Posted on 11/08/2005 11:05:11 PM PST by jennyp
Dover CARES swept the race for school board Tuesday defeating board members who supported the curriculum change being challenged in federal court.
After months of fierce campaigning that included some mudslinging from both sides, new members of the board are Bernadette Reinking, Rob McIlvaine, Bryan Rehm, Terry Emig, Patricia Dapp, Judy McIlvaine, Larry Gurreri and Phil Herman.
The challengers defeated James Cashman, Alan Bonsell, Sherrie Leber, Ed Rowand, Eric Riddle, Ron Short, Sheila Harkins and Dave Napierskie. Results are not official until certified by the county.
“We’re still in shock because we were expecting to have some wins,” said Dapp, who won a two-year term. “We weren’t expecting to have all eight.”
Dapp said “we recognized very quickly that we were a very cohesive, well-working team. I think that is one of our many strengths of what we will bring to the board.”
Candidates weigh in
Board members Bonsell and Harkins, who had voted in favor of adding intelligent design into the ninth grade science curriculum, received the least amount of votes, with 2,469 and 2,466, respectively. Bonsell and Harkins did not return phone calls about the results Tuesday.
Reinking, who was running for a four-year term, received the most overall votes with 2,754.
“It’s a nice thing,” she said. “I’m very flattered and very humble about the whole thing.”
During the campaign, the eight Dover CARES candidates had questioned the incumbents’ truthfulness and fiscal responsibility, while the eight incumbents touted their achievements in keeping taxes in line and the ability to provide quality education.
Cashman, who was running for a four-year term, had said during the day Tuesday that “I expect to win, but it’s not a big celebratory thing.”
About the loss, Cashman said, “We put our effort into this and we tried to manage the school district as conservatively as we could. I have nothing to be ashamed about.”
Rehm said he believed the voters responded because of the challengers’ combined efforts. It wasn’t one thing. They went door-to-door, held public meetings and didn’t exclude anyone, said Rehm, who won a four-year seat.
A major topic in this year’s race was the 2004 curriculum change that added a statement about intelligent design to the ninth-grade science curriculum.
The elected board members oppose mentioning intelligent design in science class. Rehm was one of 11 parents who sued the board in U.S. Middle District Court. The trial concluded Friday and Judge John E. Jones III hopes to have a decision before the year’s end.
Effects on ID Case
Regardless of the election results, those six weeks of the trial have not been lost, according to attorneys on both sides.
“The suit goes on,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Steve Harvey of Pepper Hamilton. “The mere election of a new board does not change anything.”
Harvey and defense attorney Richard Thompson of Thomas More Law Center said Jones has a set of facts to use to determine his ruling.
Harvey said he did not want to speculate on the fallout of what the new board might do. Thompson gave several scenarios.
The new board could change the policy and determine how it will handle legal appeals. It could keep Thomas More or choose another firm if it wishes to continue the case to keep intelligent design in the curriculum.
If the judge rules against the board, Thompson said, the new board could decide not to fight and could therefore be stuck with the plaintiffs’ legal fees, as requested in the suit.
“What is done is done,” Reinking said about the court proceeding, “but to take it to the Supreme Court? To me that won’t be an issue.”
ACLU attorney Witold Walczak said if the board abandons the intelligent design statement, the plaintiffs want a court order stating the new board won’t re-institute it.
“It actually is a way to conclude the litigation,” Walczak said. “The parties sign essentially a contract that says they will stop the unconstitutional conduct.”
Outside ID
Though intelligent design has captured international attention, it was not the only issue in the election.
For example, Dapp said looking at the district budget is one of the new board’s first challenges.
Property taxes, fiscal responsibility, a teachers contract and full disclosure of board members’ actions arose during the campaign.
Roughly 200 teachers attended the board meeting Monday night to show their support for a new contract. Their old contract expired in June.
Sandi Bowser, president of the teachers union who lives outside of the district and didn’t vote for board members, said the union didn’t officially support one group, but the teachers who have been vocal supported Dover CARES.
