George Spaulding, 80 (“Two Jack Bennys,” he told the Progress, alluding to the comedian’s long-running gag, inaugurated at his 40th birthday, of being perpetually 39), is running unopposed for the Bowling Green seat on the School Board. With 16 non-consecutive years on the Board, Spaulding is the current body’s longest-running member and its present chairman.
Originally from West Virginia, Spaulding said that he has “never gotten away from the schools.” With a bachelor’s in biology and physical education from the University of Charleston (W.Va.) and a master’s in education from the College of William and Mary, Spaulding spent 35 years as a teacher, coach, and athletic director.
He began his teaching career in 1958 in Williamsburg, where he spent 12 years at James Blair High School before coming to Caroline County as a teacher and football coach at Bowling Green Senior High School. When the county’s two high schools were combined in 1977 into the existing Caroline High School, Spaulding moved over to that institution, where he remained until his retirement in 1993.
Although Spaulding said that his father, himself an elected official, once told him, “George, you’ll never be a good politician,” he has been involved in county politics since the ’80s. In 1988, he was elected to Bowling Green Town Council, a position he stepped down from in October 1995 after being appointed to the School Board by then supervisor Robert Farmer. He was subsequently elected to the Board in the first elections for that body held in November 1995.
Overall, Spaulding has served four terms on the School Board, with a hiatus from 2008–11 after a 2007 failed bid for the Bowling Green seat on the Board of Supervisors, a position snagged by current supervisor Jeff Sili.
“It’s not an easy job,” Spaulding said of service on the School Board. Pointing to three major issues that have occupied the body of late—the Bowling Green Elementary School flooring fiasco, the search for and appointment of a new superintendent, and the much-anticipated renovations to Madison Elementary and CHS—he told the Progress, “I’m hoping things start settling down now.”
Asked about public criticism of the School Board’s decisions on how to spend renovation funds, particularly the funds allotted to color CHS’s new track blue, Spaulding said, “We’ve spent [money] where and when we’re supposed to. We haven’t overspent anything.”
He acknowledged that because of rising construction costs, “delays have hurt us.”
Spaulding identified the School Board’s repairing the teacher salary scale as a major accomplishment of his most recent term and said that repairing administration and support staff salary scales would be a goal of his next term.
“We’ve got loads and loads of people that are working for peanuts,” he said.
Other goals he cited include completing the CHS and MES projects, getting new superintendent George Parker established, continuing to improve CCPS’s im age in the region, and maintaining high standards within the school system.
“So many times [educators] have lowered the bar to be more successful,” he said. “We want to raise the bar.”
He emphasized the importance of compromise for public officials, noting that “if you lose something, you’ve still got to go along” with the decision.
“There’s no place in education for politics,” he said.
Outside of his service to the School Board, Spaulding is a deacon and Sunday School teacher at Calvary Baptist. He and his wife Mary Elizabeth have two grown daughters who are both products of the Caroline school system.