Statement to School Board

Last night I made the following comments in a meeting of the Loudoun County School Board:

First, let me thank you all for your good work – I do appreciate your service.

My name is Jim Barnes. From 1989 through 2010, I served as the public information officer for the Loudoun County government. In fact, I was the county’s first public information officer.

After leaving that job, I worked as a journalist covering local news across Northern Virginia for about a decade.

As you might imagine, I have sat through hundreds of public meetings, but I have never gotten up to speak as a private citizen – until now.

For many of the years I was working for the county, Wayde Byard was my counterpart for Loudoun County Public Schools. So I can appreciate what a hard job he has, and how good he’s been at it.

And when I was working as a journalist, covering Loudoun schools, he was always honest and straightforward with me, and helped steer me in the right direction.

I have always found Mr. Byard to be a hard-working public servant and a person of integrity.

Now he is facing a serious charge, and I understand that he has been placed on leave without pay. I don’t know the facts behind the charge, or even what he is alleged to have said that led to his indictment.

I trust that those facts will become known in his trial. But that won’t take place until June 20.

Six months is a long time to go without a paycheck. Six months! Please consider how that would affect your household budget. And he may not have even done anything wrong. He deserves the presumption of innocence.

It seems only fair that Mr. Byard’s pay be restored until he has his day in court. I respectfully ask that you consider doing so.

Again, thank you!

In Loudoun County, ‘village of Oz’ turns into an amenity-rich, family-friendly neighborhood

When Shirley Barber moved with her young family to Ashburn Farm in 1989, “it was like the village of Oz dropped down into this country area — one road coming in and out, no buildings,” she said. “There was nothing here.”

Barber and her husband, David Tabor, were the original owners of a house in the eastern Loudoun County community of 3,863 homes, most of which were built between 1988 and 1993. A few smaller neighborhoods were annexed into Ashburn Farm during the ensuing decade.

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The Washington Post, July 8, 2020

In Lake Ridge, Va., a planned community comes into its leafy glory

When developer Ken Thompson conceived the Lake Ridge community in the 1960s, he envisioned a place where suburban homes would coexist with nature, where active individuals and families would enjoy spending time outdoors.

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The Washington Post, November 14, 2019

Douglass School pitches in to help hurricane victims

Over the past few weeks, Douglass School has taken the lead in a relief effort to help students in a Florida community that was devastated by Hurricane Irma last month. The project has given the students an opportunity to look past their own struggles, imagine what it would be like to lose everything and consider what they can do to help.

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The Washington Post, Oct. 1, 2017

Science Center finds home in Loudoun

8-year-old Ananya demonstrates her invention, a “rolling aquarium,” which she created in the Children’s Science Center’s Garage.

When visitors enter the Children’s Science Center, they are greeted by two distinct sides of the small museum.

To the left is the Experiment Bar, where children conduct science experiments, assisted by family members, staff members and volunteers. To the right, mounted on the wall, is an enormous periodic table of elements showing the names of the museum’s major benefactors.

The Experiment Bar is one of the most popular features of the center, which offers interactive scientific activities for children and their families. The element wall honors the donors who helped open the center, marketing director Dorothy Ready said.

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The Washington Post, July 9, 2017

Historical marker for Ashburn School

Less than nine months after vandals defaced the Ashburn Colored School by spray-painting it with racist graffiti, a Virginia historical marker has been installed near the front entrance of the gleaming white building.

The marker came about through the efforts of a group of seventh-grade students at Farmwell Station Middle School who selected it as a project for their social studies class in the fall. They cleared hurdles at local and state levels to obtain grant funding for the marker and win approval from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which installed the marker Monday.

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The Washington Post, June 11, 2017

Hill School Arboretum gets recognition

The Hill School, as seen from the arboretum

Thousands of trees adorn the property of The Hill School in Middleburg, providing a peaceful, natural landscape for the school campus and an outdoor learning laboratory for the students.

Some of the trees at The Hill School Arboretum look as though they could have been there for a century. But less than three decades ago, the school was surrounded by hayfields and cornfields. A gift of land and the vision of a dedicated volunteer led to the establishment of the arboretum, school officials said.

The arboretum was recently selected by the Smithsonian Institution and the Garden Club of America for inclusion in the Archives of American Gardens. The school announced in February that the arboretum was one of 51 properties across the country that were added to the archives last year.

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The Washington Post, May 7, 2017

School Board accepts budget reduction

When the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors adopted a budget for fiscal 2018 on April 4, it handed the school board the task of trimming its expenditures by $5.5 million.

On Monday, the school board completed the budget reconciliation process by approving a list of reductions recommended by Schools Superintendent Eric Williams. That list avoided cuts to the school board’s key initiatives, such as expanding full-day kindergarten, boosting employee salaries and buying new school buses.

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The Washington Post, April 30, 2017

Kids learn about Shakespeare on Saturdays

Loudoun Country Day School students rehearse a scene from Shakespeare’s “Much Ado about Nothing” in the school library.

In between the usual Saturday activities — soccer, ballet, taekwondo — a group of 9- and 10-year-olds from Loudoun Country Day School are learning to “crack the code” of William Shakespeare.

About a dozen fourth- and fifth-graders attend voluntary Saturday morning classes at the Leesburg-area private school to learn how to understand and perform Shakespeare’s works. The school’s headmaster, Randy Hollister, leads the classes.

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The Washington Post, April 16, 2017