Testimony concluded on Wednesday in the trial over the Shenandoah County school board's decision to reinstate Confederate names on two schools – but a federal judge won't rule on the case until next year. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
The fifth day of trial in the Virginia State Conference NAACP and five students' lawsuit against the school board contained testimony from two witnesses. The defendants called Michael Dorman to the stand – the former principal of Stonewall Jackson High School who worked there for 17 years and retired this spring. He and his sons are also alumni of the school.
Dorman said that while this part of the county is less affluent than the rest, the local community "didn't mind rolling up their sleeves" to help out at the school, which is "the center of the community." Dorman said he received numerous complaints around each school name vote, with some being "borderline threatening" from both sides of the issue.
Dorman said that after the Confederate names were removed, he helped graduating students who requested them to get a copy of their diploma with the name Stonewall Jackson High School. But under cross-examination from plaintiffs' attorney Marja Plater, he recounted that about 10 years ago, he worked with the superintendent to have an emblem of the general on a horse, bearing a Confederate flag, removed from the gym floor, because "hate groups used that flag as a symbol," and "that wasn't us."
Next, School Board Member Gloria Carlineo testified. She's originally from Puerto Rico, and moved to Fort Valley in 2019. Before becoming a stay-at-home mom, she was an attorney who served on both Ohio and Virginia's state entities that look into claims of housing and job discrimination. One of her tasks in Ohio, she said, was discerning "was that person harmed," adding that "most of the cases actually did not warrant an investigation."
Carlineo said she was motivated to run for the school board in 2023 after her son had a government teacher at Central High School who presented pro-gun control materials without balancing them with pro-Second Amendment materials. An editorial she wrote at the time decries a far-left ideology seeking "to completely remove true Christian values from society," and using a "Trojan horse of diversity and acceptance" that leads to drug abuse and sexual immorality.
The defendants were again reprimanded over their use of legislative privilege on Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge Michael F. Urbanski called a sidebar over 2020 school board emails a community member obtained via a FOIA request and provided to the 2024 board, which Carlineo has publicly stated showed flaws in the Confederate name removal. Urbanski said "the only way this is relevant is to get in the back door the reasons for the 2024 vote."
Carlineo said she thought Stonewall Jackson High School was named such because of the proximity of Jackson's encampment to the school grounds, based on a 1950's article written by Coiner Rosen – the father of one of her constituents. In cross-examination, plaintiffs' attorney Kaitlin Banner displayed a letter to the editor Rosen wrote in 1956, entitled "says Southerners: hold heads high, speak for right to segregate." Carlineo said she wasn't familiar with that piece.
In the high school's inaugural yearbook, a man identified as "Conard Rosen, a neighbor," provided photos of a man holding a Confederate flag over the school construction site.
Now that the presentation of evidence is over, both parties have a few months to file written briefs and responses. They're scheduled to return to court on March 31st to present oral arguments and closing statements. Some time after that, the judge will rule on whether the reinstatement of Confederate names harmed and discriminated against the plaintiffs as defined by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act.
