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DEL.ICIO.USCobb ousts incumbent Johnstone from school board
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cobb voters gave a resounding rebuke to school board member Kathie Johnstone on Tuesday. The one-term incumbent, who has been dogged by controversy over laptop computers and evolution-disclaimer stickers, lost in a landslide.
First-time office seeker John Crooks drew 75 percent of the vote while Johnstone, the board’s former chairwoman, received 25 percent. Crooks jumped to an early lead and maintained it through the evening.
Gathering with supporters at Ritters Restaurant on Lower Roswell Road, Crooks was jubilant as his numbers rolled up. “I’m very humbled at what the Republican voters in the Post 6 community have elected me to do,” he said.
But the Baptist minister, who serves as administrator at Roswell Street Baptist Church, isn’t popping the Perrier yet. He faces one more hurdle for the Post 6 seat. In November, he takes on Democrat Beth Farokhi, a retired Georgia State University College of Education administrator.
Crooks said he’ll be ready. “I look forward to facing my opponent in the fall campaign,” he said. “I hope we confine the debate to the issues in a positive manner.”
In an aggressive campaign, Crooks hammered Johnstone on the failed take-home laptop proposal that would have put computers in the hands of all middle and high school students. Johnstone chaired the board in 2005 and championed the sweeping technology proposal that later was abandoned by the board as too costly. The courts ruled that it would have been illegal for the school board to spend Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax dollars on the laptops because that isn’t what the board promised voters in the SPLOST referendum.
Even in defeat Tuesday night, Johnstone stood by her actions of the past four years and her efforts to equip students with the take-home computers.
“I would not change anything I did over the last four years,” she said. “Giving today’s technology tools to today’s kids was the right thing to do. Perhaps we failed in communication.”
Johnstone pinned her defeat to the fact that she chaired the board during an intense time of controversy over everything from evolution-disclaimer stickers on textbooks to redistricting and the failed laptop computer proposal.
“I was chairman through much of what went on,” she said. “It was my face on television speaking for the board. I think people who were truly informed, the people who worked in the district, understood the good things that happened here.”
Al Daniel, one of the last voters Tuesday evening at the Mount Bethel precinct at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, voted for Crooks.
“I was concerned with the laptop scandal,” he said. “I want a board that is accountable. Sometimes change is good.”
East Cobb resident Larry Baugh didn’t like the idea of handing out laptops to students either. He also voted for Crooks. “I didn’t agree with a computer for everybody. I consider $100 million to be rather expensive and students would break them, lose them or sell them.”
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