Most Wake school board members hold off challengers, but one incumbent is defeated
Wake County voters largely re-elected school board incumbents, turning aside an effort by conservative challengers to reshape North Carolina’s largest school system.
Unofficial election results on Tuesday show that only one member of a coalition of six Republican-backed candidates lead incumbents in their respective races. The challengers had argued the district was moving too slow on reopening schools and was promoting a liberal agenda in schools.
Initial results have board members Heather Scott, Monika Johnson-Hostler, Chris Heagarty and Lindsay Mahaffey winning in their respective contested races. Board member Jim Martin also won his race against a write-in candidate.
But Karen Carter defeated longtime board member Bill Fletcher for the District 9 seat that includes much of Cary. Carter had 54.4% of the vote compared to 34.9% for Fletcher.
In addition to campaigning about school reopening, Carter had questioned Wake’s decision to use the controversial MVP Math curriculum in high school classes.
Board chairman Keith Sutton, vice chairwoman Roxie Cash and board member Christine Kushner were running unopposed in their races.
The election results indicate that the officially non-partisan nine-member school board will retain its Democratic majority, with now seven Democrats and two Republicans.
The closest race was in northwest Raleigh’s District 7, where Heagarty had 51.2% of the vote compared to 48% for challenger Rachel Mills. In a three-way race in southern Wake’s District 2, Johnson-Hostler had 51% of the vote.
Not including the write-in campaign against Martin, Mahaffey had the biggest margin of victory in the southwest Wake District 8 race. She had 62.3% compared to 36.8% for Steve Bergstrom.
In eastern Wake’s District 1, Scott had 55.7% of the vote to defeat former board member Deborah Prickett, who had 42.9% of the vote.
School reopening debated
Wake is the state’s largest school district with 160,000 students. It briefly had a Republican school board majority after the 2009 election. But after two years of heated debate and protests, the board flipped back to a Democratic majority that has grown as the county has shifted politically and demographically.
The challengers, though, had hoped to turn the campaign into a referendum on how the public feels about school reopening.
Some Wake elementary students and special-education students returned to in-person classes last week for the first time since March 13. But the majority of Wake students will either get limited or no in-person instruction this semester due to continuing concerns over COVID-19.
The tentative plan is to wait until the spring semester that starts in January to begin offering at least some in-person instruction to all students, aside from those in the Virtual Academy.
The challengers said they’d push the pace on reopening to bring back as soon as possible all students who want in-person classes. But the incumbents argued they had adopted a compromise plan to safely bring some students back while respecting the concerns of some teachers who don’t feel it’s safe yet to have in-person classes.
Despite complaints from Wake NCAE that the district is reopening too fast, the group had backed the board incumbents in the election. Some members of the group hope Wake will slow the pace on reopening after multiple schools reported COVID-19 cases since last week.
RESULTS
For the latest results on Election Night, go to newsobserver.com/2020-results .
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 11:42 PM.
