The School Board is expected tonight to enter discussions with
Superintendent Paul Stapleton about extending his contract, which ends
in June of next year.
That item headlines the agenda for tonight’s regular September meeting,
which begins at 7 p.m. at the Mary Bethune Complex in Halifax.
Stapleton, who came out of retirement three years ago to take the job,
has pushed through unprecedented changes in the system, from
simultaneously building two large new elementaries while also
remodeling the middle school and, more  controversially, closing seven
small schools within a few months.
  School Board Chairman D.H. McDowell Jr. has previously praised
Stapleton as “the ramrod that got us going.”
Vice Chairman Steve Anderson had said the contract issue would be
settled prior to the November elections, which inevitably will bring
new faces to the board.
State law, he said, dictates that negotiations begun just prior to an
election cannot be consummated until a delay after January 1.
Stapleton has said he would consider staying on the job.
Stapleton, a former secretary of education for the state of Virginia,
was coaxed out of retirement to take the helm of Halifax schools by a
persistent contingent of local leaders.