09/08/2026
I am submitting the attached commentary for consideration following the resignation of Franklin City Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Carlton Carter.
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A Farewell to Dr. Carter, and a Warning to Whoever Comes Next
Dr. Carter,
I never sent the letter I had written asking you to resign.
Now I do not have to.
But after reading your farewell statements and your characterization of the people who challenged your administration as a small “special interest group,” I cannot simply let this chapter close with the record rewritten on the way out.
So this is not the resignation letter I planned to write.
It is a farewell, a correction of the record, and more importantly, a warning to the people who will inherit Franklin City Public Schools after you.
I want to start somewhere people probably will not expect.
When I first began dealing with Franklin City Public Schools, I did not automatically blame you.
In fact, as an outsider looking in, you initially appeared to me to be one of the more intelligent and level headed people in the room.
I do not like assigning blame simply because someone sits at the top of an organization. Systems are complicated. Decisions are distributed. People underneath leaders sometimes make decisions the leader does not know about.
So I watched.
I documented.
I asked questions.
And I tried for a very long time to determine who was actually responsible for what.
I did not come to Franklin looking for a fight with Carlton Carter.
I did not even come to Franklin knowing the people who would eventually be accused of being some coordinated political opposition against you.
I am not from Franklin.
I was not part of Franklin politics.
I was not part of some faction.
I did not have longstanding relationships with these families.
I experienced what I experienced with my own children first.
Then I reached a point where I thought, There is absolutely no way this is only happening to us.
So I asked.
And people started answering.
Families reached out.
Staff reached out.
Former staff reached out.
People told me stories about their own children, their own employment, their own interactions with central office, their own complaints, their own fears of retaliation and their own experiences trying to get someone inside this system to listen.
That matters, Dr. Carter.
Because the families did not create the problems by finding each other.
The problems caused the families to find each other.
Yet in your public clarification, you reduced the opposition to approximately 35 to 40 people, a “small special interest group.”
That explanation is convenient.
It is also inadequate.
Thirty-five to forty people in a tiny community is not nothing to begin with.
But more importantly, how many of those people independently arrived at the same conclusions before they ever met one another?
How many families filed complaints?
How many went to the media?
How many described retaliation?
How many sought lawyers?
How many sought help from state or federal agencies?
How many employees were afraid to attach their own names to what they told other people?
How many parents simply gave up?
And how many people never spoke at all because they watched what happened to the people who did?
You cannot measure institutional trust merely by counting the people willing to stand at a microphone.
Silence is not consent.
Sometimes silence is exhaustion.
Sometimes it is fear.
Sometimes it is poverty.
Sometimes it is disability.
Sometimes it is a parent who does not understand IDEA well enough to know that what happened to their child was illegal.
Sometimes it is someone who cannot afford a lawyer.
I know that now because this experience eventually pushed me far beyond Franklin.
I began speaking with advocates, parents, attorneys and families all around the country.
And unfortunately, one of the hardest things I learned is that Franklin is not unique.
I wish it were.
What happened here is part of something much larger.
There are school systems all over this country where procedure replaces humanity, compliance becomes a box-checking exercise, parents are treated as adversaries, disabled children become administrative burdens and institutions become more concerned with defending themselves than correcting themselves.
And that leads me to something I have thought about constantly throughout this experience:
Normal people do not act like this.
Normal disagreement does not require parents to document every conversation because they are afraid the story will change later.
Normal collaboration does not require a parent to learn federal disability law just to get their child evaluated.
Normal special education does not involve walking into an IEP meeting where decisions appear to have already been made.
There is a word for that under IDEA:
Predetermination.
An IEP team is supposed to consider the parent’s participation and the child’s individual needs before reaching its decisions.
It is not supposed to decide the placement first and then hold a meeting to manufacture paperwork around the decision.
Yet I sat in meetings where I was effectively told, “This is the only placement we have.” My records document that statement in connection with my young child’s placement. FCPS Timeline(2).pdf
That is not individualized special education.
That is fitting the child into the system Franklin already built.
Normal collaboration does not involve repeatedly asking for records, proposed documents, agendas, written responses and corrections, only for the district to proceed anyway and memorialize its own version afterward. My complaint record documents that FCPS proceeded with an IEP-related meeting and issued a PWN and amendment while requested records, FERPA issues, proposed documents and compensatory-education questions remained unresolved. VDOE_State_Complaint_Form_McDermott_FILLED(2)(1).pdf
Normal parent participation does not mean a father sits trapped in a digital waiting room while the district proceeds without him and finalizes paperwork. That incident is documented in my case record. Evidence Mapping & Strategic Critique Memo.pdf
Normal special education does not require the Virginia Department of Education to repeatedly tell a tiny school division to follow laws it was already required to follow.
