Just in case you haven’t been following it, there’s been considerable controversy over who will helm the Spartanburg District 7 school board. Considering the district has had plenty of headline-grabbing problems in the last year — a religious-education lawsuit, waffling about showing the Presidential address to students, and a failed attempt to spend $325,000 to use a private golf course — perhaps the last thing the district needs is yet another high-profile problem.
As Spartanburg Herald-Journal reporter Lee G. Healy reveals, questionable internal politics and potential racial prejudice have created yet another scandal for District 7.
After one hour and two impromptu executive sessions at the start of Tuesday night’s meeting, the Spartanburg District 7 school board was still no closer to electing officers for the year.
The board eventually voted to table elections until its next scheduled meeting, Feb. 2. The board’s 2009 officers — Chip Hurst as chairman, Vernon Beatty as vice chairman and Sharon Porter as secretary — will remain in their positions until that time.
Controversy was expected to surround Tuesday’s elections after Beatty said he would challenge the nominating committee’s choice for chairman, two-year board member Laura Bauknight, by throwing in the name of 15-year board member Sharon Porter.
Both Beatty and Porter said Monday they thought black board members were not being given a fair shot at the board’s top leadership position and that Porter, who is black, is more qualified for the post than Bauknight, who is white. Bauknight said Monday that she has the time, energy and community-oriented background to do the job and confirmed she would be the committee’s pick.
The story itself is straightforward, but well worth a read. Reading between the lines, it’s not hard to see this as a power struggle that may have been years in the making, with new board members Eddie Richardson and Julie Lonon changing the chemistry just enough for a changing of the guard to be possible. That’s partially conjecture on my part, of course, but even in Healy’s preview story yesterday there were hints that this might be the case.
Steve Shanafelt
Mr. Beatty looks at everything in black and (read “versus”) white and the H-J reporter is being suckered into the portrayal of the whole matter as a “race” issue. As the Disrict 7 board has shown in the past, ineptitude knows no color.
Am I wrong in saying that it doesn’t matter if the chairperson head has three heads and is a healthy shade of plaid, just so they can do justice to the position and the job they were elected to do?