ANDERSON — Challengers in this year’s school board race are questioning whether retired teachers should serve on the board.
Of Anderson Community Schools’ seven board positions, four are held by former teachers in the district, and two of those seats are up for grabs in Tuesday’s election.
Among Madison County’s five public school districts, only Anderson’s includes retired teachers, but two board members at Elwood Community Schools teach in other districts.
At least three candidates for Anderson’s school board have said former teachers have too much influence.
The antagonists include Tim Morgan, a business owner running against incumbent Wally Fitch, a former Anderson teacher.
“I have a problem with retired teachers being on the school board, because you’ve got teachers negotiating with teachers,” Morgan said in an April interview. “Who is on the people’s side?”
Irma Hampton Stuart, a former school board member who is hoping to reclaim her seat from Teddy Pancol Bohnenkamp, has also said four former teachers is too many for a seven-member board
Bohnenkamp is not a teacher but runs a local real estate business. Along with Fitch, the Anderson School board’s other retired teachers are Keith Millikan, Philip Morgan and William Riffe.
Millikan is running for re-election against Tony Swinford, who runs a family landscaping business and works as a substitute teacher in Anderson and Alexandria.
Fitch joined the board in 2007 to fill a vacant seat. He said his career has helped the board rather than created a conflict of interest.
“Every board in America probably has employees or former employees of that industry on their board, whether it’s oil or cars or whatever,” Fitch said. “The value of having teachers is that they understand the conflicts when they come up.”
Tim Long, another opponent to Fitch, said it’s not only a problem that the school district once employed four of the board members, but that the teachers belonged to the Anderson Federation of Teachers union and two of them, Fitch and Millikan, were union officers.
“That brings in a particular mindset to viewing everything,” said Long, who shares his name with Anderson’s former school superintendent. “Four votes, and that’s a quorum. The AFT for most things has four votes locked in.”
The AFT endorsed Millikan, Fitch and Bohnenkamp after interviewing eight on the 10 candidates in March. The endorsements came with a $2,000 campaign donation, a gesture that Long said could sway the election and sway the vote of board members to favor the AFT.
“It looks band and it smells bad, even if nothing is wrong,” he said.
But the AFT is within its rights to endorse candidates and support their campaigns, said Rick Muir, the union’s president.
“Tim interviewed with us and wanted that endorsement and wanted those campaign funds,” Muir said. “Tim sincerely cares about education, but to take that position — and I know he’s not the one — it’s like what are they going to run on? I’d rather they run on what they’re going to do for education.”
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