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Virginia Beach School Board’s feud with superintendent heats up

Posted at 11:15 PM, Oct 08, 2019
and last updated 2019-10-08 23:24:40-04

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - It was a very heated discussion Tuesday night between members of the Virginia Beach School Board and the school district's superintendent.

The three-hour-long meeting was about how to keep things transparent and prevent the bullying of school board members and Superintendent Aaron Spence.

This all started when Spence filed a letter of complaint to the board chair about two board members.

The school board discussed his concerns in a closed meeting on August 13.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when board members Laura Hughes, Victoria Manning and Carolyn Weems took legal action: They believe the closed session is against the law since they believe he is technically not an employee of the city, and they also maintain it's a violation of the Freedom of Information Act.

The purpose of Tuesday's meeting was to figure out a resolution and to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.

The city's attorney doesn't believe a law was broken because it is a personnel issue.

News 3 reporter Nana-Séntuo Bonsu was able to talk to Hughes on why the board members decided to take action.

“We had a couple of issues going on. We had the FOIA, we had the issues on Facebook, we had the committees, and eventually we felt like we were being bullied and it was going off the rails," Hughes told us. "Part of that is just demeaning and part of it was illegal, so it was the last straw."

Board Chair Beverly Anderson said they did come to a resolution and that their attorney will have them in writing by Friday. She is hoping that this resolution will help prevent future incidents like this one.

Hughes says this action is just a resolve and says at the moment there are no plans of a lawsuit.