“I think that the people who are working with Dover CARES have children in the district and are concerned about some of the things that are going on including intelligent design in the science classroom,” she said.
It must suck to be on the side of perjurers who lose in court and at the ballot box, all in the span of a couple of weeks.
Worth repeating. Teach it is social studies if at all, not science.
It think it was "Pandas" promoted as a science resource that moved Dover into unacceptable territory.
I object to the notion that perjury is a conservative value.
Really, it's of very little consequence that one tortoise evolved from another after two populations had become isolated from one another.
First of all, the attack isn't just on the concept of natural selection. The attack is on empiricism and on the methodological heart and soul of science.
If you read the posts of evolution opponents you will quickly find out that they reject all of science, including physics.
Especially physics.
Sorry for the word scramble in my post. Jesus says, "Whoever offends the faith of a little child, it would be better for him that a millstone be hanged around his neck and he be thrown into the sea." (Matt. 18:6) That is a strong warning to those who would seek to undermine the faith of little children in the teachings of the Scriptures.
Well, first, people really don't like their education dollars being spent in court battles. We see school boards settle lawsuits all the time to avoid it, even when they have facts on their side.
Second, school board races are not places where you normally spend a lot of money. I assume these positions are either unpaid or monthly stipend jobs. A coordinated, well-financed campaign can crush a guy who decided it would be fun to do something for his community.
Third, I think we have a mixed message. People want schools to focus on the basics, and that is a conservative battle. But here we were trying to force additional stuff into the curriculum.
Fourth, and maybe more important, people LIKE their teachers. We might not like teacher's unions, but we have to like the teachers, because we want to trust them with our children. That desire to want to trust creates a relationship which we foster so that we can feel comfortable sending our kids school. The teachers were strongly opposed to ID, and for a voter to say the teachers were dead wrong would be for the voter to introduce doubt into that relationship they hold in their mind.
It could also be that people don't buy ID as science, and don't want it taught in science class. That would be true whether ID was science or not -- people's belief about science is not well-correlated with what science actually is.
Thank God!!!!!!!!!
From the Dover CARES site:
http://www.dovercares.org/
Critical Thinking and Academic Freedom
We support the teaching of intelligent design and other diverse religious concepts related to the origins of life in order to enhance student understanding and critical thinking. Science class is not the proper curriculum for these concepts. This can only be done in a proper forum, such as an elective comparative religion course, so our students have the freedom to explore these concepts.
You are quite right. The point I was trying to make was that if Christians object to evolution because of 'holes' or 'flaws' then why aren't they objecting to other theories. I picked on Netwon because his work has been technically disproven by relativity, even though his work is still very useful for our every day world. I was simply illustrating the intellectual dishonesty employed by some creationists.
Already waiting in the wings. It's Intelligent Evolution.
Yes, you are misunderstanding. Intentionally?
"Religion is a belief, science is a fact"
Science is based on some facts, but also theories that have not always proven to be factual. Example, the theory of evolution, and it's multitude of missing links.
Thanks for the ping!
I fear the next wave of attacks will be against the peer review system itself, not public education; this is the stance the Discovery Institute has in fact been advocating all along.
Election returns FIRST on FR! Thanks, jennyp.
From the article:
About the loss, [James] Cashman said, “We put our effort into this and we tried to manage the school district as conservatively as we could. I have nothing to be ashamed about.”
Apparently lying to kids and trying to force someone's religion down their throats isn't shame-worthy to this loser... Pathetic.
Well for me the whole thing was unacceptable.
I don't have a link to the four paragraphs, but, IIRC, they were clearly singling out evolution as not being solid science but just-a-theory blah blah.
An object lesson in what happens when Republicans abandon limited government conservatism and try to impose a sectarian agenda. Let's hope we can learn enough to 2005 to get this out of our system by 2006.
I guess whan the other shoe drops, and Judge Jones hands the School Board and Thomas More their asses (I mean donkeys, of course), the verdict isn't going to be appealed.
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