A change of the political guard in one of Georgia’s most populous counties has triggered a push to strip school boards across the state of at least the veneer of partisanship.
State Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Buford, wants to make all school districts hold nonpartisan elections now that Gwinnett County has flipped to Democrats after years of Republican control.
“Partisanship should have no place in our schools,” Dixon said.
Credit: Georgia Legislative video
Credit: Georgia Legislative video
Currently, about 40% of Georgia’s 180 school boards hold partisan elections, meaning voters know the political parties of candidates. The rest, using a law that allows for local control, have opted against it.
Gwinnett tilted Democrat for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in 2016, then turned out in force for Stacey Abrams’ 2018 run for governor. For the county’s school district — the state’s largest — the shift to a Democrat majority led to the ousting of longtime Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks almost a year before his contract was due to end.
The district Wilbanks had led for 25 years had grown more diverse. In 2018, voters elected the first Black member of the Gwinnett school board, Democrat Everton Blair, Jr. Last year, two more Democrats — also people of color — beat Republicans, joining Blair to form a new board majority.
Wilbanks’ leadership was marked by persistent criticism about disproportionate discipline for Black students. He is white; his successor, Calvin J. Watts, is Gwinnett’s first Black superintendent.
Opponents of Dixon’s proposal say it’s a ploy to stanch GOP losses in areas that are shifting blue.
“They’re losing control on the local level and what happened in Gwinnett may also happen in Cobb County,” said Hillary Holley, director of organizing for Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group founded by Abrams. She says they’re telling their voters that partisanship has seeped into classrooms.
“What they are trying to do is motivate their base by feeding them lies,” she said.
Dixon, who chairs a Senate study committee on nonpartisan elections, recently held a hearing at the Gold Dome. All four Gwinnett residents who testified for his proposal were white, including two women arrested at a school board meeting last month for allegedly violating district safety protocols.
They complained about racial tension, school board members not returning calls and the number of speakers being capped at meetings. One said parents like him were labeled “racists and bigots.”
Brenda Stewart said her arrest at the school board meeting was “an extreme overreaction” and suggested politics was to blame. She was arrested after an altercation with a police officer over the round-tipped safety scissors she tried to bring into the meeting.
“I think that we have a narrative being pushed and I think it comes directly from much higher in politics,” she said at Dixon’s committee hearing.
The Georgia School Boards Association supports legislation calling for nonpartisan school board elections, saying it could reduce political tension.
Dixon is a floor leader for Gov. Brian Kemp, but said this proposal is his own. He doesn’t know how it will be received by fellow Republicans in areas where their party dominates board elections.
“That’s part of what this study committee, I guess, will bring out,” he said in the interview. “I firmly believe that it is needed in Gwinnett.”
Public hearing
The committee led by state Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Buford, will hold a two-hour hearing on school board partisanship at 11:30 a.m. Thursday in the auditorium at Gwinnett Technical College in Lawrenceville.
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