Biography

*Elected to Loudoun County School Board: 2004-2007 term
*Born 1952, Schenectady, NY; NYS Regents scholar
*BA, Brigham Young University; JD, J. Reuben Clark Law School, BYU
*Married 30 years, wife Diane, six children, four grandchildren
*28-year resident of Loudoun County, with five LCPS graduates, youngest in Class of 2010
*Attorney/Government Affairs Representative in Washington, DC since 1979
*American Bar Association, Oregon State Bar, United States Supreme Court Bar
*Stone Bridge High School PTSO, Past President
*Boy Scouts of America, Goose Creek District Committee Member
*Member, Goose Creek Ward, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

My Family’s Experience with Loudoun County Public Schools

My wife Diane and I have been residents of Loudoun County since 1980. We have six children and over twenty-four years of experience in the Loudoun County Public Schools. Our daughter and three oldest sons are graduates of Loudoun County High School. Our fourth son is a graduate of Stone Bridge High School and our youngest son is in tenth grade at Heritage High School. Loudoun County has been a wonderful place to raise and educate our family.

We lived in Sterling Park from 1980 until 1989, where our oldest children attended Guilford Elementary School. In 1989 we moved to Potomac Crossing in Leesburg, where we have resided for the past eighteen years. During that time our children have attended Lucketts, Cool Spring and Balls Bluff elementary schools, J. L. Simpson, Harper Park and Smart’s Mill middle schools, and Loudoun County, Stone Bridge and Heritage high schools, as well as the Monroe Technology Center. That’s four elementary schools, three middle schools and three high schools, plus Monroe, and we only moved once! From this experience we have learned that change is inevitable in rapidly growing Loudoun County, and that all LCPS schools offer a climate for success.   

In early 2000, I became concerned that my son Christopher, who was then an eighth grade student at Harper Park Middle School, would have to switch high schools, from Stone Bridge High School to Heritage High School after his sophomore year. A year earlier the School Board had re-districted our Potomac Crossing neighborhood from the Loudoun County High School attendance zone to the new Stone Bridge High School zone. Candidly, I had not been involved in the process that lead to that decision, and was dismayed to learn that we would be leaving Loudoun County High School, where our oldest four children had all attended. At the time our son William was a junior at LCHS, and he was “grandfather” at LCHS, as it was the practice of the School Board not to redistrict students in their senior year of high school - a policy that I totally support.

Our son Chris was quite disappointed that he would not be attending LCHS as had his older sister and brothers. He had been very much looking forward to having some of the same teachers and sports coaches as had his older siblings. This was bad enough, but was made worse when we discovered that there was a very good chance that he would have to move from Stone Bridge to another high school, Heritage HS, following his sophomore year. This was unacceptable.

At this point I became involved in the process of determining the boundaries for the new Heritage High School, in the hope of either remaining in the Stone Bridge boundaries, or perhaps being moved back to Loudoun County High School. At the end of the redistricting process, I had been unsuccessful and our neighborhood was assigned to move from Stone Bridge HS, to the new Heritage High School in the fall of 2000. After this decision was made, two things happened. First, I became the first president of the new Stone Bridge HS PTSO. Second, I became involved with the School Board in developing what came to be known as the ”Rising Junior Survey”, which gave to the class of rising juniors in the high schools affected by  redistricting the prerogative of staying at the current school or moving to the new school. Although the School Board had to some degree allowed this informally in the past, it had not been definitely established as a policy of the school system.

After nearly a year of working through the School Board committee process, I was pleased when the School Board adopted the “Rising Junior Survey” as part of the regular process when a new high school is opened. Throughout this process I was impressed by the long hours of hard work by both school staff and the School Board. I also came to know a number of them personally, and they became acquainted with me.