Candidate filing begins for Wake County school board. See who wants to lead district.
Control of North Carolina’s largest school system will be at stake when five of the nine Wake County school board seats appear on the Nov. 5 ballot.
The filing period for school board candidates opened on Friday and runs to noon on July 19. Incumbent board members Lynn Edmonds, Sam Hershey, Lindsay Mahaffey, Wing Ng and Toshiba Rice all say they plan to run this year.
The board is officially nonpartisan, but it has a 7-2 Democratic majority. The board has opposed expansion of taxpayer-funded private school vouchers. It received implicit bias training that critics charge was Critical Race Theory.
The winning candidates will also likely appoint a successor to school board vice chair Monika Johnson-Hostler. She is heavily favored to win election to the state House in November.
But candidates will have a hard time getting much attention during the 2024 election cycle. They’ll appear on a ballot that also includes election of president, Congress, governor, Council of State and the General Assembly.
What’s different
This will be the first time in more than a decade that the entire board isn’t up for election at the same time.
For decades, school board members served four-year, staggered terms with either four of five seats on the ballot. That changed during the legal fight over the General Assembly’s unsuccessful efforts to redraw the school board election maps.
In 2016, 2018 and 2020 all nine seats were on the ballot for two-year terms.
But in 2022, the school board directed the Wake County Board of Elections to return to the use of four-year, staggered terms. This meant that four board members elected in 2022 got four-year terms. The five other board members got two-year terms that will switch to four-year terms after this fall’s election.
Which seats will be on the ballot
▪ District 3 includes parts of northeast Raleigh running to Wake Forest. Wing Ng, a physician, was elected in 2022. Katie Williams filed paperwork in October to form a campaign committee to oppose Ng.
▪ District 4 includes parts of east Raleigh running to Knightdale. Toshiba Rice, a wellness consultant, was appointed by the board in February to fill a vacancy.
▪ District 5 includes parts of west Raleigh running to Holly Springs. Lynn Edmonds, the outreach director for Public Schools First NC, was elected in 2022.
▪ District 6 includes much of central Raleigh from Moore Square up to Brentwood. Sam Hershey, a business owner and volunteer coach, was elected in 2022.
▪ District 8 includes parts of Apex, Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina. Lindsay Mahaffey, a former teacher, was first elected in 2016.
Go to http://tiny.cc/u7i0zz to view the Wake County Board of Elections’ updated candidate filing list.
Voters can only cast ballots for the candidates running in the district where they live. Go to https://vt.ncsbe.gov/RegLkup/ to see which district you’re in.
Ideological split
In 2022, two conservative board members were elected: Cheryl Caulfield and Ng.
Caulfield and Ng have split with the majority on issues such as how often parents can file book challenges. Both opposed making book-challenge decisions binding for two years.
They also opposed allowing schools to apply for grants from groups that “empower LGBTQ youth” and provide books from “diverse authors.” They expressed concerns that Wake might be violating the Parents’ Bill of Rights law that limits the discussion of gender identity and sexuality in elementary schools.
Both also voted against including wording opposing private school vouchers to the district’s legislative agenda. But they ultimately sided with the Democratic members to vote for the overall legislative agenda.
“There’s the chance for me to personally influence not just the people on the board but the public as well through things I speak of during the meetings,” said Ng, who became the first school board candidate to file on Friday. “Even if I don’t win or I’m on the minority on the vote, I still feel like I contribute something to the conversation.”
