Heather Scott, 3 incumbents win Wake County school board races

Newcomer Heather Scott and incumbents Roxie Cash, Lindsay Mahaffey and Jim Martin all won their contests Tuesday for the Wake County school board, based on complete but unofficial election results.

Scott, a Democrat and former teacher, received 39 percent of the vote for the District 1 seat, followed by Don Mial at 33 percent and Jim Thompson at 27 percent. Scott won despite spending less than $1,000 against more well-funded opponents, including Mial, who had raised more than $10,000 and was endorsed by the Wake County Democratic Party.

Scott will represent a district that includes Rolesville, Wendell, Zebulon and parts of Knightdale and Wake Forest. The seat is open because board member Don Agee didn’t seek re-election.

Even before voting started, five of the nine school board races were decided. Board members Bill Fletcher, Monika Johnson-Hostler, Christine Kushner and Keith Sutton were re-elected after running unopposed.

Board member Kathy Hartenstine, who died Sept. 23 after ballots were printed, also ran unopposed. The board will discuss Wednesday the timeline for filling the District 7 seat, which includes northwest Raleigh, Morrisville and part of Cary.

In District 3, Cash had 54 percent of the vote. In District 5, Martin had 69 percent of the vote. In District 8, Mahaffey had 61 percent of the vote.

Johnson-Hostler said that the board will benefit from the re-election of the incumbents.

“It’s helpful for this board to have this level of sustainability,” Johnson-Hostler said Tuesday evening.

In a departure from past elections, candidates didn’t focus on issues such as student assignment and whether Wake should be busing children for diversity. Instead, candidates talked about issues such as making schools safer, reducing suspensions and ending the school-to-prison pipeline.

The election results will leave Democrats holding a majority of seats on the officially non-partisan board.

The board members will be entrusted with running North Carolina’s largest school system, which has 160,000 students. In the months ahead they’ll deal with issues such as setting next year’s $1.6 billion operating budget, deciding on a new student dress code and how to assign students to schools in the growing district.

This is a developing story.

This story was originally published November 6, 2018 at 8:06 PM.