State Del. Matt Lohr on Monday defended the payments from the Rockingham County school system to the motivational-speaking company operated by Lohr and his wife, Andrea, for teacher in-service training conducted by the Lohrs.
“It’s $3,000 over three years,” Lohr, a Republican, answered a question from a caller to a live candidates debate featuring Lohr and 26th District Democratic challenger Gene Hart.
Lohr said the company focuses its efforts on ag-education groups, doing teacher in-service trainings and school assemblies.
“The feedback was always positive. The principals have always said that it was a great service that we provided to them, because when teachers are excited to teach, then the students are excited to learn,” Lohr said.
“When I go to speak in schools, I never speak as a delegate. It never comes up. I’m always speaking as a professional speaker and trainer,” Lohr said.
The caller had asked Lohr to comment on the parallels between his relationship with the county school system – before being elected to the 26th District seat in 2005, Lohr had served on the Rockingham County School Board – and the ethics inquiry into the actions of Tidewater-area Republican State Del. Phil Hamilton, who is being investigated for apparently lining up a job for himself at Old Dominion University using funds that he pushed through in a state-budget bill.
“There’s absolutely nothing similar between what we do and Del Hamilton. Del. Hamilton worked out a job, put a budget amendment in to fund the job, and then got the job after session. This is completely 100 percent separate. It’s just the gotcha politics that people play to try to make something an issue that it’s not,” Lohr said.
Hart sidestepped the ethics issue in the Lohr controversy in favor of the fiscal.
“My concern is this – over the last two years, especially, the schools in Rockingham County and the City of Harrisonburg have been financially strapped. They are cutting back on children’s travel to events, children’s programs, supplies in the school. If the principals are paying anyone, whether it be Del. Lohr or anyone else, to motivate their teachers, then I don’t think that’s a wise use of their resources. When we don’t have enough money to supply our kids with toner for computer labs, with paper for classes, spending any amount of money, whether it be $400 a year or $1,200 a year, is too much to take away from the classroom, and that’s really the issue,” Hart said.
Also at issue: “We have a County Board of Supervisors asking our citizens to approve a meals-tax increase in the county to support public schools in the county,” Hart said.
“I think this is not the right time for them to ask us that if teachers are being motivated by outside speakers instead of their own leadership. We need to be cutting back before our Board of Supervisors asks us to give more of our hard-earned money to them,” Hart said.
Lohr, in responding to Hart’s comments, said “when teachers are motivated, they do a better job, which improves test scores.”
“It’s easy to sit on the outside and say, Well, notebooks and pencils and paper are more important. What we do is we get in and help motivate teachers to help them excel, do team-building and goal-setting to help them excel as a school. If principals have the authority to spend the money to do that, I don’t think that we need to be micromanaging how every dollar is spent at that level,” Lohr said.
“I think that teachers are much more motivated when they have proper supplies for their students, when they are adequately paid, and when the staff around them is adequately paid. And in tight financial times, if we are paying anyone for this type of issue, I don’t think it’s a wise use of resources,” Hart said.
– Story by Chris Graham
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