Eye Lift: My Lamp

Virginia’s Second Best Public Schools Superintendent Receives Low Marks from Non-Parent, Independent School Board Candidate

WASHINGTON (July 8, 2025)—Many may have been following headline reports about how “Arlington Public Schools is addressing ‘concerns and recent media reports about the presence of a registered sex offender at the Arlington Aquatic Center pools.’” And, “[i]n a message sent to APS families and pool users. . . , Superintendent Dr. Francisco Durán said the school system is taking action ‘to prevent incidents like this from occurring again.’” As first reported by WJLA, Richard Kenneth Cox, had been arrested “on a series of charges linked to incidents this fall at high school pools, which are open to the public during certain hours”, and had “allegedly exposed himself in the girl’s locker room at Washington-Liberty High School after identifying himself as transgender.”, prompting “statements from the local Republican party and a former School Board candidate.” However, whether the superintendent of the 13th largest and second best public school division in Virginia deserve a two percent step increase for his performance was the agenda item for the school board this morning and perhaps everyone had already gone away for vacation, after posting comments to the press. And cut.

According to the last update on his Facebook account on June 17th, the final day for qualifying for the November ballot, Dr. James “Vell” Rives, IV, wrote, “my daughter Evelyn became a full participant in the Democracy!”, with a capital “D”. And at least according to local news reports, “it appears it likely will be a three-person field for the lone School Board seat on the Nov. 4 ballot. Independent James “Vell” Rives IV and Democratic endorsee Monique “Moe” Bryant have qualified for the ballot access, county election officials tell ARLnow, joining Major Webb in the race to succeed Mary Kadera”. Meanwhile, the putative front runner, Bryant, after winning the endorsement of the battle-hardened Arlington Dems, defeating teachers’ union president June Prakash with a resounding 69%, is joining her partisan supporters, stressing unity, urging, “We have to keep pushing forward,” while “accompanied by her father, who began his education in 1955 in the very building (now Dr. Charles R. Drew Elementary) where the meeting was being held”, as once again the Arlington GOP take a pass on what the Supreme Court had described as “perhaps the most important function of state and local government”. However, while in a rare school board meeting scheduled for a weekday morning, only the members of the Arlington County Board, a few recently appointed school officials and their families were on hand to watch Arlington Public School (APS) Board Chair Kadera pass the gavel to Vice Chair Bethany Zecker Sutton for the 2025-2026 school year, and the elevation of Miranda Turner, Kadera’s former rival in the 2021 pary endorsement caucus to serve as the new Vice Chair.

“At an online candidate forum hosted by the Arlington NAACP, Monique “Moe” Bryant and June Prakash voiced support for Superintendent Francisco Durán but challenged other aspects of Arlington Public Schools leadership.” However, with an upcoming hearing in the Arlington Circuit Court on whether Arlington Dems Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehgjhani-Tafti will be compelled to convene a grand jury investigation into Durán’s implementation of what amounts to a mandate not only to participate in human experimentation of unapproved biological products, but CBRN countermeasures known since at least the 1980s to be most effective for inducing female cancer in transgenic mice, and whether his refusal to respond to a FOIA request to produce a copy of the safe school reopening plan the school division had been ordered to develop in June 2020 by State Health Commissioner Mohammed Norman Oliver, M.D. in the Governor Ralph Northam Administration, at least one litigation hobbyist was on hand to express objection—the only public comment contributor to sign up to speak at the meeting, and Webb is not even a parent.

Webb appeared still in travel apparel, having raced back from Norfolk, where the first action in the nation to compel a grand jury investigation into a state governor’s COVID-19 response has been stalled for almost a year. However, with a new DOJ investigation into the handling of the response by former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a revived interest has prompted some new movement, as Webb prepares replies to briers recently filed by top D.C. law firm Williams & Connolly, for their client, The Washington Post, and nationally recognized Ballard Spahr, who have been retained to represent WJLA, an ABC TV affiliate owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose transfer fee revenues increased 175% during the pandemic, during a time when for the first time in history, with Americans forced to stay at home, this revenue source had even far surpassed advertising, pausing now for “a word from our sponsors” and “station identification”.

Visit Major Mike Webb for APS Board

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