District recall
Officeholders
Sandra Evans
Recall status
Did not go to a vote
See also
Recall overview Political recall efforts, 2018 Recalls in Virginia Virginia recall laws School board recalls Recall reports

An effort to recall Sandra Evans from her position as the Mason District representative on the Fairfax County Public Schools school board in Virginia did not go to court in 2018. Recall supporters submitted petitions to the Fairfax County Circuit Court on December 20, 2018, but they requested the petitions be withdrawn on December 26, 2018, after Evans filed a motion seeking to void the petitions based on a separate ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court.

The recall effort began after the board voted 7-4 to change the name of J.E.B. Stuart High School to Justice High School on October 26, 2017. J.E.B. Stuart was a general in the Confederate States Army, and proponents of the change said his name alienated ethnically diverse students. Evans represented the geographical area where the high school was located. She suggested the name Justice High School and authored the motion to change it. The vote ended a two-year debate that started when students at the school campaigned for a name change.

Recall supporters said Evans ignored community input when she voted to change the high school's name as well as when she voted for the name Justice High School over Stuart High School, which received the most votes in a community survey. Evans said she spent an extensive amount of time reading through the survey responses on the name change issue and believed that the name Stuart High School would have continued to divide the community. On December 19, 2018, Evans announced she would not seek re-election to the board in 2019.

Evans voted in favor of the name change along with Ryan McElveen, Ilryong Moon, Karen Keys-Gamarra, Jane Strauss, Pat Hynes, and Dalia Palchik. Members Megan McLaughlin, Tamara Derenak Kaufax, Elizabeth Schultz, and Thomas Wilson voted against the motion to change the name. Member Karen Corbett Sanders was absent from the vote.

Evans was re-elected to a four-year term on the board on November 3, 2015. Though the board is nonpartisan, local political parties endorsed board members. When the recall effort started, the board had a 10-2 Democratic governing majority. Evans was a member of that majority.

Recall supporters

The recall effort was started by Citizens For Government Integrity LLC, which described itself as "a NON-PARTISAN group of concerned parents and residents who live in Mason District in Fairfax County and are disturbed about the lack of good governance, irresponsible spending, safety and education of our children in the Fairfax County Public Schools, and the costs to the Fairfax County taxpayers," according to its website.

The board's policy on school name changes said that the board could consider changing a name if a school's purpose or function was changed or "where some other compelling need exists." The petition to recall Evans said that there was no compelling need to change the high school's name and that by voting to change the name, Evans did not follow board code.

The petition also said that Evans ignored community input after 56 percent of the 3,500 district residents surveyed said they did not want to change the name of the school. It also said she violated her oath of office, was dismissive of how much the name change was projected to cost the district, allowed groups outside of the district to influence school board policy and decisions, and failed to follow through on a compromise to change the name to Stuart High School, which received the most votes on a community survey. The full recall petition can be found below. Scroll in the box to read the entire document.

Recall opponents

Evans suggested the new name for the high school and authored the motion to change it. She said the term justice incorporated the efforts of Barbara Rose Johns, Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Col. Louis G. Mendez Jr., who received the second-, third-, and fifth-most votes, respectively, in a September 2017 community survey. Johns was a civil rights activist, Marshall was the first African American to serve on the United States Supreme Court, and Mendez was a local war hero.

“I understand people’s feelings about this,” Evans said in response to the recall campaign. “I don’t think it will get very far, but that’s part of the democratic process too.”

Evans said she took issue with allegations that she did not consider the community's input. She said she spent an extensive amount of time reading comments on community surveys about the decision to change the name. She said the response rate clouded the community consensus on whether or not to change the name and that most objections were related to cost rather than a desire to keep the name.

In response to the statement that she failed to follow through on the compromised Stuart High School name, Evans said, “By the time we got to the vote on the name, we realized that rather than being a way to unify people [Stuart] was just another way they were divided." Evans said that Justice High School had been an option on the survey. “With that, I felt that by combining the three names you get by far the most votes and honor all three people, so we did listen to the community by coming up with this name.”

