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.
Ah, okay. Sorry. I did indeed misread your post. My mistake. Thanks.
Considering that the OP admitted to scambling the quote accidentally, no, it was not an intentional misreading. Thanks for playing though.
Peer review always has critics, even among real scientists. There's politics in every human institution.
What bothers me is the constant clanging among otherwise intelligent people to accept supernatural explanations at every difficult turn in the road.
The default position of ID is if I can't explain it, Goddidit. It's short attention span science.
ID as "short attention span science"
I like it :-)
That's the point though. In a conservative district, with a 19% pay raise and property tax hike threatened, the Republicans still lost. This is the kind of district in which Dems shouldn't even be able to field a candidate. Thanks to the creationist agenda pushed by the school board, the Dems found a window of oppportunity, and won.
Yeh, I kind of forot about that part. What I would like to see come out of all this is some enthusiasm for all the deep mysteries of science that remain.
When I was a teenage considering a career, I was told by my teachers that all the great problems had been solved, or would be in few years. What a crime against humanity.
It's not about "putting people at ease." It's about science and whether or not we should make science conform to our ideology.
That's the trouble with creationism. It's a fuzzy-headed attempt to not hurt people's feelings with facts they don't like.
It's Political Correctness for social conservatives, and it's both as silly and as dangerous as the leftist version.
Actually not Professor. The lesson here is that local issues can be decided by locals without the intervention of federal courts and their non limited government supporters.
Question from sheer ignorance:
Were all of the Dover CARES slate Democrats or just anti-lying-Creationists of various stripes?
Last week it was divulged that Thomas More shopped around the country to find a district which would adopt the Of Pandas and People curriculum so they could fight a court case. This wasn't the ACLU looking for a battle, it was Thomas More (who, having been set up as a Catholic law center, should know better than to get into bed with Biblical literalists). They pushed Dover into a course of action that led to an inevitable lawsuit; and given the narrow margin of victory, I have to conclude that the School Board wouldn't have lost unless the suit was filed.
Any criticism or alternative theory is to be discreditied via a religious smear. Unable to explain your precious evolution on a molecular level, unable to prove your theory of macroevolution, unable to state evolution in a LAW, you resort to personal invective and castigation.
This may seem heretical but I'm actually not all that much in favor of teaching science in elementary school.
All too often, no, make that almost always, "science" is taught as a bunch of dry, boring facts to be memorized.
The magic goes away. No one's fault really. People wouldn't be elementary school teachers if they themselves had been caught up in the excitement of real science.
They were 4 Dems and 4 Republicans, who ran on the Dem. line for expediency.
I'm only an ex-Catholic, not a real one, but perhaps you might want to consider there are quite a few Christians who don't regard the Reformation as a good thing? :-)
The folks in Dover appear quite capable of making their own decisions. But I knew that from the gitgo.
At least they can't make the curriculum any more one-sided. Decades of brainwashing still hasn't convinced the majority of the subjects.
You're assuming the result of the election would have been the same if the suit hadn't been filed. Possible, but I doubt it.
Limited government includes not imposing a sectarian governmental agenda on the public sphere. That's what the religious right doesn't understand.
"I dunno. Hey, creationists: Why do you think the Dover school board got thrown out en masse?"
First of all you need to get your terminology correct. Someone could be a proponent of ID and not be a creationist. At best, logically speaking, all creationists are de facto IDers that know who the intelligent designer is. However, this childish game of trying to say that ID is reworked creationism is false. I am a young earth 6 day creationist - no matter how foolish that may sound. I see ID as merely a compromise solution and hardly a great assault on science.
Whatever, that being said. It would appear that the media attention this trial has brought on Dover has been an embarrassment for many that normally would have passively accepted ID being introduced without caring. The election is a backlash to the "bad press" caused by the trial IMO. However, regardless of the reason(s), the people of Dover have spoken by the election process. For the time being, that must be respected until the next election. If they don't want ID introduced, that is their choice, and I won't complain about it as a "creationist". I do NOT speak for true ID proponents.
Nothing prevents you from arguing that the ends justifies the means, you just can't wear the limited government hat.
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