Tag: Nick Swayne

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2023 in Harrisonburg: Here’s what people were reading

Readers in 2023 really wanted to know about Harrisonburg’s new high school — and can you blame them? It seems like it’s been in the works for ages. 

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Nick Swayne left Harrisonburg last summer to run a college. Instead, he walked into political and legal sagas that have engulfed a community.

Nick Swayne, the former Harrisonburg School Board chair and former director of JMU X-Labs, has been embroiled in a months-long fight to save a community college in Idaho from losing accreditation after a right-wing takeover of the college’s board of trustees.

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A lawsuit against the city schools and the fate of an area veterinarian got a lot of buzz in 2022. Here are The Citizen’s most-read stories of the year.

For the first time since the 2019 year-end roundup, the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t driving local news, at least in the stories our readers were clicking on the most. In fact, of the top 10 most-read stories on The Citizen in 2022, the word “COVID” appears only in passing, like a black cloud receding into the distance. 

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In a group job interview, school board asks candidates to outline priorities and views

Two former school board members and one newcomer fielded questions from the Harrisonburg City Public Schools’ board Tuesday as each made a case for being the one to fill the seat of Nick Swayne, who resigned last month after taking a job in Idaho.  

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Swayne’s resignation sets up interim appointment to school board; Virginia sends district $2.5 million in construction funds

Nick Swayne, the longtime city school board member who had been the board’s chairman, officially resigned, setting off a chain of events to fill his seat until a special election in November 2023. 

Nick Swayne, city’s school board chair and JMU X-Labs director, to leave Hburg to become college president in Idaho

Nick Swayne, the chair of the Harrisonburg School Board and founding director of JMU X-Labs at James Madison University, will become president of North Idaho College and will leave Harrisonburg in August. The departure will create voids in the technical and entrepreneurial spaces at JMU, as well as on the school board.  

4 school board candidates. 3 spots. And a new high school, education changes and school officers to consider.

The four candidates for Harrisonburg’s school board are running in a time when education as a whole is under pressure by the COVID-19 pandemic. School leaders everywhere must navigate public health concerns, technological inequities among students in accessing virtual learning and huge shifts in how to teach, feed and generally look after young people in public schools.

Pandemic prompts different schools of thought about new building

Almost six months since construction on Harrisonburg’s second high school was suspended, the project remains in limbo, with no timeline yet established to resume work. COVID-19, though, has prompted competing takeaways about the wisdom of moving forward.

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