WSFCS Board of Education challenger Sandra Mikush has quite the novel idea: take partisanship out of the school board:
“I think people use party labels to make assumptions about the candidates, and that’s a proxy for talking about the issues. I found in talking to people across the county, my issues are not conservative or liberal; they’re not Democratic or Republican.”
As you can imagine, Republican incumbent Buddy Collins disagrees:
“I think that nonpartisan races tend to hide the issues. I think when the voters elected a Republican board in 1994 … the appeal of the Republican candidates was the fact that they were Republicans, they were for parental choice, neighborhood schools, safety – things that folks identify with Republican Party politics.”
Amen. I think it’s imperative that school board members – the people handling the majority of county money, mind you- show their political stripes. Many say politics shouldn’t be a pert of education. But what else can you call when citizens walk into a voting booth every two years and pull a lever below someone’s name?
Compare WSFCS and Guilford County Schools, which has a non-partisan school board. True, WSFCS is going through an awkweard phase right now with the Robert Watson situation. But if you compare construction issues – arguably the most pressing issue among school systems in the Triad – WSFCS has a better track record than does Guilford.
If you want my opinion, a partisan school board would be the best thing that could happen to GCS.
