Voters returned every incumbent Board of Education who sought reelection Tuesday, a move that officials interpreted as an endorsement of their plan for two new 900-student, kindergarten to eighth grade schools.
“People feel that we’re doing a good job because if they didn’t feel that way, we would not have been reelected,” said Barbara Doyle, chairwoman of the school board.
Voters backed six Democrats and three Republicans to serve on the 9-person volunteer board that oversees education.
The winners were Democrats Barbara Doyle, Tom O’Brien, Julie Luczkow, Jane Anastasio, Karen Vibert and Sherry Turcotte, as well as Republicans Chris Wilson, Margaret Bonola and Amy Coan.
“All the incumbents won,” said O’Brien. “I view that as endorsement of what we’re doing.”
O’Brien has spearheaded the controversial plan to close four older schools, including Memorial Boulevard Middle School, and replace them with two new schools that would each serve students from kindergarten to eighth grade.
The board is pushing a $115 million plan to build one school in Forestville and another in the western part of town.
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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
15 comments:
Congratulations Tom!
The top Board of Education candidate pulled in a total vote count that's about 10% of the city population, which is maybe 20% of eligible voters.
I don't see these totals as the resounding endorsement that Barbara Doyle seems to view.
OBrien got over 50% of the possible votes.
Looks like a majority to me!
Keep at it Tom, you are doing the right thing for Bristol.
Those statements from the BOE people are garbage. This is NOT an endorsement of their school plan. There was no choice whatsoever. 9 of the 12 candidates were guaranteed a seat no matter what, and almost all of the candidates were in support of the school plan. To suggest they beat the critics of the school plan is very dishonest. Nice example these BOE people are setting for the kids.
I'm not sure that's true.
Yes, the six Democrats won, as almost everyone expected. They always have, after all.
But if you look at the Republicans, it's hard to ignore that the two who were most skeptical of the school plans, Wayne Sparks and Dick Prindle, were not among the three GOP candidates to get the most votes. How come?
I didn't notice it at first, but Chris Wilson actually beat a couple of the Democrats. Has any Republican school board candidate ever managed to do that before?
Maybe because there was no campaign whatsoever from the BOE candidates? That nobody even knew who all the Republican candidates were until last week? And that nobody knew where they stood until this past week when the Courant and Jackie did those 2 articles? No debates for the BOE, no BOE candidate forums, no Nutmeg TV, nothing.
When I went to vote I couldn't even remember which BOE candidates were against the school proposals, and I follow this stuff more then most people.
The BOE election was a disgrace, and I refuse to believe the results signify anything.
Bobroske probably finished ahead of Democrats before.
Congratulations to all the Democratric BOE winners. We trust you to do great things for the children of our great City!
Look out, kids. It's more of the same.
Maybe Chris Wilson got so many votes because people really DO want to use the mall site for a school.
No, it's because people know CHris WIlson from CV Mason Insurance, he;s been around for a long time.
It's been my experience that people turn out to vote when they have a problem--generally an issue that they feel strongly about. Having just witnessed another depressingly low voter turnout rate, why shouldn't the BOE candidates view it as a sign? Even if it's not a vote of confidence, it also doesn't appear to be a vote of no confidence. Clearly, there are voters who don't approve of the job the BOE has been doing, but IF the move to K-8 and building new schools was really a problem for all of the city, why did "the people" fail to express this at the polls when given the opportunity to do so?
There was no option for people to express their displeasure with the BOE at the voting booth.
Only 3 of the 13 candidates for BOE opposed the megaschool plan, so unless you want to throw away 3 of the 6 votes you get for BOE it's impossible to avoid voting for someone behind the megaschool plan. And that is assuming the voters knew where each of the candidates stood on the issue, which certainly was not the case.
I no longer subscribe to the "lesser of evils" method of casting my vote. Sometimes NOT voting for a candidate says more than actually doing so....nothing in election laws say you must vote for someone in every race on the ballot.
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