ANALYSIS: Thick political mud flying in county school board races

On Wednesday, BrentWord Communications published an open letter from Rick Wimberly, who represents District 9 on the Williamson County Board of Education.

“In 29 years of involvement with Williamson County Schools, I’ve never seen a school board election as politically charged as this one,” Wimberly wrote in no uncertain terms.

Indeed, many longtime observers of local politics agree.

Based on printed local media interviews, public surveys stemming from local political and activist groups, circulating emails, and campaign statements, there appears to be a general split in viewpoints between the three school board incumbents – Pat Anderson (District 8), Eric Welch (District 10) and Vicki Vogt (District 12) and newcomer Melody Morris (District 2) – and their quartet of challengers.  

The challengers to incumbents are Daniel Cash (District 2), Candy Emerson (District 8), Beth Burgos, (District 10), and Susan Curlee (District 12). Newcomer candidates Paul Bartholomew (District 4) and Jay Galbreath (District 6) have no opposition on the Aug. 7 ballot and are virtually assured of winning.

Wimberly is not the only one to utter the words “politically charged” on the topic of this year’s county school board election; the remark has been made repeatedly in the midst of multiple public tiffs that have occurred throughout the election season.  

It’s been a lengthy one.

Some of the first rumblings of discontent came to light in April through a private email in which District 4 County Commissioner Kathy Danner complained to District 4 school board member Tim McLaughlin, Franklin Alderman Beverly Burger and others that she was excluded from “the process of helping to vet and encourage someone to run” for the seat McLaughlin will give up on Sept. 1, the end of his term.

While McLaughlin, who chose not to seek reelection and will likely be replaced by unopposed candidate Bartholomew, said he did not know what vetting process Danner referred to, Danner’s email begged the question of how nonpartisan a local school board election actually is these days.

As the election season has worn on, more controversy bubbled to the surface – from a survey to parents generated by Debbie Deaver, a local mother of former WCS students, to criticism of a parent activist group called Williamson Strong, which supports the current school system and administrators.

Early this month, local parent and Republican State Executive Committeeman candidate James Amundsen publicly called into question WCS Superintendent Mike Looney’s announcement this spring that WCS was the number one school district in the nation based on a self-conducted study of data pulled from SchoolDigger.com.

The education website’s founder, Pete Claar, refuted Looney’s claim in emails to Amundsen, the Home Page and others, that the site is not designed nor able to compare school districts state-by-state, “since each state administers different standardized tests.”

Most recently, Kent Davis, a local political activist and generous Republican Party campaign contributor, revealed in private emails obtained by the Home Page that organized efforts exist to force Looney from his job.

That email appears to have been sent between July 15-July 24 to recipients including Cash, Bartholomew, Burgos, Curlee and District 63 State House Rep. Glen Casada.

“After thinking it over last night, I believe we came to the right conclusion to have the candidates focus on their ground game, which they are doing, and it seems to me the new element is the opposition seems determined to seek outside help such as SEIU.

“The time to build a case against Dr. Looney is post-election when we have 3-6 new board members. In thinking this over, I believe we can make the case he is a top-down micro-manager who does not trust his principals, managers and others,” Davis wrote in that email.

“The time for any ugly stuff should be done privately and kept out of the press and much as we would be tempted, ‘revenge’ is not a strategy. A win for WCS and us will be for him to move on.”

In response to the Home Page’s request for comment on the email, Davis demurred.

“As an opinion writer, I choose not to comment and even more so regarding a leaked email from anonymous sources,” he wrote the Home Page.

A July 22 Tennessean front page article on Davis’ email prompted a “press statement” yesterday afternoon (July 23) from challengers Burgos, Cash, Curlee and Emerson on the sidewalk outside Centennial High School.

Burgos spoke on behalf of the four candidates to address what she termed the “political, mud-slinging sideshow” this school board race has become.

