Contentious school board race, COVID-19 woes split parents in Lexington-Richland 5
School board elections are not usually the most high-stakes races on voters’ ballots. But in one Midlands district, the question of who controls the school board is causing candidates and voters to line up on opposing sides.
Both voters and board members in Lexington-Richland 5 have characterized the seven-member board as being split 4-3, with the balance being up for grabs when voters in both counties go to the polls on Nov. 3.
Board members have been split for years on issues surrounding a 2008 bond referendum for new school construction, with the minority often being critical of how the projects have been handled and the taxpayers’ money spent. This year, those differences have been exacerbated by different approaches to reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic.
The four-member majority — dubbed the “Core Four” by some online commenters — are Chairman Michael Cates, Robert Gantt, Beth Hutchison and Ed White. Most are long-serving board members who have shaped district policy for years, have been supportive of new school construction and more recently have backed a slow response to reopening the school district.
The other three are Nikki Gardner, Jan Hammond and Ken Loveless, who have been more critical of new school construction and of how the board has handled the issues that have surrounded the project. They have also supported a quicker return to face-to-face instruction.
This Tuesday, the seats of three of the four majority members are open; Gantt in one of three Richland County seats, while Cates and the former seat of Hutchison, who is not running for re-election, are up in Lexington County. If one of the three seats is flipped, the direction and focus of the board could shift overnight.
The LR5 Education Association, which represents teachers in the district, has endorsed Cates, Gantt and real estate broker April Alsup for the other Lexington seat. But others are supporting candidates who promise to bring a more of a change to the makeup of the board.
Lining up on the other side are candidates whom supporters have dubbed “HHH;” small businesswoman Rebecca Blackburn Hines, executive Matt Hogan and marketer Catherine Huddle. Hogan is running against Gantt in Richland County, and Hines and Huddle are up for the two Lexington County seats. The three candidates even held a joint meet-and-greet earlier this month.
Also running are Joseph J.J. Lindler in Lexington County and Jane Westbury in Richland County.
Hanging in the balance is the district’s handling of ongoing construction issues, such as the building of a new elementary school on Amicks Ferry Road and and what to do with a district-purchased but unused school site on Derricks Pond Road; an upcoming rezoning that could shift parents and students into new schools; and the still unfolding plan for reopening schools amidst the pandemic.
The split was mostly recently demonstrated by an often hot-tempered debate around the district’s response to COVID-19, when board members starkly disagreed on how quickly students should return to school after the pandemic shutdown. Gardner, Hammond and Loveless voted to lock in a return to a five-day-a-week in-person class schedule by early October, backed by a number of parents pushing for the option to go back to class as soon as possible.
But the “Core Four” majority instead voted to allow Superintendent Christina Melton to reopen schools as she felt circumstances in the Chapin and Irmo area allowed.
Lexington-Richland 5 is currently rolling out a four-day-a-week schedule, with elementary schools already operating under that schedule, and middle and high schools planning to return to that schedule next month.
The divide over reopening has been layered on top of other issues that have long split the district, including rezoning and new school construction. That has spilled over into online discussion forums that have polarized around the different camps.
“My main issue is a lack of accountability with the school board,” said Chuck Mehalic, a retired Marine. “There’s a majority of four that don’t listen to the community, or the administration, or the remainder of the school board... We want to restore integrity in the school board and accountability in District 5.”
Mehalic was upset with the board’s reluctance to reopen schools five days a week. He feels his grandchildren, who are attending private school five days a week, are receiving a better education than students using the school district’s virtual program.
“I think they’re doing what they feel is best,” he says of the board, “but you don’t want to shut things down. I think it’s stunted development among younger children. I don’t blame them, but you have to step back and take a look at it, because it’s not what’s best for children.”
But Kevin Scully, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said he was uncomfortable with the district’s decision to return students to class for four days a week, which started this month.
“I don’t think the science and the data back that up,” he said. “We’ve got to control community spread. ... It’s possible for kids to spread to older family members.”
Scully thinks pushing for a quick return to face-to-face instruction, as some board members have called for, is “reckless” — and calls those demanding a full five-day-a-week reopening “nuts.” His wife works as a teacher in the district, and while he’s satisfied with the safety precautions that have been taken in her school, he worries about the potential exposure to his family.
“What advantage is there in putting the community in danger?” he asks. “You can’t ignore a virus that’s killed 200,000 in six months. Just continuing as normal is not the way to go.”
The divided reaction has sent district parents into different online communities, looking for a better understanding of what was going to happen with schools in the fall.
“Would there be school next year or not? What will that look like?” remembers district parent Leslie Stiles. “I searched the district website for info, and it wasn’t there. I listened to the board meeting, and I still didn’t get any information.”
Sometimes, these were parents who weren’t all that involved in the district in the first place.
