Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of profiles on candidates running in the 2025 Election. Profiles of the other two candidates competing in the Rockingham County School Board’s 3rd District race will be published on Wednesday, Aug. 6, and Thursday, Aug. 7.
By Megan Cullins, contributor
Matt Cross, the incumbent Rockingham County School Board member from District 3, has spent his term championing policies that he says are morally correct, some of which have fueled public debate and, at times, controversy.
Cross said he is proud of policies the board has implemented since he joined it in January 2022, such as requiring school employees to report to a student’s parents if that student seeks to change their name, supporting the removal and banning of certain books from school libraries, and removing all flags except for the American flag and the Virginia state flag from school common areas.
Many of the policies have received backlash, especially when talking about banning books. In early 2024, students at several county high schools protested the removal of books from their schools’ libraries.
Cross said he is proud to have helped remove “dirty” books from the school system, which he has said contain content that’s inappropriate for the school setting. Among the books that the board has voted to ban are: “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” “My Friend Dhamer,” “Forever…,” “How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” “This Book Is Gay,” “Looking for Alaska,” “The Kite Runner,” “A Court of Mist and Fury,” “Red, White, and Royal Blue,” “The Bluest Eye,” “Beloved,” and the “Heartstopper” series. Many of those books have LGBTQ+ themes.
Cross also helped remove LGBTQ+ flags from classrooms.
“Parents didn’t want the kids going to school and being indoctrinated by the sexual revolution that’s going on in the classroom,” Cross said.
Not everyone agrees with that approach.
“Another word for assimilation is conform,” said Jennifer Crider, a parent of students in the county school system. “We should be celebrating diversity, not condemning it. As a school board member, you are supposed to represent all students.”
In the Nov. 4 election, Cross is running for a second term in the county’s District 3, which includes Melrose, Keezletown, Massanetta Springs, Crossroads, Grottoes and Port Republic. And like the 2021 race, Cross faces two candidates, including Hilary Irons, who finished second to Cross four years ago with 33% of the vote compared to 54.7% for Cross. Lauren Mullen, a first-time candidate, is the other person in the race.
After winning the race, Cross would go on to serve as the board’s chair in 2024, although he stepped down as chair in January 2025. Early on in his tenure, he pushed for a policy that schools must notify parents if their child decides to change their name and pronouns.
To supporters of those policies, Cross has kept his promises from his 2021 campaign.
“Matt is a great leader with integrity and resolve to keep our Rockingham school kids safe and seek common sense policies for academic priorities in our schools,” said Kathie Long, a registered nurse at First Choice Health Home & Hospice, who got to know Cross when he was a resource officer at her children’s school.
While Cross has fierce supporters in his corner, he also has attracted equally passionate critics.
Some of those critics, in school board meetings and on social media, have said the board has become more politicized since Cross’ election.
“School boards should not be about politics or who can gain a political party’s endorsement,” Crider, the Rockingham County parent, told The Citizen. “It only serves to cause divisive rhetoric fueled by hate and personal beliefs. We need school board members who will bring unity by actually listening to all voices, not just those who hold the same beliefs. We need leaders who seek compromise and solutions that consider the needs of every student.”
‘I’ve seen kids like you, and I know how they turn out’
Cross has lived in Rockingham County for most of his life. He was born in Charleston, West Virginia, but moved to Augusta County after his dad retired from the Air Force.
“When we moved here in 1990, we walked into Spotswood High School and saw that huge gym, with that beautiful painting on the wall with Governor Spotswood and then the Indians and just the whole story of them coming across the Blue Ridge Mountain,” Cross said. “We just fell in love with the area. We were just awestruck with the basketball and the gym, so RCPS has had a place in my life.”
Cross and his three brothers grew up loving sports, especially basketball and baseball. Their dad wouldn’t allow them to play football. He didn’t want his sons getting hurt or to pay the hospital bills that would come with the injuries.
For a short period of time after Cross’ parent’s divorce, Cross and his family relied on welfare and food stamps.
“I can remember going to the grocery store and it was very embarrassing for him to be on welfare, have food stamps. And I can remember standing there with my dad telling me it was OK. I was going to stand with him,” Cross said.
Cross said his dad taught him how to be a man — what it meant to work hard and fight for what one believes in.
When Cross was 12, he started drinking and doing drugs. He had baggy jeans and long hair. One day, a school administrator came up to him and said, “I’ve seen kids like you, and I know how they turn out.”
Cross said he knew that the administrator didn’t say that with high hopes for his future. He said that he knew the administrator meant that he would end up in jail or dead.
In his senior year of high school, Cross said he decided to devote his life to God.
“God, if you will save me and you will deliver me from these fears and the worry and hopelessness in my life. I’ll give you my life for the rest of my life, and I will serve you,” Cross said. “If you will show me that you’re still the same God that I read about in this Bible…that you have power to heal and set free and deliver.”
Cross got married and has kept religion as a central focus of his life.
