A Lynchburg school board member who was recently reappointed for his third term by the Lynchburg City Council has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to city council campaigns over the past two years, both personally and through his company.
Atul Gupta, who served as chairman of the board for the fiscal year ending June 30, has contributed more than $40,000 to city council campaigns in his own name and through his business since 2022, according to campaign finance records compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project.
About $33,000 came from his company, Lynchburg-based University Education Services, and about $7,300 came from Gupta personally.
State code doesn’t restrict school board members from making political donations.
Gupta’s personal contributions include $2,500 to Lynchburg Mayor Stephanie Reed, $1,800 to Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi and $1,000 to Jeff Helgeson, according to VPAP. All three are Republicans; the party has had a majority on the city council since 2022 for the first time in two decades.
The contributions are part of a larger pattern of political giving by Gupta and his company, which have donated more than $123,000 to Virginia political candidates and PACs since 2022, according to VPAP.
Most school boards in Virginia are elected. Among the 12 school divisions that had at least some appointed board members for the year ending June 30 — which include Roanoke, Salem, Galax, Martinsville and Lexington — VPAP records show only a handful of members who have made recent contributions to state or local political campaigns.
According to its website, University Education Services provides customer service platforms to higher education clients. The company has a limited online presence and does not list any leadership, staff or clients on its website, but State Corporation Commission filings for the firm list Gupta as CEO. SCC documents don’t show any other directors or registered agents for the company.
So far in 2024, University Education Services has given about $7,000 to Faraldi’s reelection campaign, $5,000 to Helgeson’s reelection campaign and $1,000 to the campaign of Republican Jacqueline Timmer, who’s running for an open council seat.
In 2023, the business contributed $10,000 to Stephanie Reed’s campaign, $5,000 to Faraldi’s and $5,000 to council member Marty Misjuns’ campaign.
The business has also contributed to statewide Republican candidates: $50,000 to Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears’ Winsome PAC, and $22,000 combined to campaign funds for delegates Tim Griffin and Wendell Walker.
After initially responding to a phone message left last week, Gupta did not reply to follow-up calls or emails seeking comments for this story.
Reed, Faraldi and Helgeson all said by phone Monday that they didn’t make promises to Gupta in exchange for contributions from him or his business. Misjuns did not respond to an interview request Monday afternoon.
“I’ve seen him work really hard with schools and I’ve seen him there with the kids,” Reed said. “That’s why he has my support.”
Gupta has served on the Lynchburg school board since 2018. School board members are limited to three terms that are each three years, so this third term will be his last.
At a state level, Virginia has few restrictions on who can serve on an appointed school board or rules governing their behavior. The Virginia School Boards Association provides a sample code of conduct for school board members that says in part: “I will refrain from using the board position for personal or partisan gain and avoid any conflict of interest or the appearance of impropriety.”
But VSBA membership is voluntary, and most guidelines for school board members are made at the local level.
The state does not limit how much an individual or a business can donate to a political campaign.
Despite few restrictions on doing so, contributions by appointed school board members to political campaigns are rare, according to campaign finance reports.
Alongside Gupta, fellow Lynchburg school board members Randall Trost, Christian DePaul and Martin Day appear to be the only appointed school board members in the state who have given money over the past two years directly to candidates who could have a say in their appointments.
None of those political contributions total anywhere near those tied to Gupta.
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The Lynchburg City Council conducted interviews in June for three spots on the school board with terms beginning July 1.
Gupta was the only person interviewed by council for the slot available in District 3, which covers Bass, Heritage and Sheffield elementary schools, along with Heritage High School and the Hutcherson Early Learning Center.
Terms for two other school board members, Trost in District 1 and Sharon Carter of District 2, also expired June 30. The city council appointed Daryl Conner and Mark Tinsley to those seats, respectively. The appointees were among 11 candidates interviewed across the two districts.
Tinsley does not have a donation record evident in VPAP. Conner made a $150 contribution to unsuccessful independent city council candidate Walter Virgil in 2022.
Gupta’s contributions were not a focus of his interview with the council on June 17. Council member MaryJane Dolan, an independent, asked Gupta if he could be impartial and fair given his relationship to University Education Services.
Gupta responded that his decisions have always been impartial. “People work for different companies. Those things are out the door when you walk into the school board,” he said. “Those are two different islands.”
Helgeson sought to approve Gupta’s reappointment by unanimous consent during that interview session, citing Gupta’s presence along with all seven council members. But city attorney Matt Freedman advised the council to wait until the June 25 council meeting, where voting for the appointments was already on the agenda.
When it came time to vote on Gupta’s reappointment at the June 25 meeting, Dolan spoke up in opposition. “I watched the decisions made by the school board over the last 18 months, and I think many decisions were made without a lot of research, without transparency, and I think many of his decisions were politically motivated,” she said. “I think [Gupta] has really fed the majority of this council with huge sums of money as donors to them. And I think that’s a conflict.”
Misjuns and Faraldi quickly countered Dolan’s statement, noting that Democrats on the council had also received donations from school board appointees in the past. Gupta was then appointed in a 5-2 vote, with Dolan and Democrat Sterling Wilder voting against.
Former school board member Robert Brennan made donations totaling $2,750 to Democratic candidates for the Lynchburg City Council over a period of about 10 years ending in 2022. In 2016, he made a $500 contribution to Dolan’s campaign.
Brennan served on the school board from 2017 to 2023, and while he sought a third term last year, he was not reappointed by the council.
Among the nine current school board members, DePaul, who was appointed to Brennan’s spot on the school board, gave $250 to Stephanie Reed’s campaign in 2022 and again in 2023. Trost gave $99 to Faraldi personally, and his law firm gave another $99. And Martin Day, the vice chair under Gupta, gave $200 to Reed in 2022 and $260 to Faraldi this year.