I have received three Letters of Findings involving noncompliance from VDOE.
In Jayco’s case alone, VDOE found that FCPS unreasonably delayed approval of an independent educational evaluation, failed to timely complete his reevaluation and eligibility process, and failed to timely develop his IEP. VDOE ordered corrective action, staff training and an IEP meeting to determine compensatory services. Sourced Fact Ledger — Chewning_FCPS Matter.pdf
That finding was appealed.
The noncompliance finding remained.
FCPS did not even challenge those findings in the appeal record. Evidence Mapping & Strategic Critique Memo.pdf
And six months later, the compensatory education ordered because of that harm still has not actually been delivered.
Think about the absurdity of that.
The child loses services.
The parent fights.
The state investigates.
The state finds the district out of compliance.
The state orders corrective action.
Months pass.
And the child is still waiting for the remedy.
At what point does “compliance” become theater?
That is why I have repeatedly described portions of FCPS’s internal dispute process as feeling like a kangaroo court.
The institution accused of wrongdoing controls the meeting.
It controls most of the records.
Its employees determine what goes into the IEP.
It writes the Prior Written Notice.
It chooses how the parent’s objection is characterized.
It determines which facts make it into the official record.
Then, after investigating itself, the institution produces paperwork showing that it followed its process.
And when the parent refuses to accept that answer, the parent becomes “difficult.”
That is not meaningful accountability.
That is procedural insulation.
My family dealt with delayed evaluations, delayed IEP development, disagreements/delays over IEEs, Prior Written Notices, Least Restrictive Environment, Child Find, records and FERPA, meaningful parent participation, safety, discipline, transportation and compensatory services. Those issues became extensive enough that my federal referral identifies multiple IDEA complaints concerning three children in one family, a VDOE appeal, and a federal OCR matter involving thirteen accepted allegations.
And I am not the only family dealing with OCR.
That matters too.
Because you cannot simultaneously tell Franklin this is a tiny campaign against you while multiple families are separately asking outside civil rights agencies to examine what happened to them.
I have also watched families describe retaliation after advocacy.
Truancy threats.
Attendance disputes.
CPS involvement.
Discipline.
Records battles.
Administrative pressure.
Fear of speaking publicly.
Normal institutions do not repeatedly generate the same fear among unrelated families and then respond by insisting everyone independently imagining the same pattern is the problem.
Normal institutions get curious.
They investigate themselves.
They ask, “What are we doing that is causing people to experience us this way?”
And that is where I think Franklin went wrong.
Too much energy went into proving the institution was right.
Not enough went into asking whether the children were okay.
That was especially obvious with students with disabilities.
You wrote a lengthy statement explaining your position and your accomplishments, talking about Franklin, its history, its future and the children you believed deserved excellence.
And once again, students with disabilities might as well have been invisible.
That omission was almost poetic, because that has been my experience throughout this entire fight.
We disappear.
Our children disappear.
Our services become negotiable.
Our disabilities become inconvenient.
Our parents become “difficult.”
Our legal protections become procedural technicalities.
And society still treats disabled people sometimes as though we have leprosy, as though disability is something uncomfortable that should be kept out of sight rather than a normal part of humanity.
You wrote that a stronger Franklin requires a stronger school system and that children deserve excellence.
I agree.
But excellence for whom?
A school system cannot call itself excellent if disabled children have to fight harder merely to access the education everyone else receives automatically.
It cannot be excellent if a parent has to file a state complaint to make federal law matter.
It cannot be excellent if compensatory education exists on paper while the child waits.
It cannot be excellent if special education operates around whatever placement happens to exist rather than what an individual child actually requires.
It cannot be excellent if there are not enough specialized personnel to implement the IEPs being written.
It cannot be excellent if children are sitting on overcrowded buses or transportation becomes another barrier to education.
It cannot be excellent if children receive threats and families have to fight to get basic safety concerns taken seriously. My own records include a threat against my son involving being “turned into Swiss cheese” and shooting gestures on the school bus. Sourced Fact Ledger — Chewning_FCPS Matter.pdf
It cannot be excellent if parents cannot trust the accuracy of their children’s records.
It cannot be excellent if public participation is treated like something government must tolerate instead of something government exists to serve.
And it cannot be excellent when the adults running the institution appear more preoccupied with who criticized them than with why the criticism existed.
There are other uncomfortable questions that should not disappear simply because you are leaving.
Under your administration, Franklin eliminated its traditional middle school configuration and moved seventh through twelfth grades into Franklin High School. The district’s own reorganization proposal expressly cited staffing and transportation savings while converting J.P. King toward CTE use.
Yet Franklin still struggles with the basic questions families care about:
Do we have enough teachers?
Do we have enough buses?
Do we have enough speech-language professionals?
Do we have enough occupational-therapy capacity?
