Gini Pupo-Walker and Adam Barese, District 8 school board candidates
Unless you’re the kind of education insider who’s always tuned in to school district dynamics, you might not even know there are four school board races happening this year.
The past few Metro Nashville school board elections have been chock-full of cash. The 2012 race saw almost $400,000 go into 17 campaigns, and 2014’s 10 campaigns brought in almost $350,000. In 2016, the money was also there — mostly in the form of spending from a PAC created by Stand for Children, a pro-charter-school organization that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. A few candidates are showing a modest amount of cash flow this time around, but the majority have very little in their coffers — some with as little as a couple hundred bucks.
In 2016, with heated races and lots of money to spend, it seemed like every other week there was a new mailer with one candidate attacking another. This year … crickets. Some attribute the nasty fights of two years ago to all the money pouring in from charter-school advocates — money that seems to have to dried up now that the school board hasn’t approved a new charter school in two years.
Many local education insiders say the fighting got so bad that people lost friends. Some who were involved in the 2016 races vowed never to get back into local education again, which isn’t exactly a win for students in the district. Perhaps that’s why the candidates on 2018’s slate aren’t exactly keen on making enemies of their opponents.
Case in point: One of the candidates running in District 2, the diverse South Nashville district whose three-term school board member, Jo Ann Brannon, is stepping down, has a fairly storied past. T.C. Weber, known for his criticisms of both the school district and Director of Schools Shawn Joseph, has a few arrests on his record: a DUI, a disorderly conduct charge and a misdemeanor for indecent exposure — for “peeing on the side of Baptist Hospital,” Weber says. The Metro Nashville Police Department confirmed Weber’s explanation of that last charge, though they worded it slightly differently.
“I’ve been sober for 18 years, and I’ve owned all of my mistakes,” says Weber, who worked in nightclubs in the ’90s. “There is some regret for my actions, but my mistakes taught me humility, and they impacted my life moving forward.”
Surprisingly, none of Weber’s opponents — which include Rachael Anne Elrod, Jesse Gentry, Edward Arnold and Radir Annoor — have seized the opportunity to publicly attack Weber.
“I’m a huge believer in rehabilitated people,” says Gentry, an attorney who works with juveniles and formerly worked for the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services. “I thought it was great to see that he’s changed his behavior for the better. We’ve all said from the beginning that we wanted a very clean election — and I don’t have a problem with that. The school board has poor public perception, and I wanted this election to show we could have good, on-topic conversation.”
The closest thing to an attack on Weber’s history came from Elrod, who tells the Scene that voters have to decide whether Weber’s arrests matter to them.
“I’m running for myself, not against anyone else,” Elrod says.
In District 8, board member Mary Pierce has decided not to run again. When the Scene called the two candidates vying for Pierce’s seat, they were headed to get coffee together. Gini Pupo-Walker, a career educator and advocate, faces Adam Barese, who works in medical sales, in the district that houses the Hillsboro cluster of schools. It’s a largely affluent part of the city.
Pupo-Walker, who says she’d be the first Hispanic woman elected to school board office in the state, seems like she could be tough if necessary. She and Barese both say they’d like to see the school board hold the district more accountable and advocate more effectively for the district’s budget needs. The district did not get what it asked for in this Metro budget cycle: It lacks close to $40 million that it requested for the 2018-19 school year.
“When Mary Pierce decided not to run, I had some conversations, and I decided I would bring a value to the board that perhaps isn’t there,” says Pupo-Walker. “Ultimately, after trying to change things from within as a teacher for 11 years and then from the outside as an advocate for Conexión Américas, I found that maybe a good way to change things would be as a board member.”
Though both think they’d bring a fresh perspective to the school board, neither seems willing to take shots at the opponent.
“I just want to see someone solid take [Pierce’s] spot on the board,” says Barese. “I’m a parent, and I expect to have 13 years in a school district that’s showing some real weakness. Part of standing up and redirecting that is changing the attitudes before I get elected.”
The chair of the school board, Anna Shepherd of District 4, has no challengers. And in District 6, which is in the Antioch area, incumbent Tyese Hunter (who also filed papers to run for Juvenile Court Clerk) is facing three opponents: Fran Bush, Earl Lattimore and Aaron McGee.
There are still a couple weeks left until Election Day — and it’s possible the city will see a flurry of attack mailers and vitriol emerge in the days before Aug. 2. But it’s more probable that without the cash flooding the race, we won’t see anyone go low. It could be that school board races are back to their old model for success: Knock on doors, ask for votes, win on merit.
