The outcome of a Roanoke Valley school board race is still undecided. In Roanoke County's Windsor Hills district, challenger Ryan White holds a narrow, 60-vote lead over incumbent Cheryl Facciani.
School board races are non-partisan, but Facciani first won election to the board in 2021 by running as a Republican-endorsed candidate. Republicans across Virginia had a tough time on this year's election night, but there's more going on in Roanoke County than just partisan politics.
"It's just hard to look at blank faces staring out at you when people are spilling their guts about what matters to them, and they just want people to understand and care about them," says Laura Bowman, a parent who's long been involved in the PTA in the county.
She's referring the school board's response to a number of emotional incidents over the last four years. In 2023, people packed a school board meeting to rally behind teachers after a parent accused staff at an elementary school of being, quote, “sexual predators disguised as teachers and staff.”
Then earlier this year, parents called on the board to rework its policies on bullying after a 10-year old student died by suicide. But there's another issue too.
"My goal was to bring awareness that there was a lot of, me personally, but a lot of other community members who were upset with the sale and the way it was handled," says Mary Paige Larsen, a parent and a resident of a Back Creek neighborhood behind Poage Farm.
Poage Farm is a historic 55-acre farm that purchased by the school board in 2008 as a potential site for a school. After the plan fell through, the school system sold it to a real estate developer last year at a $1.4 million loss.
"It would have gone a long way had our representative had come to the community saying, 'This is what we're planning to do. How would you like to see this land be used?'" Larsen says. "But that opportunity was never given."
Larsen made a series of four signs she placed by the farm property, bemoaning its sale. One reads, "Make your voice heard." Voters in the school board district apparently did.
The county registrar's office will make a count next week of all the provisional and late arriving ballots, and determine a winner.