Do disabled students actually receive the minutes written in their IEPs?
Are children receiving age-appropriate academic opportunities?
Why is preserving a separate CTE facility treated as sacred when Paul D. Camp Community College is literally down the road and FCPS already uses partnerships, dual enrollment and workforce programming?
CTE is valuable.
But CTE does not replace a functioning K-12 system.
And children cannot build careers on foundations they never received.
The academic data cannot simply be converted into a victory lap either. Publicly reported state data showed Franklin High with Level 3 performance in science, dropout rate and college/career/civic readiness in the 2024-25 reporting discussed by the division, while S.P. Morton had remained Accredited with Conditions in the earlier period. More recent reporting says FCPS declined in pass and pass-proficient rates across every tested subject except mathematics division-wide when comparing 2024-25 with 2025-26, and Franklin High declined across all subject areas tested.
That does not mean nothing improved under your tenure.
It means the record is more complicated than the farewell narrative.
And that is exactly my point.
Human beings are complicated.
Institutions are complicated.
You can accomplish some good things and still be responsible for serious failures.
Both things can be true.
I do not need to turn you into a cartoon villain to hold you accountable.
That is actually why I tried to remain neutral for so long.
I saw intelligence in you.
I saw someone capable of articulating a vision.
I understood some of the things you were trying to accomplish.
I agreed with some of them.
But intelligence does not excuse institutional blindness.
Vision does not excuse procedural violations.
Good intentions do not restore lost educational time.
And a superintendent does not get credit only for the accomplishments while everyone underneath him somehow owns every failure.
Leadership does not work that way.
You were the superintendent.
The central office organizational structure placed the assistant superintendents, academic leadership, principals and overall strategic plan beneath the superintendent’s authority. It specifically assigned student services, special-education compliance, truancy and related programs within the central-office structure.
So yes, what happened under your tenure matters.
And Franklin should also resist the temptation to treat your resignation as though removing one person automatically fixes everything.
It will not.
I have independently heard from multiple families and staff members who believe significant influence inside FCPS extends beyond Dr. Carter, particularly involving Ms. Tanieka Ricks and Mona Murphy.
I am not here to prove claims that either woman was secretly “controlling” the superintendent, and I will not present allegations of private influence as established fact simply because several people repeated them.
But the repetition is significant enough that the new Board should not ignore it.
Dr. Ricks currently occupies an extraordinarily consequential central office role covering student services, human resources, CTE and federal programs.
Ms. Murphy is not some random community observer. FCPS identifies her as a Community and Parent Engagement Specialist, and district materials describe her working directly with Dr. Ricks on parent programming. She has also been deeply involved in Franklin education and government for years, including historically serving on the School Board and participating in community and school initiatives.
The new Board needs to determine where actual decision making authority has lived, formally and informally.
Who made decisions?
Who influenced personnel decisions?
Who directed parent engagement responses?
Who participated in complaints?
Who knew about special education failures?
Who knew about retaliation allegations?
Who had responsibility for compliance?
Who advised Carter?
Who benefited from the old structure?
And who should remain in positions of authority after an independent review?
Do not simply remove the superintendent and preserve the operating system underneath him.
That would be cosmetic reform.
The same applies to Cristina Boone.
Ms. Boone is no longer the chair. Wydia Bailey now holds that position. The current Board includes Chair Bailey, Lamont Hill, Dorothy Boone, Cristina Boone, Kent Grant, Vice Chair John Thomas Allsbrook and Ellis Cofield III.
But a change in title does not erase concerns about attendance, professionalism, hostility toward public criticism or past governance.
Board members do not get to behave as though meetings are private club gatherings.
You are public officials.
People are watching.
Parents are watching.
Employees are watching.
Reporters are watching.
Children are watching the recordings too.
Act accordingly.
And to the newer members specifically, Lamont Hill, Dorothy Boone and Ellis Cofield III, along with the members who joined relatively recently:
You have an opportunity the previous Board did not take.
Do not squander it by becoming loyal to personalities.
You were not appointed to protect Carlton Carter.
You were not appointed to protect central office.
You were not appointed to protect one another.
You were appointed to protect the public interest and govern a school division.
Start by acting professional.
Ask uncomfortable questions.
Read the documents before meetings.
Demand evidence instead of accepting presentations.
Stop treating unanimous votes as evidence of good governance.
Disagreement is not dysfunction.
Sometimes dissent is the only evidence that anyone in the room is actually thinking.
And comply meticulously with Virginia’s public meeting laws.
Do not play games with notice.
Do not use closed session as a refuge from political embarrassment.
Do not change public comment procedures because citizens have become inconvenient.
Do not treat Citizens Time as though the citizens are borrowing your time.
It is their government. You are borrowing theirs.
Then rebuild special education from the ground up.