“We find it disturbing that special interest groups would stoop to any measure to protect the status quo by attacking candidates who dare challenge the incumbents in an election. Each of us has been accused of being part of a ‘secret group’ interested in ousting our superintendent, supporting [Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner] Kevin Huffman, making our moves to destroy our public schools, and wanting to take over the school system.

“Nothing is further from the truth,” Burgos said. “We cannot control what other people write, or even the emails they send to us, or what might be said in those emails. Because we have been recipients of those emails, they have found us guilty by association. Not one of us has remotely entertained or expressed a desire to replace our superintendent.”

She added that the electoral process had been turned into a “witch hunt” of “bullying and thuggery.”

Burgos, Cash, Curlee and Emerson refused to answer media questions after that statement was read, because the four had already been “treated poorly” by the press, Burgos claimed.

Included with a copy of the statement distributed to the media Thursday afternoon were several printouts questioning the group Williamson Strong, which has openly expressed support for the incumbents and newcomer Morris.

After that group’s launch last spring, Williamson Strong affiliate Susan Drury was called into question about her job as regional research and strategic campaign director for Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Soon after, her bio was removed from the group’s website.

Jim Cheney, Williamson Strong co-founder and spokesperson, said the group is “unapologetic” about Drury’s union organization ties and also regrets what he termed the group’s “knee-jerk” reaction to remove her information from the website.

“Her relationship with SEIU has had zero influence on the cause and the mission we are pursuing,” Cheney said. “We don’t take into account religious, political or professional leanings. I do regret from my professional standpoint that we took her down off the page.”

Questions also have surfaced about Williamson Strong receiving false “likes” on its Facebook page from Istanbul, Turkey.

“I can’t speak to the technicality of it,” Cheney said. “When we first started the page, we bought advertising on the Facebook page to promote it and got a lot of ‘likes’ from Turkey, of all places. Everything was done through the purchasing power of Facebook, and we ended up with a lot of irrelevant ‘likes.’ It certainly doesn’t help credibility, but it wasn’t intentional.”

Cheney continued to say that as a parent who wants the best for his school-age children, he also understands the heat surrounding the election.

“What I’m disappointed by is a lot of the opposition to the existing school board,” he said. “I think there is an agenda that doesn’t marry up with the advance of the public school system. WCS is blamed for things they’re not responsible for. Rather than open dialogue on how do we address controversial issues like Common Core, all it’s been is attack, attack, attack.”

Cheney also said the most important voice – that of children – has been excluded in the public school rhetoric throughout this election.

“It’s all what people feel is the right agenda. Nobody takes the time to ask kids about it. Certainly there’s a maturity factor, but that whole component is left out. My personal experience is the kids are happy. Are there things we could improve? Of course there are, but I think they’re happy.”

Williamson Strong distributed a survey to all school board candidates in order to determine their election endorsements, but only the three incumbents and Morris returned the surveys. Challengers said Williamson Strong’s founders endorsed candidates, including Morris and Vogt, before the survey was administered.

The school board race has elicited the interest of other groups as well, including the business community, which is inextricably linked to the school system.

“The chamber doesn’t take positions on candidates or individual elections,” said Matt Largen, president and CEO of Williamson, Inc.

“I will say we have a great working relationship with leadership in WCS. We have instituted a lot of innovative programming and have tremendous momentum – we don’t want to see that momentum put at risk with drastic changes to the school system.”

Williamson Inc., formerly called the Williamson County Chamber of Commerce, crafted a partnership with the school district over the past year and continues to work to ensure WCS turns out students equipped with the skills to be successful in the business community, he said.

“I talk to employers, and they want kids able to think critically, communicate effectively and work in teams. They want well-educated, well-rounded citizens who can think for themselves. I believe [the students] can. That’s a credit again to the leadership.”

Williamson County Schools’ top leader, when asked for comment on the election, sounded weary and said that misinformed dialogue surrounding the election has diverted from the “real work” of the school board and administration.

