Judge Gene Woolard also asked the board to refocus on the education of children.
A visiting judge on Monday morning dismissed a misdemeanor assault and battery charge brought by Spotsylvania School Board member Lisa Phelps against fellow School Board member and Vice Chair Nicole Cole.
As did his colleague Richard McGrath earlier this spring when he dismissed another case involving the Spotsylvania school division, judge Gene Woolard asked for the focus to return to the education of children rather than the politics and fraught personal relationships that have plagued the past several years.
“Clearly and unfortunately, it appears there is a lot of hostility among School Board members,” said Woolard, a visiting General District Court judge from Virginia Beach. “This case reminds me of things I tell couples [during divorce proceedings]—the only thing that is important is the child. This is kind of the same situation. The only thing that should be important to the School Board is the education of children.”
On several occasions during Monday’s trial, Woolard informed Phelps, who represented herself, and Charles King, representing Cole, that he was “only concerned with specific events” related to the May 20, 2024, School Board meeting, at which Phelps alleged that Cole pushed a door into her left shoulder and then tripped her as she entered the closed session meeting room.
Phelps said the incident occurred as she tried to re-enter the closed session room. She said she had stepped out to get her phone, and that she didn’t close the door to the closed session room because “she didn’t believe the closed session should have been secret.”
“In the meeting they were discussing removing me,” she said. “I am being censured.”
Phelps said she was not injured during the incident.
Cole said Phelps went in and out of the closed session three times, each time leaving the door open. She said she got up twice to close it and the third time stood by the door until Phelps came back in.
She said Phelps had to cross in front of her to go back to where she had been sitting along the back wall of the closed session room, and that Phelps hit the side of her foot while doing so and briefly stumbled.
“There was no point when I hit her with the door,” Cole said. “That is totally fabricated.”
Phelps called School Board member April Gillespie as a witness. Gillespie said she and Phelps do not sit at the conference table in the closed session room, but rather along the back wall, and that she saw what Phelps described from that position.
Gillespie said School Board attorney Micah Schwartz told Cole she should not stand by the door and also that Cole told Phelps to “sit the [expletive] down and shut the [expletive] up.”
School Board member Carol Medawar, called as a witness for Cole, said she never heard Schwartz say anything to Cole about the door and that she never heard Cole swear.
Schwartz was also called as a witness, as was interim superintendent Kelly Guempel. Neither said they saw the incident Phelps described, although Guempel did say his back was to the door.
Schwartz, Guempel, and Frank Fleming, a Spotsylvania Sheriff’s deputy who was also called as a witness for Cole, said that Phelps never spoke to them that evening about being assaulted.
Gillespie said that she offered to go with Phelps to the magistrate’s office on May 21 to take out a warrant against Cole, because she “was worried things [would continue] to escalate.”
After all the witnesses were called, Woolard said that a criminal charge requires evidence of “criminal intent.” He said the testimonies didn’t provide evidence of criminal intent and that he was also not sure a criminal act occurred.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR & CORRESPONDENT
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