Not to the minimum standard.
Not “technically compliant.”
Not whatever allows someone to check a box before the next VDOE deadline.
Go beyond compliance.
Franklin’s children need more than the minimum because many of them are already starting life with less.
A poor child.
A disabled child.
A child with an unstable home.
A child who cannot read at grade level.
A child who has been suspended repeatedly.
A child whose parent does not understand IDEA.
A child without transportation.
A child without money for tutoring.
A child who has already been failed by adults.
Those children do not need a school system that gives them the legal minimum.
They need a school system willing to overcorrect.
Because the world outside Franklin will not be gentle with them.
Life will pummel them if they leave school without literacy, numeracy, self advocacy, executive functioning skills, communication skills, vocational options and confidence.
A diploma that hides an educational deficit is not kindness.
Passing a child along is not compassion.
And lowering expectations because Franklin is poor is not equity.
It is abandonment.
So here is what I would support.
Conduct an independent special education audit covering Child Find, evaluations, reevaluations, IEP implementation, parent participation, LRE, discipline, restraint and seclusion reporting, compensatory education, transportation and Prior Written Notices.
Publish the findings.
Audit every outstanding VDOE corrective action and deliver every compensatory service that has already been ordered.
Stop making parents fight twice: once to prove the violation and again to receive the remedy.
End predetermination.
Never again should a parent hear, “This is the only placement we have,” as though the district’s staffing model determines the child’s legal entitlement.
Publish special education staffing and caseload data.
If Franklin needs more speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, special educators, paraprofessionals or psychologists, say so plainly and build the budget around children before administration.
Fix transportation.
No child should be sitting on a bus floor, let alone a child with a disability.
Build safe, sufficient routes and transparent procedures for reporting bus threats, assaults and harassment.
Create an independent anti-retaliation and parent-complaint process so the same administrators being accused are not effectively judging their own conduct.
Audit FERPA and records practices.
Provide parents their children’s records electronically and on time.
Stop turning access to information into an endurance test.
Provide real ADA access for disabled parents too.
Not only disabled students.
Parents with disabilities have federal rights.
Written communication, reasonable scheduling, meaningful participation and accessible records should not require a war.
Review discipline by disability, race and school.
If there are disparities, do not hide from them.
Study them.
Fix them.
Rebuild an age appropriate middle school experience.
Franklin’s children should not receive a structurally diminished education simply because the district is small.
Reevaluate J.P. King and CTE based on actual outcomes and actual numbers, not institutional attachment to a building. Partner aggressively with Paul D. Camp Community College when doing so expands opportunity without cannibalizing basic K-12 services.
And create a public dashboard showing staffing vacancies, bus capacity, special education compliance, complaint findings, compensatory service completion, academic performance, discipline and attendance.
Make it impossible for the next superintendent to survive by controlling a narrative.
Let the data speak.
Finally, hire the next superintendent differently.
Do not hire another person because they know the right educational buzzwords.
Ask how they respond when a parent proves them wrong.
Ask whether they have ever reversed their own decision.
Ask what they believe predetermination means.
Ask what they would do if their special education director violated IDEA.
Ask whether they would discipline an administrator for retaliating against a parent.
Ask whether they believe criticism is disloyalty.
Ask whether they understand that the most difficult parent in the district may still be completely correct.
And then call their former districts and ask the parents, not merely the administrators.
Dr. Carter, you wrote that Franklin’s best days are ahead.
I actually hope you are right.
But Franklin’s best days will not come because someone writes them into a strategic plan.
They will come when adults stop protecting systems that are failing children.
They will come when accountability stops being interpreted as disrespect.
They will come when disability stops being treated as an inconvenience.
They will come when public officials understand that criticism is not persecution.
They will come when a parent can say, “Something is wrong,” and the institution’s first instinct is curiosity instead of defense.
And they will come when Franklin understands that doing the minimum for vulnerable children is not enough.
This experience changed me.
It taught me law I never planned to learn.
It introduced me to families I never would have known.
It showed me how easily institutions can normalize behavior that, viewed from the outside, is completely abnormal.
And it taught me something I hope Franklin remembers after everyone has forgotten our names:
Systems do not become cruel all at once.
They become cruel one rationalization at a time.
One ignored parent.
One predetermined meeting.
One inaccurate record.
One missed service.
One complaint dismissed as disgruntled.
One child told to wait.
One employee afraid to speak.
One Board member deciding silence is easier.
One leader convincing himself that the people demanding accountability are merely a “special interest group.”
Until eventually the abnormal becomes normal.
Franklin now has an opportunity to interrupt that process.
Do not waste it.
Do not simply replace Carlton Carter.
Replace the operating system that made all of this possible.
And this time, build one worthy of Franklin’s children.
Chelsea Chewning