“In my professional career, I have never seen a school board election this charged,” Looney said.

“I haven’t seen a school board election here where candidates are making accusations and statements that are so misinformed. The Common Core debate has been hijacked, and nobody has ever come to me saying, ‘this or that standard is bad for children.’

“This is all an ethereal idea that it is a federal government ploy to take over schools,” Looney added. “I would love to debate the standards, not the politics behind the standards. I believe there are good standards and some not as good, but that’s where we should be having conversations.”

The controversy over Common Core standards, implemented in 2010, has overtaken the electoral conversation in Williamson County this year. It is a major topic of contention in the District 63 State House rivalry between incumbent Rep. Casada and challenger Cherie Hammond, currently the District 6 school board representative. In State House District 65, it is also an issue between incumbent Rep. Jeremy Durham and challenger Bill Peach, a veteran of about 25 years of both the county and Franklin Special School District boards.

But the topic of Common Core has also been the campaign platform for many school board challengers running with the promise to work toward an overhaul of the standards.

Incumbents reiterate through the media and surveys that Common Core is mandated by the state and therefore outside the school board’s jurisdiction, and yet they have not expressed blatant support for the standards, either.

District 2 board member Janice Mills, who retires at the end of her term, said the phrase “Common Core” has become a wide-reaching term.

“The Common Core standards, I think people have taken that and attached that to Obamacare, government overreach and lack of local control,” she said.

“All they are are standards. You apply it to what you teach. It doesn’t say how you teach it. If you talk to the people that are running and ask them what it is you don’t like, which standard you don’t want to apply, they can’t answer that.”

Mills, who has successfully overcome election opposition in each of her three past races, said she has never seen a more “vicious, personal or political” race in her 12 and a half years on the board.

Like Rick Wimberly, Mills also wrote an open letter published this week by the Home Page. She openly supports Morris and the incumbents and questions the motives of the challengers.

“There are people coming in that have never contacted the board, they don’t come to work sessions or meetings to learn and be involved,” Mills said.

“We need people willing to think openly about things. You have to be able to listen. My concern is we don’t have that in some of these candidates. I just hope that people look and say, ‘what is it I want my school board member to do? Do I want them focused on a small, personal bias or focused on the overall picture?’ because that’s the whole bottom line.”

Wimberly, elected to the board two years ago without opposition after serving a year-long appointment to the seat, said this is the first time he’s seen a local school board race so heavily infiltrated by national political issues.

“To some degree, the politics involved in the school board race are somewhat related to the fact that we as a school board have taken clear stands on legislation and some of the candidates, and I feel like there are people in the community who have stirred the pot a bit to teach us a lesson – the lesson being, ‘stay out of state issues,’ ” he said.

“However, I believe strongly that not only should we be involved in issues that relate to education that have a profound impact on our schools, it would be irresponsible for us not to be involved.”

Wimberly was referring to Williamson County Schools’ past lobbying efforts at the state level, which some challengers in the race oppose.  

In the midst of the SchoolDigger conversation, Davis sent another private email to Amundsen that said Wimberly will also find himself a “target” when he and other odd-numbered district incumbents are up for reelection in 2016.

Following this year’s election, Wimberly said he plans to request a meeting with all the new candidates, regardless of whether their campaigns are successful.

“Changing one person on the board changes the dynamics, and I’m not saying it changes them for the better or worse,” he said.

“The day after the election, I will reach out to every new board member and say let’s get together and talk. Either we’re going to be colleagues, and we have a lot of work to do, or you will have lost the election, and you obviously have something on your mind, and I want to better understand that.”

Meanwhile, the summer’s political heat lightning could continue to dance across Williamson County election skies for 14 more days.

Jessica Pace covers Williamson County, Williamson County Schools and the Town of Nolensville for BrentWord Communications. Contact her at jess@brentwoodhomepage.com or follow her on Twitter @Jess_Marie_Pace.