(Lander, WY) – Why is she running for the Fremont County School Board? Dr. Virginia Arbery has a simple answer.
“I care about the future of our community and our country. Our treasure is our children.”
The mother of eight children who attended both public and private schools, she has seen firsthand varying degrees of educational success. “Some schools are well-intentioned, but they fall short of the formation that will prepare our students for personal happiness and effective citizenship. We can’t let ourselves be distracted. We need to keep our focus on the highest purposes of education.”
Drawing upon a life dedicated to passing down the great Western tradition to both teachers and to the young, she now hopes to serve her neighbors and their children by sharing with them her experience and love of learning.
A professor at Wyoming Catholic College for the last eleven years, Dr. Virginia Arbery has been teaching political philosophy, history, and literature for five decades. Like Mortimer Adler, who founded the Great Books series, she believes that what was once the best education for the few is the best education for everyone.
“Understanding our country and its historical roots is vital to the renewal and preservation of our democratic institutions.”
She cares deeply about curriculum development and looks forward to collaborating with Fremont County Schools. As a consultant to Boston University’s National Center for Founding Documents, she ran many staff development programs for teachers on American founding documents and on literary classics. At The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, she taught hundreds of public-school teachers in a master’s program credited through the University of Dallas. She co-wrote and directed a highly commended grant from the U.S. Department of Education on “Striving for Excellence in the Teaching of American History.” As a student of the principles of the U.S. Constitution, she also wrote and conducted for the State Bar of Texas fifteen Minimum Continuing Legal Education seminars for lawyers.
She also understands students with special needs. Her daughter Julia, an adult Down Syndrome woman, has shared her joy and wit with many people in Lander since the Arbery family moved here in 2013.
“Julia’s accomplishments are a testament to the dedication and skill of many special needs teachers and aides who believed in her. My husband and I have seen how beautifully effective these services can be in public schools, but we have also seen situations when special needs students were shunted aside. Why? Because they couldn’t contribute to the higher test scores schools needed for better state funding.”
That is simply wrong, she thinks.
“I believe that every student deserves the best our county has to give. No student is expendable. A school board member must listen with a clear mind and true heart to parents while being faithful to the common good and honoring the principles of this great country.”
She worries that the pervasiveness of technology detracts from genuine education. Now the grandmother of twenty-four, Dr. Arbery has seen the damaging effects of remote classrooms on her grandchildren during and after Covid, and she has also witnessed the good effects of limiting the use of personal devices. Drawing upon her experience at Wyoming Catholic College, she hopes to help institute a policy banning cell phones in the classrooms (as the Los Angeles ISD has recently done) as one way to foster attentiveness, courtesy, and social grace in our schools.
Learn more about Dr. Virginia Arber at families4fremont1.org
In addition to her own candidacy, Dr. Arbery has endorsed Taylor Jacobs and Scott Jensen for FCSD#1 School Board.
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