At a Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee hearing Wednesday, education officials acknowledged that high schools remain unable to deliver Virgin Islands and Caribbean history, more than four decades after lawmakers required the class.
The push to ensure local students learn the territory’s own history dates back to a 1983 law that advocates say remains vital to preserving Virgin Islands identity. “The board remains resolute in its belief in teaching Virgin Islands and Caribbean history,” said Kyza Callwood, chair of the Virgin Islands Board of Education. “It’s not merely a curricular requirement. It’s an act of cultural preservation, civic empowerment, and national pride. We stand ready to work with stakeholders to get the job done.”
Efforts to enforce and update the law have been renewed in recent years, most notably after a 2023 court ruling set new deadlines and clarified expectations for implementation. “We’re not dealing with the old original act. We’re dealing with Act Number 8730, which was enacted in 2023, and that is the interpretation that the court looked at,” said Jennifer Jones, legal counsel for the Board of Education.
While elementary and middle schools have rolled out the new history curriculum with relative ease, offering two 30-minute sessions each week, high schools have not kept pace. “There is absolutely … no issue with your grandchildren getting instruction in their history at the K-8 levels, elementary [and] middle school levels,” said Assistant Commissioner of the Virgin Islands Education Department Victor Somme III. However, for high schoolers, meeting the curriculum mandate is far more complicated.
The obstacles are twofold: crowded graduation requirements and schedules leave little room for additional courses, and there are not enough qualified staff or resources to support a new curriculum. “That is the elephant in the room,” said Renee Charleswell, the deputy commissioner for curriculum and instruction, referring specifically to the scheduling issue. “We have been struggling to provide guidance in that area … It’s still something that we haven’t worked out the kinks, in all honesty.”
Many high schools are running short on qualified teachers and instructional material. “One of the major challenges is providing our teachers with high-quality instructional materials in order to teach Virgin Islands history at each grade level in a separate course. That’s … one of the major challenges,” said Lauren Larsen, social studies coordinator for the St. Croix district.
The problem is worsened by personnel shortages: local educators now make up only about half the teaching force, with the remainder of positions filled by international hires. “We’re almost 50-50,” said Superintendent for the St. Croix district Carla Bastian-Knight, referring to the split. “We’re getting ready to lean on more internationals to come in and fill the current vacancies.”
Lawmakers expressed concern that current seniors or students close to graduation could be penalized by a sudden change in requirements. “You can’t have a retroactive application of this particular policy. So you can’t penalize a current senior …” warned Committee Chair Sen. Kurt A. Vialet.
Overlapping all these challenges is a bureaucratic impasse between the Board of Education and the Education Department. The board says it cannot give full approval of the curriculum without complete and final deliverables from the department. The department, in turn, insists it cannot distribute curriculum materials until it secures that full approval. “Full approval of the curriculum will result in distribution, and then the board can monitor, because we’d have full approval,” said Somme.
The department says it has already submitted several drafts and versions of the curriculum to the Board of Education, revising the documents each time it receives feedback. The board, however, continues to issue only conditional approval, asking for more changes or information before it will give final sign-off. This has created confusion over exactly what constitutes a complete set of deliverables.
Neither agency committed to a concrete timeline or deadline for their next steps, leaving the approval and rollout process undefined. Lawmakers pointed to ongoing misunderstandings and lack of clear communication as a central obstacle to progress. “There’s miscommunication going on, to be honest with you, between the board and the department,” said Sen. Marvin A. Blyden.
As Wednesday’s hearing wound down, the call for urgency was unmistakable. If action is not taken on credit limits, staffing, standards, and resource delivery, the long-standing goal of a territorywide Virgin Islands history curriculum may remain beyond reach, and the next generation of students could miss a key part of their own story.
Lawmakers and education officials said more meetings are planned. “The expectation of this committee is that the Board of Ed and the Department of Education, along with the stakeholders, will get together in the same room and get this job done so that the next time we have a meeting, we’ll be able to hear just progress and both entities totally align,” Vialet said.