The relationship between the Lynchburg school board and the city council has been particularly contentious in recent months, as members of both bodies have debated school funding, plans for consolidating elementary schools and LGBTQ+ issues.
Reed pointed out that the two council members who voted against reappointing Gupta had voted in his favor for his two previous terms, which were approved by councils with a majority of Democrats. But this time, she said, neither Wilder nor Dolan brought up any problems they had with aspects of Gupta’s work on the board in their rejection of his reappointment.
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A review of current appointed school board members across the state shows very few political contributions, according to VPAP records.
A school board member in Hanover gave about $1,200 to state-level candidates from 2021 to 2022.
In Hopewell, one appointee has made contributions totaling $730 since 2015, with the money going to two state delegate candidates and a candidate for Hopewell sheriff. Another appointee made a $168 contribution to a local candidate for treasurer in 2017.
In the newly consolidated Alleghany Highlands division, one appointee contributed $250 to a sheriff’s campaign last year.
The only appointed school board member who comes anywhere close to Gupta’s political donations is Patricia Packet Pugh in Richmond County, who has contributed more than $14,000 over the past nine years. But her donations have gone primarily to state delegate campaigns.
As of June 2024, only 12 school divisions appoint all of their school board members: Franklin City, Galax, Hanover County, Hopewell, Lexington, Lynchburg, Manassas Park, Martinsville, Poquoson, Richmond County, Roanoke and Salem.
That number will drop to 11 this fall, when Lexington votes for its school board members for the first time. In 2022, 63% of Lexington voters favored electing school board members directly.
Alleghany Highlands and Williamsburg-James City County have a hybrid model, with some members elected and some appointed.
All Virginia school boards were appointed until 1994, when state law changed to allow localities to decide for themselves via ballot referendum whether they wanted to elect or appoint their school boards.
Walker, a Republican whose district includes Lynchburg, supports having elected school boards and proposed a bill in 2023 to make it easier for voters in those remaining school divisions to get the school board election question on their ballots. Currently, 10% of voters must sign a petition before a circuit court can order the referendum. Walker’s bill would have let the local government put the question on the ballot at its discretion. But the measure got blocked in the state Senate.
Walker said in an interview last weekthat the debate over whether to move Lynchburg from an appointed to an elected school board was a big talking point in the 2022 city council election, which motivated him to try to make it easier for localities to vote on the matter. “We shouldn’t try to micromanage localities,” he said.
A conservative parents group in Lynchburg tried in 2020 and 2021 to collect enough signatures to garner a ballot vote, but didn’t succeed. Neither did a 2023 push by Faraldi to reach the 10% threshold.
Walker has received about $15,000 from Gupta and his business since 2022. But he said he doesn’t see a conflict of interest for school board appointees to make such contributions. In his view, the practice hasn’t influenced Lynchburg appointments. “Lynchburg is better than that,” Walker said, noting his confidence in city council members to act with integrity regardless of their political party.
Regarding Gupta’s contributions to his own campaign funds, Walker said, “I’m not a politician that is for sale.”
In places that still have appointed school boards 30 years after the state law changed, maintaining or gaining political influence is the primary motivation to try to switch, said Chapman Rackaway, a political science professor at Radford University.
Initial waves of localities voting to elect their school boards in the 1990s and early 2000s were likely influenced by voters’ desire to exercise their democratic rights, Rackaway said. But the longer the outliers have hung onto appointments, “It's more likely that there was an influential or powerful group … that did not want to cede that advantage in an electoral environment.”
The people pushing for elected school boards are likely to be on the outside of political influence looking in, Rackaway said.
One of the arguments for keeping an appointed school board may be that voter turnout is notoriously low for these roles. The National School Boards Association estimates voter turnout at just 5% to 10% for school board races, and Rackaway thinks it’s even lower.
"Small turnout is bad for democracy but great for campaigners,” he said, because lower effort can turn into huge percentage swings in the results.
Rackaway said voters are unlikely to actually mark their ballot for school board candidates unless it’s an obvious and memorable choice for the voter. And memorable candidates in local races are likely to be on the far ends of either side of the political spectrum.
In Hanover County, which appoints its seven school board members, there’s been intense discussion about whether to move to an elected model. The question made it onto the ballot in 2023, but only 48% of voters were in favor.
After the referendum was defeated, a group called Hanover Parents Against Political School Boards posted on Facebook saying, “Yesterday we proved that our Hanover School Board is not for sale,” a Virginia Mercury article noted.
In Lynchburg, political party control after the city council election in November is likely to influence interest in switching to elected school board members, Walker said.
Helgeson said Monday that he wants the council to keep appointing school board members.
"A lot of people wouldn't run. And the people who would run would be for cheerleading uniforms and soccer fields, not hard things that have to be done," Helgeson said, such as addressing classroom discipline and pursuing academic excellence — and ensuring that the superintendent and staff are fulfilling those duties.
But Faraldi still supports moving to an elected school board in Lynchburg, as does Reed.
“It offers greater accountability on behalf of people and parents,” she said Monday. She said electing school board members would eliminate questions of political bias.
All three cited Gupta’s experience on the board as one reason they felt it important to reappoint him for a final term.
“If you look at the average tenure of school board members, including Dr. Gupta, it’s about a year and a half,” Faraldi said, adding, “We do need folks on the school board with longer tenure.”
The school board will hold a reorganization meeting with its new members Tuesday evening.
Correction 12:00 p.m. July 2:Darryl Conner is replacing Randall Trost in District 1. A previous version this story noted an incorrect outgoing board member.
