After some $350,000, a dozen or so candidate forums and countless campaign mailers, Metro Nashville Public Schools will now have two new school board members and renew the terms of two others.
The outcomes follow contested and expensive battles in the city’s four school board elections this year, each featuring a candidate either friendly to or an advocate for charter schools who ran against an incumbent moderate toward charters and with loyal allies of the current schools director.
The newest members both come from Nashville’s charter school community, which has been fighting for a greater voice on a school board critical of the schools paid for by the district’s budget but run by outside management.
In what was viewed as the hottest race of the year, Mary Pierce toppled opponent Becky Sharpe by more than 1,600 votes, or 15 percentage points, for the open seat.
Pierce — a mother of four with children attending private, charter and public schools this year — was heavily backed by charter school advocates near and far. Sharpe, a business woman who has run two companies, carried the endorsements of the city’s major labor unions.
But despite a plethora of mailers and a set of negative mail pieces paid for by outside groups, early voting in the Hillsboro cluster left Pierce with a 1,000 vote lead, which compounded on election day, earning another 600 votes Thursday.
Pierce also raised and spent more than Sharpe, pulling in nearly $100,000 as of late July to Sharpe’s $64,000. She didn’t spent it all, but for every dollar Sharpe spent, Pierce shelled out almost $2.
In Antioch, a different charter school champion took out a major target: the board’s sitting chairwoman.
By more than 600 votes, speech pathologist Tyese Hunter beat out Chairwoman Cheryl Mayes, a school board leader increasingly finding herself in the midst of a power struggle between members of the school board.
Hunter, a charter school parent, reaped the benefits of the charter school community which collectively gave her $39,000 and an army of boots on the ground for her disposal. She raised more than twice Mayes, a loyal supporter of Director of Schools Jesse Register, posting $39,000 near the end of July to the chair’s $17,000.
The result was finishing election day with 58 percent of the vote, and defeating the school board chairwoman — a feat now accomplished twice in the last two election cycles in favor of candidates cozy to charters.
Mayes was the only incumbent to fall. In the nearby Overton cluster, Jo Ann Brannon toppled her charter-friendly challenger almost 2-to-1.
Voters in school board’s second district renewed the soft spoken former teacher, principal and longest-serving board member to another term with 3,233 votes.
She went up against Bernie Driscoll, an IT consultant who criticized the school system for various shortcomings like low ACT scores. He was friendly to the idea of charter schools but stopped short of advocating in favor of them. He won an endorsement from the SEIU, and collected money from some of Nashville’s wealthy charter school backers. But although he raised $44,000 to Brannon’s $14,000, he ultimately fell more than 1,300 votes behind her.
Brannon’s third opponent, Edward Arnold, largely disappeared from the contest and garnered 659 votes.
In the McGavock cluster, incumbent Anna Shepherd is still standing after fighting off two challengers — a candidate propped up by charter advocates, and a small businesswoman who pledged to address concerns about teachers and high stakes testing.
Shepherd ultimately won by fewer than 200 votes, winning 2,348 to Rhonda Dixon’s 2,151. Like charter-backed candidates in the other races, Dixon also out-raised the incumbent — in this case, $44,500 to $18,000.
Pam Swoner who opposes charter schools, picked up 1,603 votes in the election, leaving her in a distant third.
