Voters picked three out of four incumbents to fill seats on the Cincinnati School Board while a fourth incumbent was hobbled by a write-in candidacy that opened the door for a first-time school board candidate to score a win.
In a field race for three seats up for re-election, current board members Eve Bolton and Carolyn Jones grabbed easy victories, receiving 29 and 28 percent of the vote, respectively. Meanwhile, Cincinnati Teach for America’s Ben Lindy racked up enough votes to take the third seat on the board, receiving about 20 percent of the vote.
Incumbent Pamela Bowers prevailed with 55 percent of the vote in an additional three-way race against Gary Favors and Steve Megerle for an unexpired term ending Dec. 31, 2021.
Jones currently serves as the school board’s president. She was endorsed by the Hamilton County Democratic Party, the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, Cincinnati AFL-CIO and others. She has cited the current state of school funding in Ohio — long ruled unconstitutional — as one of the district’s biggest challenges. She has also said that the district’s approach to transportation needs to be improved.
Bolton has served three terms on the school board. She was endorsed by the Hamilton County Democratic Party, the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Cincinnati Women’s Political Caucus and other groups and has served as president, vice president and other roles on the board.
Ozie Davis III, the third incumbent in the field race, was appointed to a seat last year vacated by resigning board member Lannis Timmons. Davis didn’t collect enough signatures to get listed on the ballot this time around and was running as a write-in candidate — possibly a large part of the reason for his fourth-place finish in the race ahead of fifth and sixth-place challengers Heather Couch and Marlena Brookfield.
Davis was endorsed by the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, the Hamilton County Democratic Party and the Cincinnati AFL-CIO.
Lindy, on leave from his job as the executive director of Teach for America Southwest Ohio, had scored an endorsement from the Cincinnati Charter Committee. He sees making sure educational opportunities are consistent across CPS as among the district’s biggest challenges. Lindy’s affiliation with Teach for America — which places non-teachers in public schools for two-year apprenticeships — has raised some controversy from critics, in part because TFA is sometimes affiliated with charter schools that pull funding from public schools.
Lindy has said he doesn’t think charters have worked well in Ohio and he is dedicated to public schools in Cincinnati. Still, his role in TFA and some $12,000 in campaign funding from TFA-allied group Leadership for Educational Equity has put him at odds with groups like the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, which last month voted to oppose CPS entering into contracts with TFA. The rift has led to some bitter fighting between Lindy and his supporters and TFA and charter critics.
Bowers was the incumbent and candidate endorsed by the Hamilton County Democratic Party in the second race. She’s a mental health and chemical dependency counselor with more than two decades experience and scored additional endorsements from the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, Cincinnati Women’s Political Caucus, the AFL-CIO and other groups.
The board members serve as the public’s representatives who weigh in on big calls about how CPS budgets taxpayer money and many other overarching policy decisions about how the district is administered.
There are plenty of important issues the board will need to wrestle with, including the implementation of its three-year strategic plan, which looks to prepare students for life via academic achievement, personal well-being and career readiness and to guide all CPS students into either higher education, employment or military service upon graduation.
The board will also need to continue overseeing the implementation of Cincinnati Preschool Promise, an effort to extend preschool to lower-income residents in the district.
Beyond that, the board will need to navigate the district’s continued growth, improve its bus system, address safety concerns for students walking to school and continue progress in mitigating school security and bullying issues.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 12, 2019.