Midlands school board members spar over campaign attack of controversial teacher
The votes have been counted from this month’s school board election, but the fallout from a contentious school board race is continuing to play out.
At Monday’s first meeting of the Lexington-Richland 5 school board since the Nov. 5 election, two board members exchanged accusations over a controversial mailer targeting a Chapin High School teacher that went out across the district ahead of the election.
Board member Catherine Huddle publicly accused fellow board member Mike Satterfield, the father of teacher Mary Wood, of confronting her about the flier during a break in executive session at the board’s previous meeting Oct. 28.
“He was inches from my face screaming at me,” Huddle said. “At 62 years of age, I burst into tears because I had never in my entire life been treated like that.”
Satterfield denied saying anything inappropriate, and felt he needed to say something about the mailer that attacked his daughter for teaching a lesson on race at Chapin High School. The flier from an outside group endorsed Huddle on the reverse side, along with fellow candidates Jason Baynham and Ken Loveless.
“As most of the people in the community know, there was a flier put out that had a picture of my daughter on there by a group called ‘Defeating Communism,’” Satterfield said at Monday’s meeting. “I said that it was completely inappropriate and I was worried about my daughter’s safety.”
The campaign flier highlighted the national attention Wood had received after the high school English teacher was blocked from teaching the memoir “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the spring of 2023. Administrators worried the book, focused on the author’s lived experience as a Black man in America, would violate a state budget proviso meant to prohibit the teaching of concepts associated with “critical race theory.”
Huddle was re-elected to the Chapin-Irmo area board from Lexington County on Nov. 5 and Baynham was elected to the seat in Richland County. Loveless came up short for the second Lexington seat, which went to USC professor Scott Herring.
But Huddle said Satterfield’s reaction to the mailer was improper. She attempted to enter a statement about it into the meeting minutes for the previous meeting, but was voted down by the board Monday.
“It was totally inappropriate,” Huddle said to Satterfield of the confrontation. “You shouldn’t even be on this board.”
Wood defended her father, as well as her decision to teach Coates’ book in a post on Facebook on Tuesday.
“[I]t’s hard not to see a connection between my father’s election and the criticism of my classroom,” she wrote. “I think the instances are linked, and I believe the motivation to ban a book in my classroom was racist. I was an easy target as someone who firmly opposes injustice and who also helped place a reasonable person on our school board.”
During the public comment period of Monday’s meeting, the issue was brought up again as three teachers in the district spoke up in defense of Wood.
“In my 20 years teaching at Chapin High School, I’ve learned that students take character lessons from us,” said Sara Kimberlin, adding that she’s tried to work against bullying in the classroom, only to “see it arriving in our mailbox at election time.”
She called Wood a “close friend and a dear co-worker,” who is “always welcome in my house or in my classroom.”
“I watched candidates talk about how much they valued teachers,” Kimberlin said. “I want and need to believe this.”
Katherine Ramp, another Chapin High School teacher, said the mailer “contributed to a false, divisive and harmful narrative that teachers are indoctrinated our children.” For trying to teach to the best of her ability, Wood “has been vilified and used by some of you.”
Teacher Lee Bryant said the mailer would only damage Lexington-Richland 5’s ability to recruit and retain teachers, and feed into public distrust of the profession.
“We don’t wake up in the morning, re-read the Communist Manifesto and then tweak our plans to re-program every child with Marxist philosophy,” Bryant said.
All three called for the candidates involved, all of whom distanced themselves from the material and the group behind it in social media comments after it went out, to denounce the mailer and its message. Kimberlin and Ramp each said they feared being targeted for speaking Monday.
“Despite an ongoing campaign to make her as miserable as possible, [Wood] continues to come back to her classroom,” Bryant said. “She is compassionate and courageous. What she is not is a communist. What she is is a teacher.”
This story was originally published November 20, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
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