Cross serves as a pastor at Path Church where he preaches and participates in mission trips in Central America.
In 2007, Cross became a school resource officer at Turner Ashby High School. Students would come talk to him in the hallways, he said. If students were skipping class, he would sit with them in his office and talk with them.
One day a teacher reached out to Cross about a student who hadn’t been their usual happy self. Cross talked with the student and found out that the 16 year old and his 17-year-old brother had to get full-time jobs to help support their family. Between school and working late nights, he couldn’t play soccer or participate in extracurriculars.
Cross said he asked him if they could pray, and they did. Cross then gave the student a snack and brought him back to class.
The sheriff’s office later reached out to Cross saying that there was a complaint about him praying with students in his office, but Cross said that he was proud to have helped a student in need.
“As a pastor he has had to deal with a lot of peoples’ problems that they have in their life…he knows what the kids are going through and what the parents are going through,” said Jocelyn White, a tutor with Classical Conversations Foundation and Essentials and supporter of Cross.
Student conduct and Massanutten Technical Center
Cross says he’s running for re-election because there’s more work to do.
In 2025, the Rockingham County School Board has clashed with the Harrisonburg City Public Schools’ board over their shared responsibility for Massanutten Technical School.
The technical and professional school’s oversight board has 10 voting members, split evenly between the county and city school boards. But because Rockingham County places more students at the school, it pays a majority of Massanutten Technical School’s expenses.
As a result, Cross said that he doesn’t think the Rockingham County Board is being unreasonable by pushing to have a majority of members on the school’s governing board. He asks that if a tie breaking vote is needed then that vote will be given to Rockingham County.
“We’ve been very reasonable in our response back to them, right? And so my hope is that they —when you’re when you’reonly paying 20% of the bill — should be a lot more grateful,” Cross said. “You need to be a little bit more grateful for what’s going on. And I don’t feel like the city has been grateful to the county residents paying 80% of the bill there, with the MTC shared experience.”
Cross and the county have said the city is responsible for 20% of the school’s costs. The city has disputed that, saying that while it owns 20% of real estate and equipment, the city’s share of operating expenses is 29% this year.
Cross also has touted a drop in certain student conduct violations. Incidents of students skipping school and alcohol and drug violations dropped during the 2023-24 school year, according to statistics presented at the July 28 school board meeting.
To address other student behavior issues, Cross supported a disciplinary board for students. He said teachers feel disrespected in their classroom by students who cuss at them, then when those students are sent to the office, they return to class with only “a slap on the wrist.”
“When kids cuss our teachers now, they’re out of the classroom for a long time — a very long time. And if they come back to the board for a second time of verbally abusing our teachers, they’re gone,” Cross said.
After a school shooting in Florida in 2019, Cross said that he thought not enough safety precautions were being implemented in RCPS, so he decided to run for school board.
Since being on the school board, Cross has been a part of creating a safety director position, hired more school resource officers, supported the implementation of the Life Spot Safety app, oversees the See Something, Say Something app, and added bleed kits to schools, according to a resolution by the Rockingham County Republican Committee.
Cross said he is proud of what he has accomplished while on the school board.
This includes removing national flags from common areas in schools. The only flags that can hang in common areas are the American flag and the Virginia state flag.
“We want our neighbors that have moved, our newcomers that have come here. We want them to assimilate into our way of life here in Rockingham County.” Cross said. “We want them to be proud, to be Americans, and we want them to when they see the American flag, to be proud, to have pride in their hearts that they’re American citizens.”
Seeking Republicans’ endorsement
While the school board races are technically nonpartisan, political organizations can endorse, and both Cross and Hilary Irons have sought the formal backing of the Rockingham County Republicans’ group.
Initially, that organization declined to make an endorsement after Cross spoke to the group in April and then again after Irons addressed the organization in June. But the saga didn’t end there.
At the July 16 Rockingham County Republican, the group passed a motion to re-vote to endorse a candidate at the upcoming Aug. 7 meeting.
Not everyone agreed with the motion to suspend the bylaws, with the meeting minutes showing that District 3 chair Matt Dale “did not believe the bylaws could be suspended, and that it would require more than a simple majority vote to amend them in addition to prior notification of seven days.”
Meeting minutes show comments in support and opposition to endorsing Cross.
Jocelyn White, who attended the meeting backed Cross, saying there’s “list of many, many things [that Cross accomplished] and he was honored for doing it.”
This “Resolution to recognize Matt Cross for his commitment to excellence during his chairmanship” of the RCPS specifically refers to many policies including Cross’ role in banning books, cell-phone free school days, updated drug and alcohol policy, and the board’s separation from the Virginia School Board Association.
“It was a team effort by the time we got in a more conservative school board, but he led the charge,” White said.
But earlier in the summer, Cross said in an interview that he’s always tried to make the correct decisions as a board member.
“I have done what was right in the eyes of God. And I’ve done what is right for parents. I’m proud of that,” Cross said.
— Publisher Bridget Manley contributed to this article.
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