Divided field of school board candidates makes final pitches to voters

Oct. 29—Two slates of candidates for the Frederick County Board of Education will face off in the Nov. 8 general election, capping off a lengthy campaign season that has seen unusually high spending and community engagement.

The Students First Slate — made up of Ysela Bravo, Rae Gallagher, Dean Rose and incumbent Karen Yoho — and the Education Not Indoctrination Slate, which features Nancy Allen, Olivia Angolia and Cindy Rose, have expressed starkly different views on the challenges facing Frederick County Public Schools and what should be done about them.

Bravo, Gallagher, Yoho and Dean Rose are endorsed by the unions representing FCPS employees. Their campaigns have called for modest changes to the school system, but also highlighted things they think it does well.

Allen, Angolia and Cindy Rose, meanwhile, argue that FCPS needs drastic reform. The conservative group has focused on criticizing the district for how it handles issues of race and gender, alleging that it has abandoned traditional academic subjects in favor of a "woke agenda."

A similar divide is playing out in school board races across the country, experts say.

Four people will be elected to the seven-member board.

The Frederick News-Post spoke to all seven candidates this week about their campaign strategies and the issues they're pressing to voters.

Members of both slates said they were feeling confident about their chances in the general election. But each candidate also acknowledged the uncertainty inherent in a race without polling or official party affiliations. Candidates for the board do not run with a party affiliation.

"We all kind of live in our own bubbles," Yoho said. "People are saying, 'Oh, you're gonna be fine.' I'm not taking anything for granted."

All seven candidates said they were focusing on door-to-door canvassing and speaking to voters at community events. Many people seem to have already made up their mind on which slate they support, several candidates said.

"I'm not seeing a lot of middle-of-the-roaders," Bravo said. "I don't think anybody's mixing our tickets."

Each group said they were engaged in a get-out-the-vote effort in addition to promoting their own campaigns.

And getting people to pay attention to the Board of Education race can be particularly challenging, the candidates said.

Cindy Rose, who has run for school board three times before, said she's encountered some voters without children in FCPS who think they "don't have skin in the game." Often, Rose said, these people don't plan to vote for any school board candidates.

"I usually will tell them, 'Well, you know, it's important that you do, because these are the children that when they graduate, they are going to be writing the laws you live under,'" Rose said.

But on the whole, Rose said, people seem to be more tuned into this year's school board race than they have been in the past.

"More people are awake now," she said. "The pandemic and the virtual learning opened some eyes to what was actually happening in the schools that I had been talking about for over a decade."

Angolia, Allen and Rose said they were calling for a more direct focus on academics. Many people have responded positively to their message, they said, though some have criticized them for it.

"We've had a couple of people here and there that just want to call us names because of what they've heard about us through the grapevine," Angolia said.

Gallagher said the two groups often work from different definitions of the same idea, so it can be challenging to debate the issues.

The Students First slate, for example, has advocated for additional resources for social-emotional learning programs — which the Education Not Indoctrination slate has consistently criticized, arguing they turn students into political pawns.

"I don't think that some of the folks on the other side actually understand what social-emotional learning is, because they equate that with Critical Race Theory and other ideologies," she said. "It does sometimes feel challenging to feel like we're even engaging in the same conversation."

The two groups haven't interacted much, though: There has only been one in-person forum this election cycle. Members of the Students First slate attended two virtual forums hosted by the League of Women Voters, but no members of the Education Not Indoctrination slate showed up to either one.

Members of the Students First slate said "hot-button" issues — like removing books from school libraries and altering the elementary health curriculum — weren't high on the list of talking points they bring to a conversation with a potential voter.

Instead, Dean Rose said, he spends time talking about his experience with community service and the research he's done to prepare for a potential seat on the board.

"It's more important than ever that [voters] are able to identify with you, and not just the issue," he said.

He talks a lot about the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, a sweeping education reform bill that, over the next decade, will change the way FCPS implements early childhood education, employee salaries and more.

The four members of the Students First slate took the top slots in the primary — with Yoho in first, Gallagher in second and Dean Rose in third. Bravo finished fourth with 16,904 votes — about 1,000 fewer than Dean Rose and 2,800 fewer than Yoho.

Bravo said she was confident that her three slate-mates would be elected. She expressed concern about her own standing in the race, though, being the only first-time school board candidate on the Students First slate.

Among the Education Not Indoctrination slate, Nancy Allen received the most votes in the primary, finishing in fifth overall and about 3,600 votes behind Bravo.

Allen finished significantly ahead of Cindy Rose and Angolia: More than 13,000 people cast ballots for Allen, compared to the 12,303 who voted for Cindy Rose and the 10,406 who voted for Angolia.

All seven candidates said they planned to keep knocking on doors until Nov. 8.

"We're still pounding the pavement and going forward with what we've been doing since the very beginning," Allen said.