News

LIGHTNING EDITORIAL: A welcome referendum on bad ideas

By Bill Moss, Published: October 31, 2014

Now that the Henderson County Republican Party openly owns its strategy to take control of the School Board, voters should embrace the opportunity to exercise their voice on two important issues.

If voters are in favor of vouchers taking money from public school classrooms and for personnel policies that will further demoralize the faculty and send our best teachers into early retirement, then they should vote for the Republican Party's handpicked candidate, Colby Coren.
Actually, the endorsement of Coren is not representative of the entire Republican Party leadership and certainly not in line with the rank and file of the party. Most Republicans, like Democrats and independents, are in favor of wise and efficient use of the limited allocation of money that Legislature sends to county schools.
Thanks to a spirited defense of the Coren endorsement by former Republican Party chairman Robert Danos, we now know that the Tea Party-dominated executive committee of the GOP imposed a litmus test when it interviewed Coren and three other School Board candidates who also are registered Republicans.
Lisa Edwards, who expressed dismay at the party's single-shot endorsement, "has been vocally opposed both to the recently passed tenure reform law and the school choice law for the poorest of NC's students," Danos wrote in a letter to the Lightning. "Both of these items were key parts of the Republican campaigns in 2010 and 2012 as we took power in Raleigh and both are part of the North Carolina Republican Party's platform!"
They most certainly are, and they're both bad ideas that will hurt public schools.
When Coren tosses out his applause-inducing sound bite — "We don't need more money for education. We need more education for the money" — he appears to be completely unburdened by the fact that his own positions would achieve the opposite. He says it's time for the School Board "to take a look at where money is being spent and adjust to get that money where it belongs, in the classrooms and in the pockets of our hard working teachers!"
Sending public money to private schools with unproven records is no pathway to getting "money in the classrooms and in the pockets of our hard working teachers."
Bless his heart. It really doesn't matter what Coren says or does.
He's Chauncey Gardiner, this year's beneficiary of the local GOP's now public effort to pick off one seat at a time until it gains control of the School Board. The effort is in part retaliation against Rick Wood, the candidate for the 48th Senate District and the only Democrat on the School Board. It's purely ideological, and would do nothing to advance teacher pay, help school funding or improve education.
Henderson County voters should welcome the chance to vote no on these harmful litmus-test policies by voting for candidates other than the Tea Party-aligned Mr. Coren.