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.
Consider yourself unbelievably fortunate. Good science teachers are a real rarity.
I got my love of science from home and science fiction.
No Junior, the facts are the facts. The argument in the Dover lawsuit centers around the motivations of the school board, not the curricula. The statement they wrote is non religious in nature, period.
Those that support federal intervention on that basis would also have to support federal intervention in Lemaitre's case. His peers looked at his work and held that he was wrong because they were committed to a static universe. If Dover is the model, this would have prevented his theory from an airing in public schools until the scientists, who were evidently wrong in their criticisms, finally came to their senses and testified in a federal court of law that 'Yeah even though the guys a Catholic Monk we now think it's OK for Podunk High School to allow it past the front door.
Is that your idea of what federal courts and science should do?
Rail? No, I haven't. But I have heard him take potshots from time to time, to my great disappointment.
And I wanted to test drive my new, alternative handle for him.
I like it :-)
But they aren't experiments at all. There's a right answer.
They're demos, and the kids who look up what they'respposed to get as a result do better than bumblefingered honest ones.
Religion is not banned in public schools. Whatever gave you the idea that it was?
Whatever gave you the idea that I had an idea like that? Try reading for content.
And the motivations of scientists are not dispositive of anything.
I never said that they were.
BBT was the work of a Catholic Monk.
So?
Under your expansive view of the "establishment clause" Lemaitre's work would have been banned in public schools because his peers initially disagreed with the view that there was a beginning.
Horse manure. I have said no such thing, and your bizarre imputation bears no resemblance to my actual view of the establishment clause.
So tell me, when would a Catholic Monks scientific work, quite possibly influenced by his world view, be acceptable for a science class.
When it has met the standards of scientific methodology, of course.
Perhaps when a federal judge gave the go ahead?
Look, I *know* you're not this dense, so why are you pretending to misunderstand my post so badly?
It wouldn't be the 1720th time.
:-} Nothing you wrote is worth responding to especially the part where I have to "read for content". That was good for a laugh though.
That'll teach me to post before reading the other answers.
When it is vindicated by decades of empirical observation and repeated worldwide scientific peer review.
I like it. :-)
It was Last Thursday!
No Junior, the facts are the facts.
Indeed.
The argument in the Dover lawsuit centers around the motivations of the school board, not the curricula.
Wrong on two counts.
First, the court case *did* indeed spend a lot of time on "the curricula" as well (such as it was).
Second, the point wasn't the "motivations of the school board" as such. If they were, for example, religiously motivated to teach better science, that wouldn't have been an issue. The problem was that their motivation was TO INTRODUCE RELIGION into the classroom in a Trojan-Horse manner. In that respect, it most certainly *is* perfectly relevant and appropriate to examine their motivations.
The statement they wrote is non religious in nature, period.
False, period.
Those that support federal intervention on that basis would also have to support federal intervention in Lemaitre's case.
Complete nonsense.
His peers looked at his work and held that he was wrong because they were committed to a static universe.
...irrelevant to your attempted argument.
If Dover is the model, this would have prevented his theory from an airing in public schools until the scientists, who were evidently wrong in their criticisms, finally came to their senses and testified in a federal court of law that 'Yeah even though the guys a Catholic Monk we now think it's OK for Podunk High School to allow it past the front door.
Horse manure. You're completely and utterly missing the point. No one was trying to push Lemaitre's work into schools *as* a Trojan Horse for religious indoctrination. The fact that Lemaitre himself was religious is completely beside the point, although for some reason you keep trying to make it the point, despite the fact that no one else is.
Is that your idea of what federal courts and science should do?
Your straw man version? Of course not. The real-life version? Yes indeed.
...and yet you did anyway...
especially the part where I have to "read for content". That was good for a laugh though.
If you think it's funny that you completely misunderstood what I was writing, then hey, enjoy.
It was Last Thursday!
Blasphemer!
Scientific illiterates? On what do you base that misrepresentation?
1720 could very well be a huge number if the error bar on 1 is big enough! Teach the controversy!
I have it on good authority it was last Monday night during the NFL half time report.
Scientific illiterates? On what do you base that misrepresentation?
I wouldn't call it garbage. People are known to find things that are useful in the garbage from time to time.
Psstt...
The authorities were the faeries who make those faerie-rings Doctor Stochatic introduced me too about a million posts ago. :-)
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