Evans said choosing a new name could have been handled differently. “I think if we could’ve narrowed the number of names down and left it for the community to choose from a smaller number, that would’ve been helpful to the process, but we didn’t, so we had to deal with the input that we did get,” Evans said.

Board member Pat Hynes posted the following message in support of Evans on her Facebook page:

“	A group of people who don’t like the outcome of the school board’s vote on JEB Stuart HS are petitioning in court to remove my colleague Sandy Evans from the board. I have developed a good deal of sympathy and patience for the methods that frustrated constituents use to vent their displeasure – I also have felt powerless and lashed out in anger at elected officials. But to go to the extreme of asking a court to overturn the will of the people, who have elected Sandy three times now, is remarkable…This is about punishment. And I can’t think of anyone less deserving of this attack than Sandy Evans. Sandy bends over backward to provide opportunities for community input, and she has the patience of Job with fellow board members. She is easily the hardest-working among us and is unfailingly compassionate and truthful.	”
—Pat Hynes (2017)

Path to the ballot

See also: Laws governing recall in Virginia

Virginia Code § 24.2-233 states that "Upon petition, a circuit court may remove from office any elected officer or officer who has been appointed to fill an elective office, residing within the jurisdiction of the court." Reasons for recall may include neglect of duty, misuse of office, incompetence in the performance of the office, and conviction of a misdemeanor relating to drugs or involving a hate crime. For a recall petition to be considered by a court, it must be signed by 10 percent of the people who voted in the last election for that office. A total of 12,408 voters cast ballots in the district's 2015 general election, meaning recall supporters had to collect at least 1,241 signatures. Recall supporters announced that they submitted 1,307 signatures on December 20, 2018. Evans filed a motion to void the petitions on December 21, 2018. Recall supporters requested to withdraw the petitions on December 26, 2018.

About the district

See also: Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia

The Fairfax County school district is located in Fairfax County, Virginia.

The Fairfax County school district is located in northeast Virginia in Fairfax County. The county seat is Fairfax. The county was home to 1,138,652 residents in 2016, according to estimates by the United States Census Bureau. The district was the largest school district in the state in the 2014-2015 school year and served 185,541 students.

Demographics

Fairfax County outperformed Virginia as a whole in terms of higher education achievement between 2011 and 2015. The United States Census Bureau found that 59.9 percent of county residents aged 25 years and older had attained a bachelor's degree, compared to 36.3 percent of state residents. During the same time period, the median household income in Fairfax County was $112,552, compared to $65,015 for the entire state. The poverty rate in the county was 6.2 percent, while it was 11.2 percent statewide.

Racial Demographics, 2016
Race	Fairfax County (%)	Virginia (%)
White	65.8	70.0
Black or African American	10.2	19.8
American Indian and Alaska Native	0.6	0.5
Asian	19.7	6.6
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander	0.1	0.1
Two or More Races	3.6	2.9
Hispanic or Latino	16.1	9.1

Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.

2018 recall efforts

See also: School board recalls

A total of 33 school board recall efforts nationwide were covered by Ballotpedia in 2018. They included 74 board members. Twelve recall elections were held in 2018. The school board recall success rate was 28.4%.

Of the 12 efforts that made it to the ballot in 2018, eight were approved and the 20 targeted members were removed from office. Another two recall elections were defeated, and the targeted members kept their seats. One effort saw a mix of results: three members retained their seats, while the fourth was removed from his. Another recall election was held after the board member resigned. Her replacement was elected through the recall. The chart below details the status of 2018 recall efforts by individual school board member.

See also

• Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia
• Fairfax County Public Schools elections (2015)
• Mayor and city council recall, Charlottesville, Virginia (2017)
• Recall campaigns in Virginia
• Political recall efforts, 2018
• School board recalls

External links

• Search Google News for this topic
• Fairfax County Public Schools
• Fairfax County Office of Elections
• Virginia Department of Elections
• Recall Sandy Evans

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