“I’ve always been involved in my kids’ schools,” Stiles said. “But I didn’t really know anything about the district leadership. I didn’t know who the board members were. I didn’t even know the name of the superintendent. I thought we were in a great district, so I didn’t think about that.”
But when Stiles went looking for more information online, she wasn’t satisfied with what she was hearing.
“One of them was so negative,” she said. “There were all these wild stories thrown out about the district mismanaging money, mismanaging schools.”
After researching the issues herself, she concluded much of what she was hearing online was mostly driven by politics. Seeking a place that was just for “voters and taxpayers to know what’s going on,” so she started the Facebook group “Deep Dive Into D5” to provide parents with that place.
She pointed to data, for instance, that suggested the largest added expense from a controversial 2008 school construction referendum was caused by a lawsuit that tried to block work on Chapin High School. The district contends that delays and other expenses from the lawsuit increased Chapin High construction expenses by $11.5 million.
Scully went in a similar direction, starting the page “OneD5” with the goal of bridging divides within the community. OneD5 has also issued an endorsement of the Alsup, Cates and Gantt slate of candidates.
But on other pages, including the 1,700-member “Learn About Your D5 School District,” members have been more critical about the current direction of the board. Taking their activism offline, members of the group “5 days f2f for District 5” organized a protest outside a school board meeting this fall calling for a faster return to five-day-a-week in-person classes.
Mehalic is among those in the district who are critical of how the district has handled construction from the $243 million bond referendum passed in 2008. But he’s more critical of how he feels the board has handled public criticism of the project.
“Even some school board members have been shut out,” he said. “The community has not been heard. There have been previous elections to try to bring new blood in, and one was completely driven off the board,” he said, referring to former board member Kim Murphy, who was ejected from the school board when it was determined she lived in the wrong county.
Because Lexington-Richland 5 straddles both counties, some board members are elected at large from Lexington County and others are elected from Richland County. Murphy was elected from Richland County but the board later determined she lived in Lexington County.
“We need a much more transparent look at things, a long-term look at the budget, and much more engagement with the community, and between parents and teachers,” Mehalic said.
Mark Ebert is concerned about the construction of new schools in the district after the 2008 referendum, including the Piney Woods Elementary School under construction on Amicks Ferry Road near Lake Murray. Critics have been upset that the school is being built on Amick’s Ferry and not on the original district-purchased site on Derricks Pond Road. The district walked away from the Derricks Pond Road site because it couldn’t secure access to a main road.
Ebert believes the population growth in the district isn’t enough to justify new school construction, although the district froze enrollment at other Chapin-area elementary schools last year. At the same time, Ebert worries that new schools may go hand-in-hand with new home construction in the outlying areas of the district.
“They made the decision to build the elementary school, even though we said we don’t have the population to fill it,” Ebert said. “They’re not listening to the public.”
Studies show enrollment in the district has grown by around 6% in total since 2012, and by 2030, rezoning models show the district could add up to 1,300 new students.
The most growth will be seen in the Chapin High School cluster in the less developed western half of the district, where projections say the population could as much as double in some areas.
Different members have clashed publicly over the issues in recent weeks, heading into an election where control of the board could be up for grabs.
Mehalic says he’s voting for Hogan. “I’ve known Mr. Gantt and voted for him a number of times,” Mehalic said. “I respect (Hogan’s) approach and fresh leadership.
“From the residents of Lexington County I speak to who have a similar opinion, there are two ladies running there with a similar platform.”
Ebert, a critic of new school construction in the Lake Murray area, said he plans to vote for Huddle and Hines for the two Lexington County seats.
“I’m just for no incumbents,” he said.
Hines has been critical of the district’s decision to delay a full reopening after announcing an initial plan to return to class this fall.
“The selected representation and limited sharing of information of the district’s reentry committees did not accurately reflect a true sampling of district stakeholders’ thoughts,” Hines said in response to a questionnaire from The State. “These feelings are exacerbated by the decision of the School Board Chairman to not bring the reentry plan to the full board for input and a vote, effectively shutting out the community from having their voices heard while failing to provide leadership in a time of crisis.”
But the challengers haven’t committed to a full reopening, depending on how the pandemic shapes up this fall and winter.
“Our board’s made it very clear, not once but twice with 4-3 decisions, that any re-entry decision does rest on Dr. Melton’s shoulders,” Hogan said at a candidate forum on Thursday. “While I have my own thoughts, the questions (at the forum) don’t really outline the measurables the superintendent is going to be using to measure in reviewing continued in-person versus a fully virtual platform... I would need to know all of the measurables that are being factored as well as what we are considering as an increase or a spike before I could answer yes or no (on continued reopening).”
School district officials have said their reopening plan is based on community infection rates for Richland and Lexington counties provided by the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
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